Maine: CMP Delivery Rate Changes 7/1/2017

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

CMP Delivery Prices changed on 7/1/2017
- Generally prices went down due to the completion of a previous program
- Standard residential rate reduced the effective fixed fee by $1.80 per month, but it increased the per kWh charge by $0.003645/kWh.
- TOU service charges increased by $0.24 to $10.24.
- Optional TOU Savings Plus have been canceled. Only optional is the Supersaver rate. I've been moved to that.

We received a letter from CMP about a change to our plan. We were on TOU Savings Plus and it said that our usage says that we could save more on the Supersaver plan and that we would automatically be moved to it on July 1st. Turns out it was just that they'd canceled Savings Plus and we'd save more on that than on regular A-TOU.

Based on the last 12 months we will save more this year on Supersaver than we did on Savings Plus.

New Delivery Fees (Fee kWh is how many off-peak kWh you'd need just to "pay off" the difference in fee:

	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	To Fee	Fee kWh
Fixed	7.17	0.070186	0.070186	0.070186	0.0
TOU	10.24	0.107207	0.107207	0.05215	170.2
Supersaver	10.24	0.184612	0.032653	0.032653	81.8

Old rates (I only have the fixed and the Savings Plus plan I was on)

	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	To Fee	Fee kWh
Fixed	9.55	0.066541	0.066541	0.066541	0.0
Savings Plus	10.00	0.136036	0.043144	0.043144	120.9

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Just wanted to clean this up. I messed up the column headings in my first post
New Delivery Fees (Fee kWh is how many off-peak kWh you'd need just to "pay off" the difference in fee:

.	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh
Fixed	7.17	0.070186	0.070186	0.070186	0.0
TOU	10.24	0.107207	0.107207	0.05215	170.2
Supersaver	10.24	0.184612	0.032653	0.032653	81.8

Old rates. Fee kWh is compared to new fixed rate. Value in parentheses is compared to previous year's fixed prices

.	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh
Fixed	9.55	0.066541	0.066541	0.066541	0.0
Savings Plus	10.00	0.136036	0.043144	0.043144	105.8(15.4)
Supersaver	10.00	0.188870	0.037243	0.037243	86.8(19.2)

Also note that the Standard Offer supply (energy) price for 2017 is $0.06691/kWh. That's at a flat rate for residential customers.

 

[Gwgan]

The rates have changed again as of July 1 2018. I do not find the saver options on the website.

 

[Gwgan]

Also note Rate A-TOU has an ~$30/mo fee for terms less than one year but no fee is listed for the Optional TOU. Current standard offer delivery rate is $0.068334 above 50kWh, and now $11.00 for up to the first 50kWh.
Spreadsheet analysis of my actual 2017 meter shows neither TOU would not be advantageous but if I could move all EV charging to off peak and only use the TOU in the summer there would be a savings with the Optional TOU rate. YMMV.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

2018-2019	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh	Rate BE %	BE%750/mo	BE750/mo	$/100kWh>BE
A (Flat)	7.58	0.068334	0.068334	0.068334	0.0	0.00%	0.00%	0.0	$0.00
A-TOU	10.17	0.106603	0.106603	0.050974	149.0	68.79%	74.99%	562.4	$1.74
A-TOU-OPTS	10.17	0.185380	0.031726	0.031726	70.7	76.18%	78.42%	588.1	$3.66

2017-2018	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh	Rate BE %	BE%750/mo	BE750/mo	$/100kWh > BE
A (Flat)	7.17	0.070186	0.070186	0.070186	0.0	0.00%	0.00%	0.0	$0.00
A-TOU	10.24	0.107207	0.107207	0.052150	170.2	67.24%	74.67%	560.1	$1.80
A-TOU-OPTS	10.24	0.184612	0.032653	0.032653	81.8	75.30%	77.99%	585.0	$3.75

A-TOU-OPTS now only has the Supersaver tariff so I just used the rate schedule names in the table above.
As you can see in the table, although the reduced rates save money, it's made TOU a worse deal compared to the fixed A schedule.

BE = Breakeven.
Rate BE is the breakeven on the raw per kWh prices
Fee kWh is the amount of low-rate electricity to pay off the extra monthly fee.
Exactly how much you need to be off peak depends on your overall electricity usage. The more you use, the closer to the raw rate-based breakeven you can be. That's because you first have to pay for the extra fee, and then you can save.
As a guide, I've include breakevens percentage and kWh calculated for total usage of 750kWh/mo.

For us, the A-TOU-OPTS still saves money since our average usage is over 750kWh/mo and we're about 84% off-peak and shoulder. This is with a single plug-in (2013 Volt). If I were to replace my Prius HEV with a PEV and charged it only off-peak and shoulder that would all be at a lower price than the fixed tariff.

 

[Gwgan]

“BE”?
These averages are for total kWh? but if one is able to move nearly all power use of out of the peak times then the results are much better. And don’t forget peak does not include weekends and holidays.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

“BE”?
These averages are for total kWh? but if one is able to move nearly all power use of out of the peak times then the results are much better. And don’t forget peak does not include weekends and holidays.

Yes BE = Breakeven. See details below the table added in edit.
$/100kWh > BE is referring to the savings per extra 100kWh of use at off-peak.
It's quite clear from the tables that the A-TOU has a very narrow use-case, while A-TOU-OPTS could work out pretty well for a heavily-plug-in household.

We do laundry and the dishes all off peak or on shoulder and that helps limit our peak usage.
We have one household member who's always at home.

But I think it's worth any Maine plug-in owner (and really any person in Maine) to check their data and see whether they'd benefit from switching to TOU.

To download usage data on CMP:
Log in to your CMP account.
In "Manage My Account" in bottom right press the "Download My Data" button.
Enter a 1 year (or multiple year) data range.
Select to download as a CSV if you want to load it into a spreadsheet program.
Select Green Button XML if you want to use a compatible online tool.

Press Submit to download.

If loaded into a spreadsheet the file has:
- Column A: Account Number
- Column B: Maybe an internal service number. (Different for different meters for me)
- Column C: Meter number
- Column D: date to the hour
- Column E: not sure. Maybe a tariff code? It's 10 for me.
- Column F: kWh used that hour
- Column G: indicates if there's a GAP In data
- Column H: indicates what they did to calculate if a gap, like MISSING (if nothing) or ESTIMATE (if estimated)
- If you have multiple meters as I do, there are different rows for different meters

(It might be that the Energy Manager has improved for showing average usage, but last time it checked it wasn't very good.)

 

[Gwgan]

But I think it's worth any Maine plug-in owner (and really any person in Maine) to check their data and see whether they'd benefit.

I now have a Quantrix spreadsheet to examine historical CMP data and calculate relative costs and would like to compare other examples if anyone would like to share their data. I would share the spreadsheet but I doubt there are a lot of Quantrix users here.

 

[Gwgan]

Been on the fence about getting a battery for outage backup, but could use it to avoid peak charges altogether. Hmm...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Been on the fence about getting a battery for outage backup, but could use it to avoid peak charges altogether. Hmm...

Well, you only save on the delivery portion, so including the Standard Offer Price, per kWh savings would be ...

(0.2645863 - 0.1109323 / <store_retrieve_efficiency>). Multiply by 1.055 if sales tax applies.

Eff % $ saved/kWh With tax*
70% 0.106111586 0.111947723
71% 0.108343624 0.114302523
72% 0.110513661 0.116591912
73% 0.112624245 0.118818579
74% 0.114677786 0.120985065
75% 0.116676567 0.123093778
76% 0.118622747 0.125146998
77% 0.120518378 0.127146889
78% 0.122365403 0.1290955
79% 0.124165667 0.130994779
80% 0.125920925 0.132846576
81% 0.127632843 0.13465265
82% 0.129303007 0.136414673
83% 0.130932927 0.138134237
84% 0.132524038 0.13981286
85% 0.134077712 0.141451986
86% 0.135595253 0.143052992
87% 0.137077909 0.144617194
88% 0.138526868 0.146145846
89% 0.139943266 0.147640146
90% 0.141328189 0.149101239

* Best case: displaced peak already has sales tax; worst case would be displaced peak untaxed, extra demand due to charge/discharge cycle loss is taxed. (taxable on any use above 750kWh during a billing cycle)

So, assuming 80% system efficiency, per 100kWh savings of $13.28. Certainly not going to pay for the battery, but could offset it a bit.

Also have to remember that you can only replace peak loads up to the output power limit of the battery system.

Need more calculation.

 

[Gwgan]

Not expecting arbitrage savings to pay for a backup system—that has it’s own worth.

Need more calculation.

Working on it. Added efficiency (thanks for that) to my table; how efficient is Powerwall? The idea is to move all grid consumption to off peak; one Powerwall with 5 kW is more than enough output to cover my base load but may not be enough capacity to cover all dark on-peak hours in winter.
With real 2017 data, 90% efficiency, the pre-tax delivery charge savings would be negligible with A-TOU and negative with OPTS. There was plenty of on-peak time car charging in 2017 so the real data set is not predictive.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

New delivery prices for 2019-2020

CMP has raised the effective flat service fee substantially, but slightly lowered the fixed delivery price.
For TOU, they've lowered the peak price, and raised the off-peak price by quite a bit.
So, the break-even has risen and the reward after break-even has dropped significantly.

2018-2019	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh	Rate BE %	BE%750/mo	BE750/mo	$/100kWh>BE
A (Flat)	9.10	0.067109	0.067109	0.067109	0.0	0.00%	0.00%	0.0	$0.00
A-TOU	10.22	0.103577	0.103577	0.055813	99.2	76.35%	79.48%	596.1	$1.13
A-TOU-OPTS	10.22	0.175801	0.039756	0.039756	40.9	79.89%	80.99%	607.4	$2.74

2018-2019	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh	Rate BE %	BE%750/mo	BE750/mo	$/100kWh>BE
A (Flat)	7.58	0.068334	0.068334	0.068334	0.0	0.00%	0.00%	0.0	$0.00
A-TOU	10.17	0.106603	0.106603	0.050974	149.0	68.79%	74.99%	562.4	$1.74
A-TOU-OPTS	10.17	0.185380	0.031726	0.031726	70.7	76.18%	78.42%	588.1	$3.66

2017-2018	Fee	Peak	Shoulder	Off-Peak	Fee kWh	Rate BE %	BE%750/mo	BE750/mo	$/100kWh > BE
A (Flat)	7.17	0.070186	0.070186	0.070186	0.0	0.00%	0.00%	0.0	$0.00
A-TOU	10.24	0.107207	0.107207	0.052150	170.2	67.24%	74.67%	560.1	$1.80
A-TOU-OPTS	10.24	0.184612	0.032653	0.032653	81.8	75.30%	77.99%	585.0	$3.75

A-TOU-OPTS now only has the Supersaver tariff so I just used the rate schedule names in the table above.
As you can see in the table, although the reduced rates save money, it's made TOU a worse deal compared to the fixed A schedule.

BE = Breakeven.
Rate BE is the breakeven on the raw per kWh prices
Fee kWh is the amount of low-rate electricity to pay off the extra monthly fee.
Exactly how much you need to be off peak depends on your overall electricity usage. The more you use, the closer to the raw rate-based breakeven you can be. That's because you first have to pay for the extra fee, and then you can save.
As a guide, I've include breakevens percentage and kWh calculated for total usage of 750kWh/mo.

For us, the A-TOU-OPTS still saves money since our average usage is over 750kWh/mo and we're about 84% off-peak and shoulder. This is with a single plug-in (2013 Volt). If I were to replace my Prius HEV with a PEV and charged it only off-peak and shoulder that would all be at a lower price than the fixed tariff.