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PG&E Rate Schedules: "Home Charging" (EV2-A) Goes Live vs. Others
- Thread starter SoundDaTrumpet
- Start date
Yes, you will eventually be kicked out of E-6 in 2023. I don't think it will be triggered by your Powerwall install or PTO.
You should have a look at the Tariff. The time periods are changing in 2021 and 2022 before the entire schedule being retired in 2023. See sheet 5 in the Tariff doc linked below.
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-6.pdf
I've never seen them make such significant schedule changes to a Tariff before. Usually they just close it to new customers then eventually kick everyone out and make them choose another rate schedule that is available at that time.
My electric bill has been $250 for June and July, for a 1100sqft 2br home up in the East Bay. I'm currently on EV-2A. We moved in to this place in January, and the previous tenants bills were constantly less than $100, and since I switched to this new rate, the bill has almost doubled! I barely charge the car at home because of the pandemic, so I'm wondering if I need to switch to another rate. We only use 842kwh, 200/131 during peak/part peak and 503 off peak (when we run the dishwasher, laundry, charge the 3).
mblakele
FSD Beta (99)
You can probably see that it's the peak and part-peak that's raising your bill, and that's a trade-off of EV rate plans. Peak usage needs to be really low. Any idea what's driving that peak and part-peak usage? Maybe it's air conditioning?
If you can figure that out and adjust your household usage, that should make the EV plan cheaper for you.
I think it may be because we have an electric stove (we rent). We have a newborn as well so we have a swing plugged in, along with his sound machine and a robot bassinet that's plugged in all the time. I'm wondering if that's what's causing it.
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Thanks for posting the E-6 Tariff... I have never seen a phased change to the TOU schedule before the expiration date!
mblakele
FSD Beta (99)
Ah, I'd ignored cooking and hot water because I saw gas on your bill. Electric cooking can use significant power, but mostly people don't use all the burners at the same time, or for very long, or use the oven much in summer. So I wouldn't expect that to draw as much as, say, an electric water heater. Do you have one of those too?
With an all-electric house, the big-ticket items tend to be heat, hot water, and A/C. Most things that plug into an ordinary wall socket don't draw much power. You can look at the power rating on each of those baby appliances and see peak draw, but even so they probably won't draw that much all the time.
Assuming you have a smart meter, the best way to figure out what's drawing power should be to look at your meter and compare what's running with the current power draw.
Normally I'd suggest looking into solar too, but since you're renting that probably isn't practical; anyway that'd only be likely to help much on a west-facing roof, or with battery storage.
JPP
Active Member
EV2-A is a big problem without Powerwalls. You need to be able to cover the really punitive 4-9 pm peak. And partially punitive is the 3pm to Midnight partial peak. You might just do better with one of the TOU-A or TOU-B plans.
Log into the PG&E web site. Look for the "Jump To" area near the upper right and select "Electric Rate Plan Comparison". This page gives you an idea of what the various rate plans would cost - based on the last 12 months of your usage. The more load you can shift to off-peak times, or even from peak to part-peak times, the better.
Depending on the house, pumps can also consume quite a bit - a pool pump or a well pump, for instance. I schedule my pool pump to run off-peak where I can, though these days I shift my loads with my Powerwalls so it's not quite as necessary.
Got my Tesla solar PTO...that was nice. I'm pretty happy overall w/ Tesla. Price & work were excellent. They're a bit disorganized wrt program management (just like w/ their car sale...so I'm used to it I supposed). Took about 35 days from ordering to installation to PTO.
Estimating 1 day sample...I had 4kWH excess but still owed PGE $4...this on EV2A. I did math...if I was on ETOUD, I would've had -$0.20. The break even of both is if I added another 40kWH of usage in middle of night (charge my other car too...extremely unlikely). So I'm switching to ETOUD. This is no brainer for me.
Since you can't change plans often, you have to consider your annual situation, not just a Summer month when you're producing a lot of solar.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
You need to try out Cost Savings mode before you switch. It's in Customize, but you will have to wait about a week for Tesla to do enough analysis so they know how to operate it for your situation. Plus you will need to turn your reserve down so you have enough storage to get through peak periods. Maybe start at 50%?
Once you do that and push as much power use to off peak and partial peak, you will be able to export at full retail, all of your solar generation during peak. That can be a 4:1 value.
Currently on E-1. My electric is pretty low, ~$55/mo. (mainly on tier 1, bleeds into tier 2 time to time) But with the charging at home, I'm on a heavy debate whether or not TOU-C, TOU-D, or EV2-A is advantageous to E-1.
They all seem to conflict each other a lot. EV2-A seems most reasonable, but the peaks are killer. Any insight would be helpful!
They all seem to conflict each other a lot. EV2-A seems most reasonable, but the peaks are killer. Any insight would be helpful!
Whether EV2-A will save you money really depends on what loads you have that cannot be moved out of the Peak hours. If you live in the East Bay or Central Valley where you have a lot of A/C that you cannot avoid during 4-9pm, then EV2 may not be good for you. Keep in mind that TOU-C has the same Peak hours but the Peak and Off-Peak are closer to the same price than EV2-A. TOU-D is 5-8pm so it would be easier to avoid A/C during those hours. Depending on how much EV charging you do relative to your household consumption, the lower cost of EV charging could dominate the calculation.
Pandemic household usage patterns are different than they used to be, so keep that in mind too.
Summary:
TOU-D Peak M-F 5-8pm
- Summer Peak=$0.36476 Off-Peak=$0.26980
- Winter Peak=$0.29089 Off-Peak=$0.27351
TOU-C Peak M-F 4-9pm
- Summer Baseline Peak=$0.3270 Off-Peak=$0.26356
- Summer Over Baseline Peak=$0.41333 Off-Peak=$0.34989
- Winter Baseline Peak= $0.22991 Off-Peak=$0.21258
- Winter Over Baseline Peak=$0.31624 Off-Peak=$0.29891
EV2-A Peak 4-9pm every day Part-Peak 3-4pm, 9p-12mid
- Summer Peak=$0.47861 Part-Peak=$0.36812 Off-Peak=$0.16611
- Winter Peak=$0.35150 Part-Peak=$0.33480 Off-Peak=$0.16611
All of these plans have the new 4 month long Summer season June-September. Earlier plans were 6 months May-October.
P.S. I detest the "Baseline Credit" nomenclature in the TOU-C tariff. They should just say Baseline and Over Baseline like I did above.
Pandemic household usage patterns are different than they used to be, so keep that in mind too.
Summary:
TOU-D Peak M-F 5-8pm
- Summer Peak=$0.36476 Off-Peak=$0.26980
- Winter Peak=$0.29089 Off-Peak=$0.27351
TOU-C Peak M-F 4-9pm
- Summer Baseline Peak=$0.3270 Off-Peak=$0.26356
- Summer Over Baseline Peak=$0.41333 Off-Peak=$0.34989
- Winter Baseline Peak= $0.22991 Off-Peak=$0.21258
- Winter Over Baseline Peak=$0.31624 Off-Peak=$0.29891
EV2-A Peak 4-9pm every day Part-Peak 3-4pm, 9p-12mid
- Summer Peak=$0.47861 Part-Peak=$0.36812 Off-Peak=$0.16611
- Winter Peak=$0.35150 Part-Peak=$0.33480 Off-Peak=$0.16611
All of these plans have the new 4 month long Summer season June-September. Earlier plans were 6 months May-October.
P.S. I detest the "Baseline Credit" nomenclature in the TOU-C tariff. They should just say Baseline and Over Baseline like I did above.
Just following up on this...
Last week I called PG&E to ask them when my changeover date from EV-A to EV2-A was/would be. The rep said the start of July. I figured that had to be obviously wrong, particularly since the PG&E Web site still showed me being on EV-A.
This past Saturday I got my bill covering the month of July, and guess what, all of July was billed on EV2-A. Grrr. Since I was already charging my car after midnight it didn't make a big difference, but had I known this, I would have altered my Powerwall TOU settings to reflect the EV2-A hours (in particular the much longer off-peak).
To make matters even stupider, I looked on the Web site (literally 5 minutes ago) and it still thinks I'm still on EV-A, more than a month after the forced transition happened.
Bruce.
One thing I can say with certainty is that PG&E really borked this transition from EV-A to EV2-A. Even the Customer Service Reps can't give consistent or accurate information about it.
EV2-A definitely penalizes those with PV compared to the previous plan. And it penalizes those with PV+storage even more. So from a personal perspective, I don't like it one bit.
That said, it potentially more accurately reflects demand as California's PV installations continue to grow, and I'm assuming that's a good thing from a grid usage perspective. And if the PSPS events didn't encourage enough people to install storage, this peak shifting until 11pm might.
That said, it potentially more accurately reflects demand as California's PV installations continue to grow, and I'm assuming that's a good thing from a grid usage perspective. And if the PSPS events didn't encourage enough people to install storage, this peak shifting until 11pm might.
