California PUC Proposed Decision doc re: EV Deployment

http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/efile/PD/132120.pdf

Interesting reading for the Leaf community and California residents in particular.

Commissioner Peevey recently issued a proposed decision in Phase II of the Alternate Fuel Vehicle OIR which establishes policies to overcome barriers to electric vehicle deployment and complying with Public Utilities Code 740.2.

It's a bit long, but PG&E customers might want to check out the bottom of page 14 and top of page 15 for this interesting tidbit:

SDG&E and SCE already offer PEV rates that are opt-in, non-tiered, and
time-of-use. PG&E does not. PG&E’s separately metered E-9b rate is a tiered,
time-of-use rate. Therefore, we direct PG&E to file an advice letter to modify
Electric Rates Tariff Schedule E-9b to eliminate the tiers. This advice letter shall
be filed as a Tier 3 advice letter within 60 days of the effective date of today’s
decision.

I'm not a PG&E customer, but that sounds like some good news?

Randy

That would probably be an improvement. Even better would have been to improve E9a, which is much cheaper for most people to physically implement.

Folks also might like to know that on the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) working group call of the Air Resources Board this week, they discussed whether high-priced cars such as the Tesla should be eligible for rebates of up to 5k.
They also discussed whether the cap should be raised from 60k to as high as 75k or 80k.
The Tesla guy gave a variety of spinmeister reasons, most of them a real stretch of logic. The only viable one was that their high-end cars are testing the limits of battery technology and range, and therefore they make a strong contribution to EV R&D.
He also said that Tesla is going to offer three levels of trim, with pricing from about 62k to 77k (I pull that from memory) and that the three tiers largely relate to the battery size and range.

Critiques of it questioned:
whether customers at that level need up to 5k incentives at all
whether that would hurt customers at the lower end who need the incentives
and more importantly,
whether subsidies for such expensive cars that go exclusively to high-bracket individuals would jeopardize the entire rebate program. That argument is that the state is pressed for money and it is too easy to attack an EV program as a luxury or pie-in-the-sky tree hugging, and that by subsidizing Tesla's at 65K and up, you make it easy for ICE advocates to kill the subsidies for cars that are aimed at the general consumer market.

Folks who are worried about whether their delayed orders will put them on a rebate wait list with possibly reduced rebates should get their comments into ARB or our friends at CVRP.
I think that subsidizing Teslas is a sure road to ending rebates for all cars.

Good catch, Randy - interesting reading.

By way of background, CPUC Proposed Decisions can't be voted on for at least 30 days from date of publication, at which point they become Final Decisions and go into effect (so anyone anxious about the PG&E rate won't see any impact until the CPUC adopts this PD or an alternate decision, then PG&E has 60 days under the order to file a compliant rate, then the CPUC staff would have to evaluate/adopt the PG&E filing -- figure another 30 days at least). Total lag from today, then, likely would be at least four months before PG&E's new rate became effective.

The overall policy in the PD seems to be that the CPUC is keeping customer choice a priority on several fronts:
1) Customers can stay on their regular domestic rate, go on a single-meter whole-house TOU rate for PEV's, or separately meter the PEV usage on a TOU meter;
2) Customers may eventually own sub-metering equipment (likely less expensive to install than the 2nd meter panel required today for EV-only metering) once standards are developed;
3) Public charging stations would be metered/billed with the sponsor's (Costco, Borders, Starbucks) existing electic usage/meter, rather than a dedicated meter/rate for commercial charging. This means, I think, that cost pressures on these sponsors (and thus on 'participating' EV owners) would be lower due to easier hookups to their existing electric service, and likely lower on-peak rates for general commercial service than for EV charging.

Randy said:

http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/efile/PD/132120.pdf

Interesting reading for the Leaf community and California residents in particular.

Commissioner Peevey recently issued a proposed decision in Phase II of the Alternate Fuel Vehicle OIR which establishes policies to overcome barriers to electric vehicle deployment and complying with Public Utilities Code 740.2.

It's a bit long, but PG&E customers might want to check out the bottom of page 14 and top of page 15 for this interesting tidbit:

SDG&E and SCE already offer PEV rates that are opt-in, non-tiered, and
time-of-use. PG&E does not. PG&E’s separately metered E-9b rate is a tiered,
time-of-use rate. Therefore, we direct PG&E to file an advice letter to modify
Electric Rates Tariff Schedule E-9b to eliminate the tiers. This advice letter shall
be filed as a Tier 3 advice letter within 60 days of the effective date of today’s
decision.

I'm not a PG&E customer, but that sounds like some good news?

Randy

Click to expand...

I hope so, they are the worst utility.

EVDRIVER said:

Randy said:

http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/efile/PD/132120.pdf

Interesting reading for the Leaf community and California residents in particular.

Commissioner Peevey recently issued a proposed decision in Phase II of the Alternate Fuel Vehicle OIR which establishes policies to overcome barriers to electric vehicle deployment and complying with Public Utilities Code 740.2.

It's a bit long, but PG&E customers might want to check out the bottom of page 14 and top of page 15 for this interesting tidbit:

SDG&E and SCE already offer PEV rates that are opt-in, non-tiered, and
time-of-use. PG&E does not. PG&E’s separately metered E-9b rate is a tiered,
time-of-use rate. Therefore, we direct PG&E to file an advice letter to modify
Electric Rates Tariff Schedule E-9b to eliminate the tiers. This advice letter shall
be filed as a Tier 3 advice letter within 60 days of the effective date of today’s
decision.

I'm not a PG&E customer, but that sounds like some good news?

Randy

Click to expand...

I hope so, they are the worst utility.

Click to expand...

Only if it's your utility, I'm quite sure the worst utility is whatever one sends you a bill.

Randy said:

http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/efile/PD/132120.pdf

Interesting reading for the Leaf community and California residents in particular.

Commissioner Peevey recently issued a proposed decision in Phase II of the Alternate Fuel Vehicle OIR which establishes policies to overcome barriers to electric vehicle deployment and complying with Public Utilities Code 740.2.

It's a bit long, but PG&E customers might want to check out the bottom of page 14 and top of page 15 for this interesting tidbit:

SDG&E and SCE already offer PEV rates that are opt-in, non-tiered, and
time-of-use. PG&E does not. PG&E’s separately metered E-9b rate is a tiered,
time-of-use rate. Therefore, we direct PG&E to file an advice letter to modify
Electric Rates Tariff Schedule E-9b to eliminate the tiers. This advice letter shall
be filed as a Tier 3 advice letter within 60 days of the effective date of today’s
decision.

I'm not a PG&E customer, but that sounds like some good news?

Randy

Click to expand...

Just checked this out. While this may be good news for those who decided to go with the E9b, it doesn't seem to offer any chance of relief to people like me who are going with E9a due to the high upfront costs of installing a sub-panel & sub-meter to be eligible for E9b. Sigh....