SmartMeter Hourly/Daily Usage with E9a?

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csriram45

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 28, 2010
Messages
421
Location
SF Bay Area, CA
I wanted to check if anyone has been able to track their electricity usage on hourly/daily basis after having moved form E1 to E9a? When I was in on E1 I used to be able to track my daily and hourly usage thus giving me an idea on my usage patterns and what appliance consumed more electricity. After having moved into E9a I can no longer do that.

I emailed PGE and they say that they can not do that with E9a and can not provide the data. I fail to understand because while I understand they will not be able to provide the $ values due to the complicated math, but I should be able to know the kwH usage. This way I can atleast know if my night usage is higher etc etc.

Anyone else in same situation?
 
So that's why my July PG&E readings disappeared!

I asked to switch from E1 to E9A in May and could see readings up through 23 July but then they vanished with the on screen note that they would be available after the next bill. Now I'm even more dependent on the energy monitoring system I installed (Current Cost) to see when the power is on and where it is going but that's an approximate measurement with +/- 10 percent difference from PG&E and sometimes the data gets lost. The smart meter has nothing to do with E9A - it just reports the values but the PG&E web software has an option where you can see the calculated cost by the hour and see the tier levels in effect. So I suspect rather than update the software or disable the cost by hour they disabled the entire data display stream.

I remember it took 5 months after the smart meter was installed to get access to the data stream and was part of the reason for installing a third party monitor system. If the home area network (HAN) monitor could be made available then there would be another data stream we could capture. The HAN works with zigbee and the meter says Silver Springs Networks but PG&E says HAN is not available - anyone else have any additional information on the HAN applications?

-- add edit --
I don't have any PV or net metering requirements. It's a landis+gyr smartmeter - FOCUS AXR-SD .
 
From what I understand no one has SmartMeter functionality with E9A because the PG&E billing software can't handle the rate. PG&E has not been able to provide me information when it will if ever. So you will have a meter reader come out every month and read the meter and most likely be charged for the privilege.

If someone does have SmartMeter functionality and is on the E9A rate I would love to know.
 
I did not have to change my meter so I know I have the smartmeter. Apparently now they can not display the usage stats with E9a. I fail to understand why.... but that was their response.... very frustrating...Will TED help in recording daily and hourly usage?
 
csriram45 said:
I did not have to change my meter so I know I have the smartmeter.
Just because you have a meter with SmartMeter functionality does not mean PG&E can use the SmartMeter functionality with the E9A rate. I suspect a meter reader still needs to come out and read the SmartMeter. Please prove me wrong as I would like to get a SmartMeter installed myself so I can stop paying the meter reader fee.
 
I have a Landis+Gyr meter with which I was able to see hourly usage via the PG&E website when I was on the E-1 tariff. However, when I switched to the E-9A Tariff I could no longer see my hourly usage. But it's still a "smart meter" in that it is radio communicating my usage to PG&E. When I called to change to E-9A, the woman I spoke with had to check if my meter was in the "right configuration" to do TOU. It was and she said they will reprogram my meter for TOU. My guess as to why after converting to E-9A that I can't get hourly information follows...

The hourly information for one day used to be reported sometime later on the next day. I imagine that the meter has a number of buckets to track power usage. "Reprogramming" means instead of 24 hourly buckets of information, it has a different set of buckets, say 12am to 7am, 7am to 2pm, 2pm to 5pm, 5pm to 9pm, and 9pm to 12am. Now these new time ranges have to be more reliable than the hourly buckets. I remember some days missing from my hourly information, but the month was right. I imagine that these TOU buckets have to be reliable which means that they don't have to report everyday. The meter needs to function on its own for many days without communicating back home. But the point is that the meter only can manage so many buckets at once and would not be able to manage hourly buckets along side these reliable TOU buckets. Nor would the web site software know what to do with these TOU buckets.

So yea, it's not great. A big point of the smart meter was to be able to report quickly to users how much power they were using to get people to change habits. But that isn't going to work if you can't report this information. The reality of smart meters is probably that the utilities will no longer need error prone meter readers walking the streets and that's really what counts the most to them. They don't care about people using less power, they want people using more power but they have to put a good face on for the regulators. It's shameful. There are too few TOU customers to make the website work. For that matter I think the outsourced the website they have as you must enable third party cookies for it to work.

But I can see that PG&E has bigger problems then getting the website to work with TOU smart meters. Just getting people to accept them is proving hard enough. And with their gas transmission problems... I would not want to be working for PG&E these days. They're in hell.
 
jaanton said:
I have a Landis+Gyr meter with which I was able to see hourly usage via the PG&E website when I was on the E-1 tariff. However, when I switched to the E-9A Tariff I could no longer see my hourly usage. But it's still a "smart meter" in that it is radio communicating my usage to PG&E. When I called to change to E-9A, the woman I spoke with had to check if my meter was in the "right configuration" to do TOU. It was and she said they will reprogram my meter for TOU. My guess as to why after converting to E-9A that I can't get hourly information follows...

The hourly information for one day used to be reported sometime later on the next day. I imagine that the meter has a number of buckets to track power usage. "Reprogramming" means instead of 24 hourly buckets of information, it has a different set of buckets, say 12am to 7am, 7am to 2pm, 2pm to 5pm, 5pm to 9pm, and 9pm to 12am. Now these new time ranges have to be more reliable than the hourly buckets. I remember some days missing from my hourly information, but the month was right. I imagine that these TOU buckets have to be reliable which means that they don't have to report everyday. The meter needs to function on its own for many days without communicating back home. But the point is that the meter only can manage so many buckets at once and would not be able to manage hourly buckets along side these reliable TOU buckets. Nor would the web site software know what to do with these TOU buckets.

So yea, it's not great. A big point of the smart meter was to be able to report quickly to users how much power they were using to get people to change habits. But that isn't going to work if you can't report this information. The reality of smart meters is probably that the utilities will no longer need error prone meter readers walking the streets and that's really what counts the most to them. They don't care about people using less power, they want people using more power but they have to put a good face on for the regulators. It's shameful. There are too few TOU customers to make the website work. For that matter I think the outsourced the website they have as you must enable third party cookies for it to work.

But I can see that PG&E has bigger problems then getting the website to work with TOU smart meters. Just getting people to accept them is proving hard enough. And with their gas transmission problems... I would not want to be working for PG&E these days. They're in hell.

what you say makes sense.. and to the earlier poster, yes I have a smartmeter which is in TOU. When I went from E1 -> E9a PGE confirmed that my existing meter would work. I had switched to smartmeter last year so I know I have it.
 
jaanton said:
It was and she said they will reprogram my meter for TOU.
Its this reprograming of the meter for the E9A rate that I was told by a PG&E field technician that breaks the ability of the PG&E billing backend to properly accept energy usage electronically from the now reprogramed meter. This of course also breaks any SmartMeter functionality according to the tech I spoke with and also results in a meter reader coming to manually read the meter each month until PG&E gets the billing software updated on the back end and as far as I know this has not happened yet.

If this is no longer the case I would love to know so I can get my meter swapped/reprogrammed to save the daily meter charge.
 
csriram45 said:
what you say makes sense.. and to the earlier poster, yes I have a smartmeter which is in TOU. When I went from E1 -> E9a PGE confirmed that my existing meter would work. I had switched to smartmeter last year so I know I have it.
I am curious if those that are now on E9A and had SmartMeter functionality before now get approximately a 12 page bill in the mail from PG&E each month like I do or something else. This part of my bill does not even show up on the PG&E website only the total.

For example on page 4 of my last bill is where I show the $0.21881 per day meter charge.
 
Spies said:
csriram45 said:
what you say makes sense.. and to the earlier poster, yes I have a smartmeter which is in TOU. When I went from E1 -> E9a PGE confirmed that my existing meter would work. I had switched to smartmeter last year so I know I have it.
I am curious if those that are now on E9A and had SmartMeter functionality before now get approximately a 12 page bill in the mail from PG&E each month like I do or something else. This part of my bill does not even show up on the PG&E website only the total.

For example on page 4 of my last bill is where I show the $0.21881 per day meter charge.
I get the regular bill from PG&E and another report from PG&E solar/netmetering department. This one shows the usage divided into peak, part-peak and off-peak. Nowhere near 12 pages.

To get hourly / minute usage data, I installed the TED system. As others have already mentioned, I couldn't get the hourly usage information from PG&E anymore. My meter is the GE kv2cs.
 
greenleaf said:
To get hourly / minute usage data, I installed the TED system. As others have already mentioned, I couldn't get the hourly usage information from PG&E anymore. My meter is the GE kv2cs.

Hey Greenleaf,
Before you switched over to E9A did your GE kv2cs provide the hourly usage on the PG & E website? If it previously did, then the GE kv2cs should be a "SmartMeter" right?

Do let us know... Thx.
 
mxp said:
greenleaf said:
To get hourly / minute usage data, I installed the TED system. As others have already mentioned, I couldn't get the hourly usage information from PG&E anymore. My meter is the GE kv2cs.

Hey Greenleaf,
Before you switched over to E9A did your GE kv2cs provide the hourly usage on the PG & E website? If it previously did, then the GE kv2cs should be a "SmartMeter" right?

Do let us know... Thx.
It was a different meter (Smartmeter) when I was on E1.
 
For those that are interested here is a scan of my latest PG&E E9A bill saved as a pdf and is my first full month bill with the new rates.

http://home.comcast.net/~misterspies/leaf/E9A.pdf
 
Spies said:
For those that are interested here is a scan of my latest PG&E E9A bill saved as a pdf and is my first full month bill with the new rates.

http://home.comcast.net/~misterspies/leaf/E9A.pdf
Your bill gives a lot more details than mine. My net metering bill shows only the information from your pages 2 and 3.
 
This is an interesting discussion. Here are some more data points on my move from E1 to E9A.

-My combined Gas/electric bill's format did not change, the only difference now is the expanded detail of peak, partial peak, and off peak details. It is still just 5 pages long for both Gas & Electric.
-The Smart meter that is being used for the E9A billing is the same one that was installed last year, a Focus AXR-SD from Landis+Gyr
-There have been no monthly meter charges on my bill, but now with the E9A billing the first 319 Kwh get a $0.01729 discount.

My biggest disappointment has been that my online PGE hourly energy usage that I had been watching is no longer available. I do not understand what is so hard about showing the TOD usage vs regular usage.
 
greenleaf said:
Your bill gives a lot more details than mine. My net metering bill shows only the information from your pages 2 and 3.
Just wanted to point out if it was not obvious before is that I do not have solar.

What I do find interesting is that those that had a SmartMeter before and have now switched to E9A are not being charged the meter fee even though they are not able to look up their usage real time. Perhaps I will call PG&E again and at least try to get the meter charge waived.
 
Spies said:
What I do find interesting is that those that had a SmartMeter before and have now switched to E9A are not being charged the meter fee even though they are not able to look up their usage real time. Perhaps I will call PG&E again and at least try to get the meter charge waived.
I had a Smartmeter before going to net metering. On my regular bill (of 30 days), I see a charge of $11 (distribution + public program + nuclear decommissioning etc) + $0.55 (utility users' tax) and $0.03 (San Jose Franchise Surcharge). This sums up to $11.58 for a 30-day billing period.

The other bill I get is the net metering bill which is the net charge for electricity usage or generation. This bill is only for information each month and will be "true-up" once every 12 months.
 
greenleaf said:
It was a different meter (Smartmeter) when I was on E1.

This thread is getting interesting:

Why do some E9A folks get their SmartMeters replaced with the non-SmartMeter GE kv2cs model turrets and effectively get charged for the daily meter charge?

And some folks get to keep their existing SmartMeters?

This is confusing....
 
Spies said:
For those that are interested here is a scan of my latest PG&E E9A bill saved as a pdf and is my first full month bill with the new rates.

http://home.comcast.net/~misterspies/leaf/E9A.pdf

Wow your bill so different than mine. I will try to upload mine tomorrow. Mine basically shows the total KwH used and then a break up for Tier 1, Tier2, Tier3 and Tier4 alone with Peak, Partial Peak and Off Peak and then the total for each.

your bill is a bit hard for me to understand but that is probably because I am seeing such a format for the first time...
 
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