PGE rate plan choices

[jjrandorin]

I called PG&E this am after considering your post. I described what I was doing and asked for the procedure to disconnect. They said that I could call and request a disconnect date up to 30 days in advance and up to 90 days if registered online. There is no specific procedure or requirement to follow. They will ask for an address for the final bill......

Off Grid Living is Illegal! Sort of...

Off grid living is illegal. Sort of. "Off grid" means disconnecting from the power grid. Living off the grid, by itself, is not technically illegal.

offgridworld.com

The quote I am looking at:
===================

Power System​

This kind of goes without saying. Some counties will not allow you to be disconnected from their utilities. Usually, this happens in rural areas closer to town. In town, of course, it’s most likely that it’s illegal to disconnect from the public utility system completely.

==================

I am reasonably comfortable in the fact that when you asked PGE " I want to disconnect", if you live in a non rural location, they did not understand that as "Forever, while still living at this address, using my own power".

 

[holeydonut]

Off Grid Living is Illegal! Sort of...

Off grid living is illegal. Sort of. "Off grid" means disconnecting from the power grid. Living off the grid, by itself, is not technically illegal.

offgridworld.com

The quote I am looking at:
===================

Power System​

This kind of goes without saying. Some counties will not allow you to be disconnected from their utilities. Usually, this happens in rural areas closer to town. In town, of course, it’s most likely that it’s illegal to disconnect from the public utility system completely.

==================

I am reasonably comfortable in the fact that when you asked PGE " I want to disconnect", if you live in a non rural location, they did not understand that as "Forever, while still living at this address, using my own power".

the word "disconnect" is so awesome. It's a noun, it's a verb, and it's also illegal in some counties.

 

[getakey]

We looked at several off grid houses in northern California. They were off grid because there was no choice. Interesting setups.

 

[jjrandorin]

We looked at several off grid houses in northern California. They were off grid because there was no choice. Interesting setups.

I think it depends on the county, location, etc. I am certainly no expert (far, far, FAR from it) on this topic, but I expect that, if one already has utility service, and does not live in the "middle of nowhere" in CA, the answer to "come take your meter off my property, i want to disconnect this property for good" will be "no, you cant do that", once one would finally get them to understand the request.

Even getting them to understand the request might be difficult, as they wont even be able to conceptualize "I want to disconnect this address thats already connected, completely".

There was an article about an ex oracle exec who installed a tesla powerpack (not powerwall, the commercial powerpack) at a property in someplace in norcal called woodside (I think) because the choices were "pay 100k to run lines to the utility for this new property you built, or do it off grid and prove you can sustain XXX amount of usage over YYY amount of time with no fossil fuels", or something like that.

 

[h2ofun]

I think it depends on the county, location, etc. I am certainly no expert (far, far, FAR from it) on this topic, but I expect that, if one already has utility service, and does not live in the "middle of nowhere" in CA, the answer to "come take your meter off my property, i want to disconnect this property for good" will be "no, you cant do that", once one would finally get them to understand the request.

Even getting them to understand the request might be difficult, as they wont even be able to conceptualize "I want to disconnect this address thats already connected, completely".

There was an article about an ex oracle exec who installed a tesla powerpack (not powerwall, the commercial powerpack) at a property in someplace in norcal called woodside (I think) because the choices were "pay 100k to run lines to the utility for this new property you built, or do it off grid and prove you can sustain XXX amount of usage over YYY amount of time with no fossil fuels", or something like that.

Yep, and that person I believe had to prove they could be 100% off for 7 days. And they have propane for heat!!!! And since he had nothing to start with, ...

 

[getakey]

"His system, which was activated in November, combines 27 kw of photovoltaic solar panels with a 232kWh Tesla Powerpack. There are five ground-mounted arrays of 15 solar panels each, or 75 solar panels total, stretching across the yard."

I'm surprised that he only has 27 kW PV.

How the Rich Can Escape America's Unreliable Power Grid

When Wim Coekaerts built his dream home, he decided to bypass the local utility and engineer his own microgrid.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[h2ofun]

"His system, which was activated in November, combines 27 kw of photovoltaic solar panels with a 232kWh Tesla Powerpack. There are five ground-mounted arrays of 15 solar panels each, or 75 solar panels total, stretching across the yard."

I'm surprised that he only has 27 kW PV.

How the Rich Can Escape America's Unreliable Power Grid

When Wim Coekaerts built his dream home, he decided to bypass the local utility and engineer his own microgrid.

www.bloomberg.com

I thought the same until I heard he has gas heat

 

[getakey]

I have mostly gas heat, but in Dec/Jan my home uses 3 times as much electricity than my solar generates. I have 11 kW solar. I don't see him being able to recharge the Powerpack during stretches of cloudy days

 

[Lloyd]

I w

I agree that PG&E probably thought a disconnect as in moving. I believe it is illegal in CA to go off grid when grid service is available. Search on Grid Defection

I don't know how old this article is

https://www.cailaw.org/media/files/IEL/Publications/2016/grid-detection-vol10no1.pdf

I was pretty specific describing my "self generating Micro Grid" as their replacement.

 

[getakey]

I w

I was pretty specific describing my "self generating Micro Grid" as their replacement.

wow - well keeps us updated

 

[FlatSix911]

"His system, which was activated in November, combines 27 kw of photovoltaic solar panels with a 232kWh Tesla Powerpack. There are five ground-mounted arrays of 15 solar panels each, or 75 solar panels total, stretching across the yard."

I'm surprised that he only has 27 kW PV.

How the Rich Can Escape America's Unreliable Power Grid

When Wim Coekaerts built his dream home, he decided to bypass the local utility and engineer his own microgrid.

www.bloomberg.com

Great article... thanks for sharing.

"Coekaerts didn’t want his system to function as a backup to the grid: he wanted to be independent of the grid. So through Luminalt, the San Francisco company that installed his solar system, he was able to get a Powerpack, which is about 17 times what a single Powerwall provides. Tesla representatives have told him it is the first residential Powerpack installation that they know of, though others are in the pipeline. The total cost, including permitting, labor for the installation, and a federal tax credit for the solar system, was roughly $300,000.

His system, which was activated in November, combines 27 kW of photovoltaic solar panels with a 232kWh Tesla Powerpack. There are five ground-mounted arrays of 15 solar panels each, or 75 solar panels total, stretching across the yard. The Tesla Powerpack, which on the outside just looks like a massive white box with Tesla’s logo, emits a low hum and is protected and surrounded by a tasteful wooden fence. During long summer days, the system will probably generate far more electricity than he needs, and neighbors have joked that they’ll get out their extension cords.

PG&E has become something of a villain to many Californians in recent years. The state has staggered through increasingly devastating wildfire seasons, and some of the blazes were sparked by aging utility infrastructure. Faulty PG&E equipment ignited the November 2018 Camp Fire, an inferno that destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. In March, PG&E’s residential customers will see their rates increase as the utility, which recently emerged from bankruptcy, seeks to upgrade its equipment. When there’s high wind and fire danger, PG&E—which provides natural gas and electric service to roughly 15 million people from the Oregon border to Bakersfield—proactively shuts off power to tens of thousands of customers. Costs keep rising and outages are becoming more routine."

 

[holeydonut]

Lol somebody has the money and really dislikes PG&E to do a residential Powerpack. Color me impressed...

 

[DSolarPW]

What did things look like for you back before you got the Powerwalls? Like in 2018, was your annual net energy usage pretty much in line with what your solar produced across the whole year?

May and June are a bit razzle-dazzle for solar. These months you get to bank for your net metering since you get a lot of sun, and you aren't running the ACs too hard. But I think the months you really need to have a hard look at are the winter months.

In December you'll have more cloud-cover, and even though PG&E has "winter" EV2-A rates, they're still terrible compared to E-TOU.

So if you go back and look at your usage in December 2018/2019, you will really start to see if your net metering deficit is breaking even to the good generation days you had in the Summer. In a perfect world, Tesla would allow you to grid-charge your Powerwalls at 12:01am the day of an expected overcast weather forecast. Then EV2-A would become the bees knees since you'd pretty much lock in the off-peak energy even on the worst possible day.

But alas Tesla cannot support this feature



View attachment 673680

Yes, winter months could be a challenge because of increased cloud cover. The other important item to note is that Winter Part-Peak rates are essentially the same as Winter Peak rates (twice the cost of Off-Peak rates). So, you will need to be able to charge up batteries from solar enough to run off them from Part-Peak Start, through Peak hours to Part-Peak End, i.e., from 3PM - midnight everyday to avoid the high rates. With two PW (and no AC running in the winter), probably not a problem for most people except for a multi-day period of rain/cloud cover when low amounts of solar generated. The Tesla app is great as you can download tons of data to get a sense of what you might have experienced in past years. Of course, since we have had a drought the last couple of years they probably represent a "best case" future solar scenario (and a "worst case" for our water situation).

 

[h2ofun]

Yes, winter months could be a challenge because of increased cloud cover. The other important item to note is that Winter Part-Peak rates are essentially the same as Winter Peak rates (twice the cost of Off-Peak rates). So, you will need to be able to charge up batteries from solar enough to run off them from Part-Peak Start, through Peak hours to Part-Peak End, i.e., from 3PM - midnight everyday to avoid the high rates. With two PW (and no AC running in the winter), probably not a problem for most people except for a multi-day period of rain/cloud cover when low amounts of solar generated. The Tesla app is great as you can download tons of data to get a sense of what you might have experienced in past years. Of course, since we have had a drought the last couple of years they probably represent a "best case" future solar scenario (and a "worst case" for our water situation).

Since I have an all electric house, heat pumps for heat, it is a big issue