PG&E sent a letter to me on October 1 telling me that my rate schedule had been changed from E-9 to EV on August 10. I did not appreciate the late notice. I went to use the rate comparison tool on the PG&E web page but was informed there that it was not available for solar customers. Have some of you observed otherwise?
Instead I wrote my own program to implement the PG&E billing algorithm for E-1, E-6, E-9 and EV to compare. It turns out they were correct, that EV is now the least expensive for me since I have significant consumption during the off-peak hours and I am able to avoid consumption during the peak hours. For the past two years during which I have SmartMeter hourly data, the cost under the current EV tariff is more than I have paid during that time with E-9, but the E-9 tariff has been increased so now it would be more expensive.
By the way, if your solar system is sized so that you wind up consuming on average at least $10 worth of energy each month, then the recent increase from $4 to $10 does not make any difference. Both of those amounts are the "minimum energy charge", so the sum of those monthly minimum charges is subtracted from your true-up energy charge total that you have to pay. If that total was already negative, though, then there is nothing to subtract the minimum from.