Official California PG&E Thread

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leaf561 said:
gascant said:
For us, the 2nd meter might save $60/month if that, so it's a big investment to make for a small savings.

If you plan to get a second EV in the future, then the 2nd meter makes sense. You get the federal rebate now (if it is still available).

If two people in the house were commuting, I'd agree. I would imagine that we'll be a two-EV family around the same time as I retire, so our overall driving will go down considerably.
 
Did anyone notice that PG&E's E9a rate treated today (7/4) as a regular weekday (i.e. regular peak rates apply from 2pm to 9pm)?

Being a hot day today, I was about to turn the thermostat down another three degrees when I checked the meter to see that regular rates apply. I always thought that holidays would count under weekend rates.

I guess I should have scrutinized the rate sheet closer. :shock:
 
greenleaf said:
Did anyone notice that PG&E's E9a rate treated today (7/4) as a regular weekday (i.e. regular peak rates apply from 2pm to 9pm)?
Unfortunately, there are no "TOU Holidays" for residential accounts, only for commercial & industrial accounts. :(

Bummer.
 
greenleaf said:
Did anyone notice that PG&E's E9a rate treated today (7/4) as a regular weekday (i.e. regular peak rates apply from 2pm to 9pm)?
Unless you've got something the rest of us don't have, you're not using a smart meter. It can't communicate with the central office, and it's not much smarter than a digital watch. It doesn't even switch between standard time and daylight saving time on the right date!

Ray
 
greenleaf said:
It doesn't seem much to have the holidays programmed in for the next 10 years...
Yeah, because as I said three posts up, now quoting PG&E:

"Residential TOU tariffs do not include off-peak rates for weekday holidays."
 
I've had my Leaf just over 2 months and I'm very satisfied with it. I've now experienced two full months of PGE charges using the 110 volt adapter supplied by Nissan. I rarely go over 35 miles/day and the additional charges have been ~$150/mo. We're not very green and use quite a bit of power here. Last month's bill showed 350kwh of use at 300% above baseline which was billed at 37+ cents/kwh. The total bill was over $500 and we hadn't even been using much AC in June so it really got my attention.

In the Bay Area where Ecotality was not originally going to roll out the EV Project to EV owners, Nissan was heavily pushing the private installation of charging stations via Aerenvironments. My quote was $2300. Luckily I kept my ear to the Internet, learned of the EV Project and managed to get approved after I had taken delivery but before I had committed to a private company. Nissan was not very helpful, btw, and did not approve my initial application because I had gotten a previous Aerenvironments quote. When I learned of that I rained some Hell Fire down on Nissan and eventually got approved for my free Ecotality Blink charging station installation.

I also spent a great deal of time analyzing PG&E's E-9A and E-9B programs. From my analysis and based on how we use electricity in our house we would have gotten killed by E-9A because we mostly use power during peak hours and my wife is about as flexible as granite. That $500 bill from June would have been closer to $600 on E-9A.

Once I decided that E-9B was what I wanted I obtained bids from private electrical contractors who had difficulty coming up with a price because it was not clear exactly what hardware PG&E was really going to require. In the end it cost me $2000 for the electrician (just the splice box alone that PG&E required cost him $500) and $250 from PG&E for the 2nd meter. We have underground service to a 200 amp panel since we remodeled in 2000. PGE said we could add the splice box and still power the 200 amp panel + the new 100 amp panel that we installed for the Leaf without a service upgrade. The splice box that PG&E required is huge (3 feet wide, 4 feet high) so we had to move the existing 200 amp panel up several inches to accomodate it. (It also cost me $75 to restucco the area between the newly located 200 amp panel and the splice box).

PGE was out early in the AM to cut off our power and to pull the cables back so the electrician could cut the existing 3 inch diameter steel conduit and install the splice box. Before PG&E would reconnect power they required that the city inspectors sign off on the work. By 8PM we were back in business and Ecotality's contractor came out the following day to install a dedicated 40 amp 220 circuit with conduit to the opposite side of the garage where I park the Leaf. The Blink unit just plugs into the 220 volt receptacle much like an electric dryer.

I've set up a charging schedule using the Leaf's timer so that charging does not start until midnight on week days and until 9PM on weekends to obtain the baseline rate of $ 0.05995 (6 cents) per kwh. I now expect my monthly Leaf charging to cost less than $20 /mo.

As half of the electrical work I paid for is eligible for a tax credit I expect the switch to E-9B to pay for itself within a year. Luckily I was not required to do any trenching for a PG&E service upgrade as that can get pricey. I hope this helps anyone who is trying to figure out the best way to go forward!

Black SL Leaf with fast charger installed.
Motorola Atrix Android phone has no problem accessing carwings and using PowerAmp to stream mp3s directly to the Leaf as soon as the car is powered on.
 
I was in your tier with PG&E until I installed solar and now I have no bill even with LEAF charging on one E6 meter. I use my Blink most of the time and my modified Nissan EVSE when I back into the garage or when my charge is critical and I don't want to rely on the Blink unit.
 
does anyone know if the per-day meter charge for an E9A meter is subject to the 7.5% energy users tax? is it just added on to the daily taxed electrical usage separately?
 
astrorob said:
does anyone know if the per-day meter charge for an E9A meter is subject to the 7.5% energy users tax? is it just added on to the daily taxed electrical usage separately?
I am not sure what 7.5% energy users tax you are talking about is. I am looking at my last E9A bill and the only tax I can find is the Energy Commission Tax and it was $0.15 on a total bill of $53.75 and $7 of that bill was for the meter charge. If only PG&E would just hurry up and get those SmartMeters working with E9A I would not be charged for the meter at all.
 
Spies said:
astrorob said:
does anyone know if the per-day meter charge for an E9A meter is subject to the 7.5% energy users tax? is it just added on to the daily taxed electrical usage separately?
I am not sure what 7.5% energy users tax you are talking about is. I am looking at my last E9A bill and the only tax I can find is the Energy Commission Tax and it was $0.15 on a total bill of $53.75 and $7 of that bill was for the meter charge. If only PG&E would just hurry up and get those SmartMeters working with E9A I would not be charged for the meter at all.


that's interesting. there's definitely a 7.5% tax on my E1 bill. i assumed it would be on the E9A bill as well. guess i need to read the E9A document thru again.

i wrote a script to analyze my TED5000 output and i was trying to fine tune it to be as accurate as possible...
 
astrorob said:
Spies said:
astrorob said:
does anyone know if the per-day meter charge for an E9A meter is subject to the 7.5% energy users tax? is it just added on to the daily taxed electrical usage separately?
I am not sure what 7.5% energy users tax you are talking about is. I am looking at my last E9A bill and the only tax I can find is the Energy Commission Tax and it was $0.15 on a total bill of $53.75 and $7 of that bill was for the meter charge. If only PG&E would just hurry up and get those SmartMeters working with E9A I would not be charged for the meter at all.


that's interesting. there's definitely a 7.5% tax on my E1 bill. i assumed it would be on the E9A bill as well. guess i need to read the E9A document thru again.

i wrote a script to analyze my TED5000 output and i was trying to fine tune it to be as accurate as possible...

i read the bill again, and it's called a *utility* user's tax. either way i guess it does not appear on the E9A bill?
 
astrorob said:
i read the bill again, and it's called a *utility* user's tax. either way i guess it does not appear on the E9A bill?
The UUT or "utility users tax" is not part of the rate and is an imposed tax and as far as I can tell that I am not subject to. The rate seems to be based on what city and/or county you live in and what type of customer you are. This site has some of the rate information http://www.uutinfo.org/
 
Spies said:
astrorob said:
i read the bill again, and it's called a *utility* user's tax. either way i guess it does not appear on the E9A bill?
The UUT or "utility users tax" is not part of the rate and is an imposed tax and as far as I can tell that I am not subject to. The rate seems to be based on what city and/or county you live in and what type of customer you are. This site has some of the rate information http://www.uutinfo.org/

ah hah. that explains it. thanks.

i'll check the link.
 
Does anyone with a PG & E 2nd meter know what the "cycling channels" information refer to:

PG & E tech mentioned to me but I think he may be wrong on a couple.

Channel 1: Date
Channel 2: Time of day
Channel 4: Total kW
Channel 5: On Peak usage
Channel 9: Off Peak usage ??
Channel 13: Partial Peak usage ??
Channel 99: Instantaneous kW ??

My first usage yesterday, I am showing 22kW used on channel 13, but I was definitely charging between 12am - 7am.

Another Question I have is this: I could have sworn I previously spoke to someone at PG & E that if you have a Smart meter, you will NOT be charged the E9B Meter Charge per meter per day: 0.21881 cents.

Can anyone confirm/validate these data points? Thanks!
 
Bassman said:
I think you might have 9 and 13 switched. I think 9 is semi-offpeak and 13 is offpeak. I'll have to check my meter tonight when I get home.

Hi Glenn,

Please do check and confirm for me. At least, I have you as a data point.

I was told verbally by the meter tech but I think he said it wrong on channels 9 and 13.

By the way, my 2nd meter is a GE branded meter.

Let me know....

Thanks!!
-Mike
 
mxp said:
Another Question I have is this: I could have sworn I previously spoke to someone at PG & E that if you have a Smart meter, you will NOT be charged the E9B Meter Charge per meter per day: 0.21881 cents.
It sounds like what you have is a GE kV2 meter. This is not a smart meter; it doesn't transmit data to the central office, so a meter reader still has to come around every month. (Hence the meter charge.)

Ray
 
Hi all.

I've skimmed this (long) thread and I'm not sure I've found the answers to my questions. I'd like to just go ahead and ask specific questions. If these are well answered in previous responses, please direct me to these. Thanks.

My Leaf is probably arriving in October (Nissan originally indicated "Month of September" but then changed it :cry: ).

My house (in San Jose) has overhead service, currently to a second-story roof, down through the wall to an integrated meter/breaker box. How would PG&E want the install of a second meter for E9B? Would they do a second drop from the pole? If not, how would the power get tapped off for the second meter?

Otherwise, assuming that I go with one meter, I'm comparing the E6 rates to E9A (I'm currently on E1). As I read the rates, E6 has lower peak rates but higher off-peak, so that EV charging would be more expensive on E6 but the rest of my consumption would probably be lower. Also, the E6 peak period to 7PM would work better than 9PM with E9A. Given that I'm currently running 200 -300% of baseline, It seems to me that E6 would work better. Does that sound reasonable?

As I understand it, once I'm on E9A and have told PG&E I have an EV, I cannot change to E6, but if I'm already on E6 when I get my Leaf, I can keep it. Could I change to E6 and then, a month later, install a charging station and keep E6?

Finally, a kicker, I'm probably going to install solar. I'm thinking of waiting until next year for that to spread out the federal tax credits. I'm thinking that with solar, it makes no sense to be on E9A due to the later peak period. I'd either want to go E6 or even stay on E1 just to chop off the higher post-baseline rates. What do you think?

If I do end up doing E6 with solar, maybe I should just bite the bullet and do the solar now? Do you know if the Ev and solar tax credits will carry over to next year if the credits happen to exceed my tax liability?

I realize that some of my questions depend of my specific situation. I'd appreciate any advice you can give.

Thanks
 
Your house is very similar to ours (size and city). The larger your solar system the better E6 is. We produce about 80% of our electricity (6MW/years, pre Leaf, no AC) with PV, and before I had a full years worth of data I calculated that the break even point would be around 10-15 full charges of the Leaf/month. After running the PV over a year by now I'm pretty sure that the break even point for us is even higher (i.e. only if we charge the Leaf more than 20 full charges/month does it make sense to switch to E9). My suggestion: go with E6 for at least a year or two after installing the PV system, then make some calculations to see if E9 would work better. E6 has another advantage: even with 120V you can charge the Leaf to 80% during off-peak, and with a 240V charger you can charge 2 -3 Leafs/night :)
 
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