Official California SDG&E Thread

[garygid]

With my PV I just have a SOM meter (Standard Old Mechanical), with simple Net-Metering for billing. At the northern-most edge of SDG&E territory, with PV, but not EVProject, I have yet to really understand what is required/best to do to install an EVSE.

Hopefully my EVSE will be a plug-in model, like the 32A (40A circuit) SPX unit.

 

[walterbays]

Same with me. New smart gas meter, same digital, but non-smart electric meter. I was told that it would be at least a year before they had smart meters for PV systems. That was about 2 months ago. If your switch goes without a hitch, maybe I can call and make myself enough of an annoyance that they switch mine.

Me too. They switched some or all of our neighbors' meters to smart meters, but left our old mechanical meter since we're on net metering.

This will merit a close look at production and usage data, plus estimates by season and by time of day - data our PV meter does not collect. So far I think we'll probably be best off remaining on our current rate schedule. We're slightly on plus now so I hope the car doesn't push us up into too high a rate tier. Discussion I've read (mostly here) indicates the EV rate schedules may not be beneficial to PV owners. Recharging would be too much in off-peak rather than in the super-off-peak period designed for recharging. And PV production, once it has offset all your peak $0.30 consumption, is not paid back to you but next goes to offset your off-peak ~$0.15 consumption.

A separate TOU meter for the car would be best, with the PV and house separately net metered. But they charge a very high fixed monthly fee for the second meter, so that option looks like it would be more expensive than either whole house net metering or whole house TOU.

The EV project talks about installing a second meter. I wonder if it will be a little meter just for the purpose of gathering data for the project, or if it will be a utility certified meter capable of being used for separate billing. If the latter, I wonder what will happen when the EV project ends. Will SDG&E demand the high monthly fee to continue reading the second meter? Or will we have to go back to whole house net metering with a single dumb meter, while a new smart meter sits on the wall unused?

Or maybe one of the findings from the EV project will be that a great may EV drivers also have PV, that none of the rate schedules under consideration work for homes with PV, and therefore in order to shift EV recharging to off-peak periods they will have to come up with some different rate schedule that makes sense.

 

[Coffee_Slurry]

The EV project talks about installing a second meter. I wonder if it will be a little meter just for the purpose of gathering data for the project, or if it will be a utility certified meter capable of being used for separate billing. If the latter, I wonder what will happen when the EV project ends. Will SDG&E demand the high monthly fee to continue reading the second meter? Or will we have to go back to whole house net metering with a single dumb meter, while a new smart meter sits on the wall unused?

It will most certainly be a utility-grade (billing) meter. That's the whole point -- they don't (yet) trust the metering in the Blink EVSE itself.

After the project, it's up to you. You can choose from any of the available rate plans. If you pick one that doesn't use a second meter, I imagine they will come remove it and not bill for extra metering.

Realistically, I can't see any dual-meter solution as viable for a large customer base. Twice the overhead (metering, reading, billing, installation/permitting, etc.) It's only viable for EV Project because SDG&E is picking up the tab for installation, rewiring, the meter itself, and monthly billing.

 

[sdbonez]

It will most certainly be a utility-grade (billing) meter. That's the whole point -- they don't (yet) trust the metering in the Blink EVSE itself.

It'd be nice if as part of the EV Project, they compared the readings from the EVSE to the second meter as a way of getting comfortable

btw, talked to the smart meter installer SDG&E contracted with this morning... she confirmed that they're hit those with SolarPV systems this time around and said I'd have the meter installed within a week. She couldn't tell me when but said I could make an appointment if I preferred (but that was all the way out in February - so I declined...)

 

[sdbonez]

Just got an alert from my UPS at home... power went out... have the sneaking suspicion my meter just got replaced...we'll see tonight...

 

[DaveEV]

The Dec CSI newsletter had a blurb about the smart meter rollout for PV/net-meter customers:

http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/252090/0fa441fe39/1264020337/50ad6923bf/#anchor4

Will be nice to get better granularity on consumption/production, but I'll miss the spinning dial.

Do the smart meters have an instantaneous power readout on them?

 

[wsbca]

The Dec CSI newsletter had a blurb about the smart meter rollout for PV/net-meter customers:

http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/252090/0fa441fe39/1264020337/50ad6923bf/#anchor4

Will be nice to get better granularity on consumption/production, but I'll miss the spinning dial.

Do the smart meters have an instantaneous power readout on them?

The ones currently deployed in San Diego do not (we had one briefly before they swapped it back for an analog meter due to our solar install)....they have an animated "train" of about 5 small LCD squares that builds up left to right and then resets, the rate at which they accumulate and then start over is driven by the load...it's sort of like a virtual version of the spinning disk but hard to interpret...i suppose there must be a way too put a stopwatch on it and count them and make a calculation, but it would be nice if there could just be a number displayed along with the other values that are cycled through.

 

[Randy]

Some info about how to interpret the squares and arrows on the Smart Meter display...


1) You see the left most square only

2) When a watt-hour is registered, the second square shows up <sq> <sq> (the first square is still present - you have now used 1 watt-hour)

3) When another watt-hour is registered, the arrow shows up <sq> <sq> <arrow> (the 1st & 2nd squares are still present - you have now used 2 watt-hours)

4) When another watt-hour is registered, the 1st square drops off <sq> <arrow> (the 2nd square & arrow are still present - you have now used 3 watt-hours)

5) When another watt-hour is registered, the 2nd square drops off <Arrow> (the arrow is still present - you have now used 4 watt-hours)

6) When another watt-hour is registered, the arrow drops off (none of the symbols are present - you have now used 5 watt-hours)

7) When another watt-hour is registered, the left square shows up <sq> (the 2nd square is still present - you have now used 6 watt-hours)

8) A full cycle of all the symbols equates to 6 watt-hours

In actuality, the symbol looks like this: <left arrow> <sq> <sq> <right arrow>

The arrows indicate the direction of energy flow. Whichever direction the energy flows; you will not see the opposite arrow.

 

[sdbonez]

Just got an alert from my UPS at home... power went out... have the sneaking suspicion my meter just got replaced...we'll see tonight...

Sure enough, Smart Meter installed. I'm guessing the only difference is a software update and the 'Net' sticker.

Also of note, the 'how to read your smartmeter' page is now updated with info for SolarPV customers.

Main: http://sdge.com/smartmeter/readMeter.shtml
New FAQ specific to Net Metering Customers: http://sdge.com/documents/smartmeter/HowToReadSM-NEM.pdf

 

[DaveEV]

Cool - now you should be able to get it working with Google Powermeter (though SDGE seems to indicate that you have to wait 3 months before you can get it going) and have a useful way to monitor your historical power usage/generation. Too bad you have to wait 24 hours before SDGE uploads the data to Google.

 

[sdbonez]

Cool - now you should be able to get it working with Google Powermeter (though SDGE seems to indicate that you have to wait 3 months before you can get it going) and have a useful way to monitor your historical power usage/generation. Too bad you have to wait 24 hours before SDGE uploads the data to Google.

yeah, I tried earlier and got several errors... great for me since my inverter doesn't have any reasonable way of downloading data (and I haven't sprung for geeky upgrades yet)...will be my first time seeing use by hour...

 

[DaveEV]

I got a message last Friday that I would be getting a smart meter for my net metered house, too over the next couple business days.

So if it's not in today, I expect to have it before Christmas. I am going to miss the spinning dial which makes it a snap to tell which direction the electricity is moving.

sdbonez - any luck hooking it up to Google Powermeter yet?

 

[Randy]

The arrows on the LCD screen (like the one pictured above) should change direction with the flow of energy...

 

[DaveEV]

Got my net-metering smart meter this morning. Didn't take long for the tech to swap it out. Said he's been doing a lot of them the past couple weeks.

 

[garygid]

Net Metering is no TOU features?

Smart is just reading remotely?

If so, basically a dumb net-meter with remote reading?

 

[wsbca]

Net Metering is no TOU features?

Smart is just reading remotely?

If so, basically a dumb net-meter with remote reading?

I think it (the SDG&E smart meter) has TOU knowledge, which Google Power Meter can make use of...? Whether they are actually ready to use it for for DR-SES is a different story.

 

[DaveEV]

Net Metering is no TOU features?

Smart is just reading remotely?

If so, basically a dumb net-meter with remote reading?

Smart includes measuring net power in 15 min intervals. Net metering only means that the meter is capable of going backwards.

I don't want to change to TOU until I have detailed TOU data, so for now I'm on the DR schedule. Which is fine as our net usage appears to be only slightly negative after 8 months.

 

[DaveEV]

So for any solar / net generation people hoping to use Google PowerMeter with their newly installed smart meter. It ain't gonna happen any time soon. I sent an email to SDG&E asking them about it and here's what they said:

We appreciate your interest in the Google PowerMeter. We?ve reviewed
your information and determined the reason you?re unable to complete
enrollment. Customers who have either photovoltaic (solar) or wind
generators, installed to serve their own energy needs and who may feed
kilowatts back into the SDG&E electric system will not be able to
register for the Google PowerMeter.

We hope this will available in the future, but unfortunately, we?re
unable to send your energy use to the Google PowerMeter at this time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and encourage you to
periodically check our website at sdge.com for updates about Google
PowerMeter.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at
[email protected] or 1-800-411-7343.

Someone here posted information on how to hook up a device to monitor the smart meter directly - anyone have it? I can't seem to find it...

 

[Jimmydreams]

So for any solar / net generation people hoping to use Google PowerMeter with their newly installed smart meter. It ain't gonna happen any time soon. I sent an email to SDG&E asking them about it and here's what they said:

We appreciate your interest in the Google PowerMeter. We?ve reviewed
your information and determined the reason you?re unable to complete
enrollment. Customers who have either photovoltaic (solar) or wind
generators, installed to serve their own energy needs and who may feed
kilowatts back into the SDG&E electric system will not be able to
register for the Google PowerMeter.

We hope this will available in the future, but unfortunately, we?re
unable to send your energy use to the Google PowerMeter at this time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and encourage you to
periodically check our website at sdge.com for updates about Google
PowerMeter.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at
[email protected] or 1-800-411-7343.

Someone here posted information on how to hook up a device to monitor the smart meter directly - anyone have it? I can't seem to find it...

I just got the call from SDG&E tonight about them installing a smart meter at my house. It'll be interesting to see if they replace only meter 1 (MAIN meter) with smart, and meter 2 (solar production for Ca rebate) and/or meter 3 (SDG&E EV Experimental TOU rate meter). I'm crossing my fingers they do all three.

FWIW, I also have a TED monitoring system installed and THAT talks to Google Powermeter just fine.

 

[DaveEV]

I'm crossing my fingers they do all three.

IMO - I don't care unless I can get access to the smart data it's collecting... Which is why I wish I could get access to the data...

At least the smart NET meter lets me see how much I've used and generated (in excess of usage) - so I do get on additional datapoint that I didn't have before.