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Understanding What PG&E Pay’s For Excess Solar?

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You can call the Solar department and they can stop sending the paper Black and White bill. You can download a PDF version of it in your account, but it's hidden in the "My Accounts & Services" section in the top bar pulldown after you log in to pge.com.

Thanks! I found those. I think part of the confusion here is that I was switched to a new service # (Not account #) when PW PTO / NEM was started.

My current issue is that none of my "Black and White" bills are showing any solar generation. I did not have a separate NGOM meter installed because Tesla received UL approval in time for my PTO to negate that requirement. I wonder if PG&E doesn't know how to deal with this since they have no meter recording my Solar Generation. Still they should credit me for all the energy I exported to the grid. The "Black and White" isn't reflecting this but I think overall the PG&E system is keeping track of it because my simple online monthly statements seem to reflect it.
 
Thanks! I found those. I think part of the confusion here is that I was switched to a new service # (Not account #) when PW PTO / NEM was started.

My current issue is that none of my "Black and White" bills are showing any solar generation. I did not have a separate NGOM meter installed because Tesla received UL approval in time for my PTO to negate that requirement. I wonder if PG&E doesn't know how to deal with this since they have no meter recording my Solar Generation. Still they should credit me for all the energy I exported to the grid. The "Black and White" isn't reflecting this but I think overall the PG&E system is keeping track of it because my simple online monthly statements seem to reflect it.
How long ago was your PTO? It took PG&E several months to get my billing correct. They backed out and credited the incorrect bills and reissued bills back to the PTO date.

You should be able to see the generation in two different places on the Black and White NEM-Paired Storage billing.
1. The raw meter data is divided into Channel IDs. Channel IDs that end in A are consumption and IDs that end in C are generation. These are sum of the positive intervals and sum of the negative intervals.
2. The Paired Storage billing should also have an "Estimated Generation" quantity. This is PG&E estimation of what your solar should be making based on your solar interconnection documents. You will not receive NEM credits in excess of this figure.

If you are using Self Powered mode with your Powerwalls and the Powerwalls never get 100% full in that billing cycle, you may not see any credited generation, just reduced consumption. I use Time Based Control, so I have Peak export whenever I have solar generation during that time period.
 
How long ago was your PTO? It took PG&E several months to get my billing correct. They backed out and credited the incorrect bills and reissued bills back to the PTO date.

You should be able to see the generation in two different places on the Black and White NEM-Paired Storage billing.
1. The raw meter data is divided into Channel IDs. Channel IDs that end in A are consumption and IDs that end in C are generation. These are sum of the positive intervals and sum of the negative intervals.
2. The Paired Storage billing should also have an "Estimated Generation" quantity. This is PG&E estimation of what your solar should be making based on your solar interconnection documents. You will not receive NEM credits in excess of this figure.

If you are using Self Powered mode with your Powerwalls and the Powerwalls never get 100% full in that billing cycle, you may not see any credited generation, just reduced consumption. I use Time Based Control, so I have Peak export whenever I have solar generation during that time period.

The start of this true-up cycle and the "Complex Billing" was August 2020.
I don't see any channel IDs that end in C, only two that end in A. So that seems to be the issue.
I'm using Balanced Time Based Control.
 
Thanks! I found those. I think part of the confusion here is that I was switched to a new service # (Not account #) when PW PTO / NEM was started.

My current issue is that none of my "Black and White" bills are showing any solar generation. I did not have a separate NGOM meter installed because Tesla received UL approval in time for my PTO to negate that requirement. I wonder if PG&E doesn't know how to deal with this since they have no meter recording my Solar Generation. Still they should credit me for all the energy I exported to the grid. The "Black and White" isn't reflecting this but I think overall the PG&E system is keeping track of it because my simple online monthly statements seem to reflect it.

I had to log a case with PG&E after I installed PW. They were not showing any solar credited to the grid. They closed the case and said my billing was correct. I had to escolate and finally got it resolved after 3 months. They went back and corrected the bills. I showed them what my NEM charges were with solar before PWs and then after PWs. NEM went from negative to positive. I said that was impossibe, but they could not understand until I escolated.
 
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I'll make a point of mentioning this to my husband so he double checks. We have only received one bill so far which included a few days of our time using our solar/PWs so not much to go on yet.
Just to have a reference point in case you need it, record the PG&E meter consumption numbers now and perhaps at the dates the bill covers. You may need to show them how negative it goes indicating what they received at end of billing dates.
 
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Due to unplanned delays in my heat pump conversions (did the water hear already and it's saving me about $1200 / year in propane I no longer buy), I'm leaving about 1.3 MWh of excess generation on the table at trueup coming at the end of this month.

Download Net Surplus Compensation Rates for Energy (PDF, 139 KB)PDF. Opens in new Window.

Can someone figure out how I'd calculate what I should expect for excess generation? Is it based on the amount of excess in each month or the month of true-up?
 
Also, the hybrid water heater ended up costing even less than I'd figured. I thought that after doing all the conversions that the totals would result me using a net of 1 mwh or so. The water heater ended up using about 200 kwh less than expected. It's basically costing me $10 / month to run if I was paying PG&E for the power.
 
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