Hi Tom,
I wanted to respond to your recent posting about the workshop that we held at the Energy Innovation Center last Thursday to discuss the winding down of the EV Rate Study in which you are participating, and provide some sample data that we've collected so far.
I’m sorry to learn about your disappointment in the information we provided, but I’m glad you shared it with us. Let me offer some additional background for the benefit of others who participated in the Study and may have questions.
We discussed at the meeting that this was a longitudinal Study over a span of time that would be long enough for us to witness the persistence of vehicle charging patterns. The Study does not end until Dec. 31, so we will look at the results once it is complete to determine rate change recommendations at that time. Rate recommendations to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) take more than a year to approve and put in place, so any such changes are at least that far out. We should have made that more clear at the meeting.
For the Study, we were interested in understanding charging behavior across a large number of Leaf drivers, not just those who acquired their car in 2011, for example. While you were an early Leaf buyer (like myself), many in the study have not had their cars as long as we have, meaning that SDG&E doesn’t yet have two years of data from everyone to analyze and draw conclusions from. Since the EV Project was extended to the end of 2013 to allow for more participants, this allowed us to do the same and improve the Study by adding more participants as well. There was never an expectation that data gathered from this Study would be used to influence new EV rate design until the study concludes at the end of this year, and all the data was gathered and analyzed. While this analysis has yet to be done, we have been looking at the rough trends of the raw data collected (and I’ll post some data below), and we shared some highlights with you at last week’s discussion. We can certainly sponsor another workshop to review the final results around March of 2014, if there is interest.
The purpose of the workshop last week was to give the Study participants enough time to consider their rate alternatives, and introduce the option of rolling off these temporary experimental rates before the end of 2013, if there was another rate that could save them money.
Once we have reviewed the Study results we can determine if the findings warrant a new or modified EV rate, and if so, file an application with the CPUC to consider such a rate. I see that if we would have explained this aspect at the workshop, those attending would better understand the next steps in the process, and that the process can take more than a year. Your feedback is valued and this will influence our future communication with all Study participants (about 400 customers).
In a couple of places in your note, you make reference to getting “soaked” (and other adjectives) by the company, and you have also questioned our EV-friendly stance. I have to address those issues head on to make sure that the background facts are clear. SDG&E has been extremely supportive of EVs and we have done a number of things to show that support and “walk the talk”.
First, SDG&E was very proactive in negotiating and working with both Nissan and the EV Project to have the initial launch of LEAF and EV Project home and commercial chargers take place in San Diego. Once those commitments were in place and moving forward, we approached the CPUC and worked with them on the concept of the experimental rate program that you and I are both a part of. This innovative concept was not initially met with support, but in working with a large number of EV stakeholders it was approved by the CPUC in time for the initial launch in early 2011.
In addition, SDG&E partnered with ECOtality to pay for the installation of the second meter hardware (so the cars could be metered separately for the Study). Our group worked tirelessly with a number of internal SDG&E groups to make the second meter concept a reality, complete with a special billing process. Again, this is done nowhere else in the US that I know of. At other utilities, a separate EV meter must be connected to a new service, and that is very expensive to install.
Because of our partnership with Nissan and ECOtality, the LEAF and the EV Project were rolled out early to the region. You were able to receive many benefits at no charge because of this, including the infrastructure for the second meter that measured your LEAF usage and the ability to participate in the rate study. So I believe this and many other reasons qualify us as being very “EV friendly”.
As a participant in the Study you were randomly assigned to the Z EV TOU rate with the lowest price in the super off-peak time period, and the highest price in the on-peak time period. It sounds like because you were able to manage your charging time to be primarily during the super off-peak period, and avoid the on-peak pricing, you have enjoyed very low fueling costs for your EV for the past couple of years. Maybe we didn’t make it clear initially, but the 3 experimental rates were designed specifically for the Study to determine the influence of pricing on time-of-use EV charging and were never meant to be permanent rates.
As far as your question about time-of-use periods, as we described at the meeting, those time periods in the experimental rates were designed to specifically study the effect of weekday vs. weekend charging within the study and were not meant to reflect power system conditions of higher or lower system capacity like you would expect from other rates. Like you and others on the Z rate, I didn’t charge very much on-peak during the week or on the weekends because of the pricing, which is something that will be studied across the various experimental rates and analyzed when the study is done. For example, those with lower on-peak pricing may have less incentive to charge in only the super off-peak.
As we said in the meeting, we’d be happy to help you study your own personal situation at home to see what current EV rate would be the best for you to adopt. You can do so now, or you can wait until the study is over in December to switch.
In closing, I wanted to reiterate that I know that our company’s commitment to EVs in the region will remain strong, and that you will see this reflected in future programs. I hope you’ve enjoyed the benefits you’ve received so far, and I look forward to continuing my work to bring the best programs and services to you and other EV customers in San Diego.
Here is a small example of aggregated raw draft data that we’ve collected so far from participants in the SDG&E Rate Study, with more definitive analysis to be performed after the Study is over…
June 2011:
Rate X (2:1) 4% on peak, 9% off peak, 87% super off-peak
Rate Y (4:1) 6% on peak, 8% off peak, 86% super off-peak
Rate Z (6:1) 4% on peak, 6% off peak, 90% super off-peak
June 2012:
Rate X (2:1) 11% on peak, 14% off peak, 75% super off-peak
Rate Y (4:1) 10% on peak,9% off peak, 81% super off-peak
Rate Z (6:1) 8% on peak, 8% off peak, 84% super off-peak
June 2013:
Rate X (2:1) 12% on peak, 15% off peak, 73% super off-peak
Rate Y (4:1) 11% on peak, 10% off peak, 79% super off-peak
Rate Z (6:1) 9% on peak, 9% off peak, 82% super off-peak