Solar Users Winter Charge

Has anyone out there whose residence is solar powered encountered a "Winter Usage Charge" attached as an additional charge to their Usage billed on 3 tiers from SDGE. December is the first time I have seen it and I have been on solar for over 4 years. When I asked the company about that their spokesperson said it was a transmission charge. O.K. My neighbor consumed nearly 1500kWh for December without solar while I was billed for just under 400kWh using solar. His bill reflected a "Winter Usage Charge of $6.00 while my bill reflected a "Winter Usage Charge" of $26.00.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Should not he be paying an equal or greater transmission charge? His billing method is the same as mine so that factor is negated from the argument.

Solar Customers on net billing already compensate SDGE for use of the grid by virtue of sharing their production with SDGE customers during peak demand time. Collectively, solar users add profit to SDGE. An additional and uncontrollable transmission fee, bundled, or unbundled is not jusotified.

I'll check my bills. I did see something in November that soaked up some of my credits that I hadn't seen before. We have only one meter for the house and PV. Do you have a separate meter for your car?

-u

That sounds ominous. It sounds like the kind of grid usage fee that they're trying to install with their new rate case, and that fee got slapped down by a regulator. Please keep us posted, and other SDG&E folks chime in, too, please.

I'm a non-solar SDG&E customer, and the only wording close to that on my recent bill is a line item called Winter Electricity Generation and it is 5.583 cents per kWh (which I believe is the customary generation charge).

I don't have anything on my bill that is labeled "Winter Usage Charge"

I see this on mine, same as Randy, except I am a PV owner:

Winter Electricity Generation 583 kWh x $.05583 $32.50

This is shown in the same area as the DWR Bond Charge, not as part of the tier structure (of which there are four, baseline, 1-30% over baseline, 31-100% over baseline, and more than 101% over baseline.

No Winter Usage Charge.

I apologize for the inaccurate wording "winter usage charge" on the bill. It is as you all report it. The winter charge looks like an additional charge to me for the same power billed under 3 tiers.

Mine just says "Winter Electricity Generation" which simply means we are on the winter tariff that's all.

Going back, looking thru my bills on sdge.com, I see the oct-nov bill had this:

DWR Bond Charge 425 kWh x $.00505 2.15
Summer Electricity Generation 275 kWh x $.07531 20.71
Winter Electricity Generation 150 kWh x $.05583 8.38

So that had both, as it was mostly still under Summer rates.

The previous month had two summer generation figures--because the rate changed, apparently.

I see the Winter generation charge in a bill from Jan 2011, too.

So it's been around for a while. And it seems to be what they charge you for having the power plants generate that power. I guess. In any case, it's a rate multiplied by the number of kwh's I used, so it seems legit.

Randy said:

I'm a non-solar SDG&E customer, and the only wording close to that on my recent bill is a line item called Winter Electricity Generation and it is 5.583 cents per kWh (which I believe is the customary generation charge).

Click to expand...

Whoa! Are you guys saying that you are being *charged* 5.583 cents per each kWh you generate?

No, we're being charged for power that we consume.

Many of the various components are now broken out on the bill whereas in the past it was one lump sum number per kWh...

Randy said:

No, we're being charged for power that we consume.

Many of the various components are now broken out on the bill whereas in the past it was one lump sum number per kWh...

Click to expand...

This is it - for example on the bill that arrived yesterday, we used 67kWh net, billed as follows:

10 of 33 days:
Electricity Delivery 67 x .07722
Winter Electricity Generation 67 x .05583
$0.13305/kWh

23 of 33 days:
Electricity Delivery 67 x .08033
WEG 67 x .05788
$0.13821/kWh

So, basically tier 1 retail, as expected. Which was offset by previous generation so our out of pocket bill was the expected $5.93.

To the OP - have you actually SEEN your neighbor's bill? Can you post a PDF with his PII blanked out? The approx .004 cents per kWh you describe sounds more in line with his per kWh DWR Bond Charge than his Generation charge...

At any rate, you're not getting ripped off. If he's really only paying .004 for generation, then something else is going on, but I suspect a mis-reading of his bill. As a further sanity check, what's his total (electric) bill?

That's good. Still, it would make me nervous if my solar was done that way. They are basically dictating that the energy you produce has different value than the energy they produce. In AZ, my energy production applies 1:1 as a credit toward anything I use. I only end up getting paid wholesale value if I have excess production left over for the year (they settle up in April).