Randy wrote:To clarify my comment about the study, the rates created for the study (EPEV-X, Y, and Z) are expected to be good through April 2013. After that, people on those study rates will be asked to choose which of the traditional EV rates they'd like to move to (EV-TOU or EV-TOU2 at this time). We don't know yet if any new rates will be created besides those two, but there could be other rates at that time to choose from.
I'm dredging up this old thread this morning after attending the workshop last night for "SDG&E Plug-in Electric Vehicle Time-of-Use Pricing Study Participants" to provide us with information about our rate options once the study ends, which is set for Dec. 31, 2013.
I was fairly disappointed to learn that after two years of experimental study, there would be no change at all to their pre-existing EV-TOU rates, and that we would all be transitioned to them automatically next year with no new options, adjustments, or modifications of the two rate plans that have been available since 2011. I guess that collecting data for all that time only reinforced the "correctness" of their previously determined rate structure? Did they learn nothing??
I was hoping for some rate change that would encourage EV usage, and reward "super-off-peak" charging to a greater extent. Instead, they seem to have garnered the conclusion that it doesn't matter how high or low the rate is, you will still charge at night even to save a few cents/kWh, as 80% of the charging that was done by study participants was during the super-off-peak period, regardless of whether you had the X, Y, or Z tariff. Thus, they can soak us for the $.14/kWh rate that was established years ago and most people will go along, since there is no alternative (other than spending mega-bucks for a solar/storage/NG system to avoid them entirely). My EV "fueling" costs will double on Jan. 1, since I was in the Z group, being charged $.07 kWh for super-off-peak charging. I am happy that I got 2 years of cheap rates, but was hoping that the final schedules would be somewhere between the old rates and the experimental rates. This did not happen--another disappointment to add to the lack of infrastructure development that was touted to the early adopters.
I was hoping that they would at least throw us a bone with some kind of refinement of the 7-day-per-week structure for the time periods of EV-TOU rates along the lines of other utilities like PG&E, at least giving us a break on weekends and holidays from weekday peak rates, and actually asked a question at the end of the presentation about why weekend and holiday peak periods were the same as weekdays, when it is obvious that the demand for electricity from the grid is less when commercial users are not sucking juice like they do during business hours. The answer was that commercial usage was not considered in setting the rates, only residential usage profiles were included. This seems illogical to me, since it is certainly the high commercial demand during peak periods that causes the high rate at those times, so why would they be ignored during the off-peak periods? Why is it possible for PG&E, a "sister" company with comparable demand on its grid, to offer their customers this structure:
Peak: 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Holidays.
Partial-Peak: 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Off-Peak: All other hours.
Maybe Randy can answer my question in a way that makes more sense to me than the one I got from his boss last night? I feel like we are getting screwed and not even getting kissed, here. For all the noise that is being made about being "EV-friendly," SDG&E is ending up with some of the most onerous EV residential rate tariffs around.
TT
Tom Tweed
La Jolla, CA
Plowshare Media
2011 SLe #1317 del. 4/1/11
1st bar lost at 31,953 miles
2nd bar lost at 38,685 miles
3rd bar lost at 50,711 miles
4th bar lost at 59,758 miles after 64 months
Battery replaced at 61,307 miles.