I have a 7.5 kw solar system that was installed 10 years ago. I added 2 Tesla batteries late last year. I am on a grandfathered PGE E6 rate however the choices on the Performance section only show Etou a, b, c and EV rates. E6 is very attractive as I sell to the grid at the same rates they sell to me. This plan is currently closed to new subscribers and goes away at the end of 2022. My issue is that the performance numbers are way off because of the lack of an E6 rate choice. I am sure there are others who have this issue. Any chance to get E6 added as a choice?
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PGE rate plan choices
- Thread starter DoyleS
- Start date
E6 is definitely getting phased out... even if you got elected into it for the next few months, you'll be forced to change to ETOU C or D or EV2-A. There is an EV-B program but it's kind of hard to participate in.
Since you already have two Powerwalls, I think the best way to determine which rates works for you is to first determine if you're a net consumer of annual energy (that is your solar produces less than you need); or if you are a net producer (your solar makes more).
If you are a net consumer, you should then find out if the two Powerwalls can allow you to operate your typical daily home energy pattern without touching peak priced energy coming from PG&E. Yes, EV2-A has some shoulder (aka partial peak), but for the sake of this let's just assume there is only off-peak and peak. The reason this is important is that EV2-A has a huge price gap between off-peak and peak energy. As a net consumer, you want to try and have your net consumption be at the cheaper off-peak rate.
The EV2-A has off-peak that goes from midnight to 3pm. So in a perfect world solar would charge up your batteries during off-peak. And then you start to use your batteries so you don't touch energy from PG&E starting 3pm.
Without knowing how you run your air conditioners and what type of kitchen you have, it's tough to determine if the two batteries will be enough to last those 9 hours from 3pm to midnight. If you can ride on your batteries each day, then EV2-A is your best energy bet. The only time you'll use energy from PG&E is during off-peak... and this off-peak energy will cost much less than E-TOU. Of course your solar production will also be worth less under E-TOU... but the key here is any excess you consume from PG&E won't break your bank.
The absolute worst case for a net consumer is to go onto EV2-A then realize they need to take peak time energy from PG&E. No homeowner wants to have their solar produce energy at off-peak rates, but then the homeowner consumes the USA's most expensive residential energy to power an oven or AC at peak time. My neighbor behind me (he's a net consumer without batteries) saw his annual energy true up bill go from $0 to over $1,000 last year after he switched from the old E6 to EV2-A. Everyone is always like "just add more solar" but it's not always so easy lol.
The flip happens if you have a huge amount of solar due to an oversized array. If your solar easily meets your annual needs, then stay on E-TOU since you won't really care about taking advantage of rates. E-TOU has a smaller gap between off-peak and peak energy rates and as a net producer you don't need to do much to offset off-peak production and peak-usage. At least not yet; we'll see what happens under the next wave of TOU rates.
Things changed as we got into May and June. I currently sell all solar back to the grid during peak. Batteries recharge in the morning and solar supplies house while charging. Currently not using much AC. Performance app says I have been able to supply house with solar and batteries. I’ll find out when next bill arrives. i am guessing the EV choice has a low sell back number during peak. I’m surprised that I am doing this well. The app says I am generating $13-$18 positive each day.
On the Home Energy Gateway which is the Tesla App for monitoring the batteries, home use, grid and Solar, there is an area called Performance. It monitors daily, weekly, monthly and yearly usage and generation. There is also an area for power flow. For instance, my solar is currently generating 5.8 KW, home is drawing 1.5 KW and batteries are getting 4.3 kw charging and they are at 80% charged. As soon as they hit 100% or hit PGE peak time, all generated solar will go to the grid and home will run off of the batteries.
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
In my tesla app under the performance tab, if you scroll past "solar offset" there is a "solar value" section. At the bottom of that section, you can tap it and it has a few rate plans in there you can select.
At least for me, touching Southern california edison brings up a couple of rate plans. I seem to remember reading "somewhere" it was "popular selections" or some such. @getakey , I seem to remember this being a function of having a particular tesla app version.
My phone screenshots are from iOS (in case there is not parity between iOS and android here), AND i am using self powered mode. Not sure either of those are relevant, but when trying to figure out why I see it and you dont, might be relevant.
Back to OP. One of the "suggested threads" at the bottom of this thread has a discussion about rate plans that might be interesting to you:
teslamotorsclub.com
received EV -> EV2 transition letter [Discussion: CA Rate plans and PV or PV+Storage]
this is something i was not expecting; i thought PGE would just switch my rate without warning. i received a letter the other day which looks like a mass mailing to EV customers saying that sometime starting in June i'd be transitioned from EV to EV2. a good deal of the letter is devoted to...
teslamotorsclub.com
I am on an iphone. When I click on the info button on the Solar Value display this is in part what it says:
Feature Availability
The Solar Value performance card will be available to customers in stages, and requires mobile app version 3.10.8. It is currently only available in California for select customers of Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas & Electric. Additional utilities and regions will be added routinely.That said when I see on my app the Silicon Valley Clean Energy generation provider we are under with EV2A, if I tap on the text it does let me then select different rate plans under it. Guess maybe I did this a while ago and forgot how I set it to EV2A duh.
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I am in the process of going off grid and cutting the cord to PG&E. I should be complete in about 60 days and will post the results.
17 KW of solar
4 X powerwalls
14Kw backup generator
17 KW of solar
4 X powerwalls
14Kw backup generator
I thought there was some rule that said you couldn't go off grid unless you could somehow execute your on-prem generation during long stretches of cloudcover without the use of fossil fuels?
Are you also going to get a backup inverter or are you on distributed/micros?
Two different solar installations. 11.4 kw with solar edge and another 6 kw with Micro inverters.
It may be a battle becoming disconnected, but I'm willing.
