PG&E TOU pricing useless in winter?

[chopps]

I just changed my reserve to 70%.

i wish i could get that much sun! it's nearly peak and my PWs have progressively gotten lower and lower SoC due to the gloom. down to 40% after a whole day of charging and it's nearly peak hour.

Wow! Those are some rates. Even though I will soon again have 2 EVs, I think I made the right decision to not go with an EV plan.

isn't that why we are here though? having powerwalls to get us through the pricey peak hours but get us that sweet cheap off-peak rate. with my 2 EV's and heat pump heat/AC we are using 1500kWh/month. luckily 99% of the time the powerwalls get us through peak and part peak usage

 

[miimura]

Wow! Those are some rates. Even though I will soon again have 2 EVs, I think I made the right decision to not go with an EV plan.

In my situation, the lower Off-Peak price of EV2-A saves me a lot of money on an annual basis. That is because my Powerwalls time-shift my solar into Peak hours, avoiding the Peak price most of the year.

Off-Peak prices:
EV2-A: $0.18647/kWh
E-TOU-C (4-9pm): $0.23060 Winter, $0.28158 Summer (inc. baseline credit of $0.07605)
E-TOU-D (5-8pm): $0.28800 Winter, $0.28429 Summer

Even E-1 baseline is $0.26175/kWh. Tier 2 is $0.32882/kWh and over 400% of baseline is $0.41102/kWh.

 

[ucmndd]

I have a hard time considering 19 cents/kwh off-peak on EV2-A "cheap". I'm dreading the day when I get kicked off EV-A a year from now...

 

[chopps]

I have a hard time considering 19 cents/kwh off-peak on EV2-A "cheap". I'm dreading the day when I get kicked off EV-A a year from now...

isn't the current EV-B rate something like 15 cents now? i nearly put in a 2nd meter when i was building, but the fact that EV-2A was 18 cents off peak, and EV-B was nearly 15 cents, didn't make any sense. i'm assuming EV-A grandfathered with NEM1 is still 11-12 cents?

 

[h2ofun]

i wish i could get that much sun! it's nearly peak and my PWs have progressively gotten lower and lower SoC due to the gloom. down to 40% after a whole day of charging and it's nearly peak hour.


isn't that why we are here though? having powerwalls to get us through the pricey peak hours but get us that sweet cheap off-peak rate. with my 2 EV's and heat pump heat/AC we are using 1500kWh/month. luckily 99% of the time the powerwalls get us through peak and part peak usage

I was at 10kwh for yesterday, so far today back to 26 kwh. what a difference when the clouds go away

 

[ucmndd]

Gas wins by way more than 4 points because they are including things that do not even have a gas option. This is very skewed data. Why not list TVs and light bulbs since they list dish washers, pull pumps, freezers, AC, and refrigerators which don't have gas options?

Your list actually proves my point. Look at all the appliances that have gas and electric options and you will see that it matches with what I stated

I don't think you understand the chart you're looking at. You said "the overwhelming majority of people in CA have have gas" for cooking, laundry, and dishes. You then doubled down and said "60%+ have gas for all major appliances".

The data provided by the CEC survey shows, definitively, that the overwhelming majority of people in CA, by any reasonable definition of "overwhelming majority", do not use gas for all of those appliances.

It's impossible for "60%+ to have gas for all major appliances" when only 36% of homes in the state have a gas clothes dryer, and only 42% of homes have a gas oven.

It seems your personal experience is coloring your perception of the facts.

 

[ucmndd]

isn't the current EV-B rate something like 15 cents now? i nearly put in a 2nd meter when i was building, but the fact that EV-2A was 18 cents off peak, and EV-B was nearly 15 cents, didn't make any sense. i'm assuming EV-A grandfathered with NEM1 is still 11-12 cents?

EV-A off-peak is up to nearly 15 cents now too as of Dec 1... crazy.

 

[holeydonut]

i wish i could get that much sun! it's nearly peak and my PWs have progressively gotten lower and lower SoC due to the gloom. down to 40% after a whole day of charging and it's nearly peak hour.


isn't that why we are here though? having powerwalls to get us through the pricey peak hours but get us that sweet cheap off-peak rate. with my 2 EV's and heat pump heat/AC we are using 1500kWh/month. luckily 99% of the time the powerwalls get us through peak and part peak usage

Yeah things were great in the summer time. But winter time is BS since there's no way to charge the Powerwalls (stupid clouds). I think the spirit of the batteries was to reduce grid demand during peak time. But the rules prohibit homeowners right now to get those batteries charged.

 

[holeydonut]

In my situation, the lower Off-Peak price of EV2-A saves me a lot of money on an annual basis. That is because my Powerwalls time-shift my solar into Peak hours, avoiding the Peak price most of the year.

Off-Peak prices:
EV2-A: $0.18647/kWh
E-TOU-C (4-9pm): $0.23060 Winter, $0.28158 Summer (inc. baseline credit of $0.07605)
E-TOU-D (5-8pm): $0.28800 Winter, $0.28429 Summer

Even E-1 baseline is $0.26175/kWh. Tier 2 is $0.32882/kWh and over 400% of baseline is $0.41102/kWh.

It likely depends on how much of your annual consumption is offset by your annual production. If you're net zero, it shouldn't really matter too much which TOU plan you're on.

If you're a net consumer (presumably if you have multiple EV's to charge), then you want enough Powerwalls to make sure your home never takes power during peak time. So then you'd definitely want EVA (or 2A) for the lower off-peak costs.

The absolute worst worst worst thing I've seen is when a solar-only customer who was only offsetting like 80% of their annual home consumption (before an EV) decides to switch to EV2-A to charge EVs. Yes, the charging of their automobile gets cheaper, but then they get absolutely murdered by the slamboni when their peak time home consumption shoots up and they have no batteries to load-shift.

I feel like Tesla ought to be going back to all their previous solar customers in California who also bought EVs (but didn't get Powerwalls). These customers really need Powerwalls now since they'd literally pay for themselves in like 5 years and would be a big FU to the games PG&E played with TOU malarkey.

 

[chopps]

Yeah things were great in the summer time. But winter time is BS since there's no way to charge the Powerwalls (stupid clouds). I think the spirit of the batteries was to reduce grid demand during peak time. But the rules prohibit homeowners right now to get those batteries charged.

yea i went to 100% backup reserve today. just barely hit 41% by the time peak hit at 3PM so that's 20% per powerwall. reallly wish they would allow us to partially charge from the grid for the health of our batteries at least during winter

 

[miimura]

It likely depends on how much of your annual consumption is offset by your annual production. If you're net zero, it shouldn't really matter too much which TOU plan you're on.

If you're a net consumer (presumably if you have multiple EV's to charge), then you want enough Powerwalls to make sure your home never takes power during peak time, but then you'd definitely want EVA (or 2A) for the lower off-peak costs.

The absolute worst worst worst thing I've seen is when a solar-only customer who was only offsetting like 80% of their annual home consumption (before an EV) decides to switch to EV2-A to charge EVs. Yes, the charging of their automobile gets cheaper, but then they get absolutely murdered by the slamboni when their peak time home consumption shoots up and they have no batteries to load-shift.

I feel like Tesla ought to be going back to all their previous solar customers in California who also bought EVs (but didn't get Powerwalls). These customers really need Powerwalls now since they'd literally pay for themselves in like 5 years and would be a big FU to the games PG&E played with TOU malarkey.

Agree. If you don't have Powerwalls, and your Peak hours fall mostly outside of solar generating hours, then you want the smallest rate differential you can find. It almost doesn't matter what the actual prices are if you have net metering. EV2-A is terrible for solar-only customers if you have significant Peak usage that can't be avoided like central air conditioning.

EV-A was really too good to be true - you got Part-Peak solar credits from 7am-2pm and then could use twice as many kWh to charge your car from 11pm-7am. People also got Peak solar credits for 2pm-sundown. That was not sustainable. Like it or not, EV2 is really more realistic.

 

[sunwarriors]

Today was my worst production day since getting solar. Around 3.5kWh. I was at 31+ yesterday.

I generally manage my reserve daily, but I think the best course of action in my mind is maybe just raise the reserve a ton for long cloudy stretches/winter in general Mine's at 70% right now.

If I can fully recharge the next day (in ~3 hours), I tend to drop it to 30-40%, but I am pretty sure I'll be a net producer anyways so it just doesn't really matter much as I load shift most of the time when the rate gap is high during the summer.

In SDG&E land, winter months is only 5 or 6 cents difference (for me) so paying slightly more now won't affect things I don't think. I believe having power during an outage though is more important since that's the #1 benefit of batteries and what makes it worth more than just $$.

I agree that ToU is useless in winter for me due to the small gap difference. Originally, I was going to go on a EV plan, but they had a higher monthly minimum so since if I'm a net producer anyways, I'd rather save my $40-$50 bucks. That and work from home so I don't even have to charge the EV so my energy usage is lower than originally expected.

 

[Redhill_qik]

Today was my worst production day since getting solar. Around 3.5kWh. I was at 31+ yesterday.

I generally manage my reserve daily, but I think the best course of action in my mind is maybe just raise the reserve a ton for long cloudy stretches/winter in general Mine's at 70% right now.

If I can fully recharge the next day (in ~3 hours), I tend to drop it to 30-40%, but I am pretty sure I'll be a net producer anyways so it just doesn't really matter much as I load shift most of the time when the rate gap is high during the summer.

In SDG&E land, winter months is only 5 or 6 cents difference (for me) so paying slightly more now won't affect things I don't think. I believe having power during an outage though is more important since that's the #1 benefit of batteries and what makes it worth more than just $$.

I agree that ToU is useless in winter for me due to the small gap difference. Originally, I was going to go on a EV plan, but they had a higher monthly minimum so since if I'm a net producer anyways, I'd rather save my $40-$50 bucks. That and work from home so I don't even have to charge the EV so my energy usage is lower than originally expected.

If you are a net producer then the TOU rates don't really matter as you just need to get the NEM charges to $0 and then the SDG&E, like PG&E, pays you the wholesale rate (~$0.04/kWh for SDG&E or ~$0.03/kWh for PG&E) for the net surplus. Since those rates aren't TOU based, the more kWh you export the more you get back.

I am with a CCA that has a more generous net surplus compensation through April 2022 with TOU base generation compensation, but starting in April they are moving to a flat rate and I will be rethinking my Powerwall settings.

 

[holeydonut]

Actually I take back what I said about the worst worst worst thing is when someone with a smaller solar array (and no Powerwalls) goes to EV2-A to charge their EV.

The worst worst worst is when someone who doesn't have solar or Powerwalls at all decides to go to EV2-A to charge their EV. They get hit with TOU rates and now literally just sit there getting whacked by PG&E for their normal day to day living. Ignoring the EV for a second, their normal home energy rates go up like 20%. All to save like 30% on their EV charging. So unless they're driving 12,000 miles a year all with home charging this entire EV2-A plan makes no sense.

I'm actually surprised TMC doesn't have many posts from those that don't have solar or batteries about how going to EV2-A created some wacky high energy bills in the summertime. Maybe nobody's really using EV2-A unless they have solar and Powerwalls?

 

[ucmndd]

EV2-A is indeed a hot garbage rate schedule unless you drive A LOT and can shift A LOT if not all of your usage off peak. Pre-pandemic we were driving ~35k EV miles/year so it would have been more straightforward, but as things stand now the rate plan estimator suggests it’s the most expensive option for me at $3190/year (!!), compared to $2,000 for EV-A.

 

[skepticcyclist]

Ironic post is ironic

Anyway. Here is, to the best of my knowledge, the closest we'll get to authoritative data courtesy of the 2019 Residential Appliance Saturation Study conducted by the California Energy Commission.

Lots of interesting data in here, but I think this chart speaks most directly to the matter at hand (see p. 14):

View attachment 741604

Anyway. As I mentioned, clothes dryers are just about an even 50/50 split, gas wins by 4 points. Gas ovens win by 6 points, 36/42. I will give you gas cooktops as the clear winner and let 60%+ saturation slide as an "overwhelming majority". In any case, the unsubstantiated claim that "60%+ have gas for all major appliances" would seem to be statistically impossible given this data.

@Zorg sorry for the thread hijack. @jjrandorin if you want to move all this gas talk somewhere more appropriate my feelings won't be hurt.

I know we were asked to get back on topic but I just want to say that after looking at the source of this, I stand corrected. My original source as not correct. The majority of houses in CA do have gas for at least one major appliance, but not as much as I thought (as the source I originally used was not correct.)

BTW, here is the entire study from where ucmndd got this figure. Thank you for the correction

 

[sunwarriors]

Yeah, that's one reason I didn't bother with the lower EV rate myself. In San Diego, you can get $0.09 vs. $0.56 on-peak during the summer or $0.08 vs. $0.36 winter, but if you're net generating, it won't matter and there's a higher monthly minimum. Add in no solar days and you're stuck paying $0.36 during the winter months (like these last few days...expect near 0 generation today). Yeah, there's a calculation one can do if you didn't have batteries based on how much more you need to charge your EV to make it worth the savings, but WFH really stopped that idea for me since I barely charge the EV now.

The good thing with that rate is if you did have other ways to charge the batteries, that $0.08 is still valid during the winter months.

 

[Merrill]

Another question, this coming week it looks like rain for the whole week. Since my Powerwalls will not get enough Charge is it better to just let them shut off when they hit the reserve or is it better to change from timed based to backup.

 

[jboy210]

Another question, this coming week it looks like rain for the whole week. Since my Powerwalls will not get enough Charge is it better to just let them shut off when they hit the reserve or is it better to change from timed based to backup.

I am just set the reserve at 80%. Since my NEM-2 rates are down to $0.093 off-peak and $0.11 peak, I will buy power for the house and use the Powerwalls as a backup.

 

[miimura]

Actually I take back what I said about the worst worst worst thing is when someone with a smaller solar array (and no Powerwalls) goes to EV2-A to charge their EV.

The worst worst worst is when someone who doesn't have solar or Powerwalls at all decides to go to EV2-A to charge their EV. They get hit with TOU rates and now literally just sit there getting whacked by PG&E for their normal day to day living. Ignoring the EV for a second, their normal home energy rates go up like 20%. All to save like 30% on their EV charging. So unless they're driving 12,000 miles a year all with home charging this entire EV2-A plan makes no sense.

I'm actually surprised TMC doesn't have many posts from those that don't have solar or batteries about how going to EV2-A created some wacky high energy bills in the summertime. Maybe nobody's really using EV2-A unless they have solar and Powerwalls?

I don't really agree with this. It really depends on where you live and how much energy you use. For people who live in coastal areas that don't use a lot of A/C and have gas appliances and central heat, their electric usage is not really that much. If you add in EV charging, you could be doubling your electric usage with one car and tripling with two cars, pushing you into Tier 3 E-1 rates. EV2 doesn't have tiers and Off-Peak is cheaper than E-1 Baseline. Sure you don't want to run an electric dryer from 4-9pm, but the EV2 savings can be significant for many people without solar.