The bill is bizzare and hard to read. But here is how it actually works.
1. LADWP has a "mix" of one-to-one net metering and limited credits for your net kwh returned to the grid. So, in the various "times of use" they first break down high peak, low peak and base. You didn't say how large your system is going to be., but I will go on mine. I also have powerwalls.
2. Because of a large system and the powerwalls, I often see negative Peak, High Peak, and base numbers. So my system builds up a credit, which is converted to dollars. You never get paid for them, you can just use the dollars in your "bank" when you have a period where you owe.
3. LADWP bills every two months. In five of my six two-month cycles, I was a net exporter. So I will go with the November 24 to January 27 bill, which is obviously the worst for solar and the one period where I actually had to pay something.
4. In each time period, you get one-to-one credit. So in low peak and high peak I had a slight, net usage. When you get a bill, its "High peak delivered = 10 minus High peak received = 5 for net of 5. This part of the bill is 1 to 1 net metering. LADWP does it separately for each time period. Because it was winter, I had 1,400 kwh of base (middle of the night to early morning) usage.
5. Then, it was billed at tier 1, for the first 1k, and tier 2 rate for the second 400 odd kwh. This is odd, I would have thought they would bill each time period at the rate for that time period, but no.
6. Then, I had some money in the "bank" - but of the $300 in charges I only was able to use like $140 (even though I had more money left, because some of the charges are not "offsettable" by credits. Its this part of the bill that is NOT 1 to 1 net metering, sort of like 1 to .5 or so.
How will this work for you without powerwalls? I believe what will happen is that your "net low peak" is going to be off the charts negative, and it looks to me like LADWP basically divides the bill into time of use periods, but still gives 1 to 1 credits at this stage, which is very pro-solar. They do not appear to play games where they give you cheaper credits during the day and apply those cheap credits during high priced peak.
Of course, this all depends on the size of your system. I concluded that my powerwalls don't really save any money, I just have them because I wanted them and its nice to have the back up, even though LADWP is very reliable.
