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drees said:
sdbonez - how many kWh/year is your PV system generating and how many kWh/mo do you use on average? Just asking because if you're saving $301/mo I would have to guess that you exceeded baseline by quite a bit...
Click to expand...

Here's a snippet - yeah, consistently in Tier 4.

Code: 
05/01/09	1024
06/02/09	1176
07/01/09	1282
07/31/09	1445
08/31/09	1427
09/30/09	1601
10/29/09	1155
12/01/09	1099
12/31/09	1480
02/01/10	1258
03/03/10	1043
04/01/10	1074
05/03/10	1294
06/02/10	1142
07/01/10	908
08/02/10	1358

It's actually a real pain to calculate savings because I have to calculate what you would have paid across all tiers even though I didn't pay it (and everything for me is manual). I've been good about keeping usage consistent, still using CFLs, etc. and usage is on par with what it was before I had my PV system.

What can I say - I'm a geek - I've already done a ton in the energy conservation department (appliances, computers, etc.) - exhausted all those options running around with my kill-a-watt before getting my PV system.
 
sdbonez said:
Here's a snippet - yeah, consistently in Tier 4
Click to expand...
Wow - that's impressive. Do you have the corresponding PV generation to go with the consumption?
sdbonez said:
What can I say - I'm a geek - I've already done a ton in the energy conservation department (appliances, computers, etc.) - exhausted all those options running around with my kill-a-watt before getting my PV system.
Click to expand...
I'd wager you have some big vampire draws of power that you aren't aware of. Do you have a pool or hot tub or something?

I averaged your last 12 months - came to 1235 kWh/mo.
My last 12 months averaged about 445 kWh/mo. The variation in your bill is more than what I use in a typical month! I've got a small aquarium a computer/server that's on 24/7 and electric range. Have AC, but don't use it more than a few hours here and there when it gets real hot.

1235 kWh/mo comes to an average constant draw of 1715W. The only thing I can think of that would generate that kind of load would be pool pumps, hot tubs, or running the AC a LOT - and it's been a mild summer so I can't imagine that you use the AC that much. Maybe just a really big house? Or if you're a geek - 3-5 servers running 24/7 or something? Attic fan? Hot water circulation system? Fountains?

BTW - I'd estimate that your PV system generates about 10,000 kWh/year and should be big enough to generate a surplus most of the summer months between April-September unless you have a really big consumption month - am I close?
 
garygid said:
Is there a monthly surcharge or minimum billing associated with the EV meter?
Click to expand...
The SDG&E rep at the CCSE workshop last night said that there would be no meter surcharge for EV Project participants during the course of the project. After 2013, it remains to be seen what might happen. The PUC has to rule on their proposed rate schedules for EV-TOU that come out of the project study data.

TT
 
ttweed said:
garygid said:
Is there a monthly surcharge or minimum billing associated with the EV meter?
Click to expand...
The SDG&E rep at the CCSE workshop last night said that there would be no meter surcharge for EV Project participants during the course of the project. After 2013, it remains to be seen what might happen. The PUC has to rule on their proposed rate schedules for EV-TOU that come out of the project study data.

TT
Click to expand...

I was at the meeting last night also, and heard exactly what is stated above. The only thing about the EV Project Participant rules that bother me a little is the fact that rates will be "randomly" assigned initially,( in order to give the study folks a more realistic usage pattern, they say).
 
derkraut said:
ttweed said:
garygid said:
Is there a monthly surcharge or minimum billing associated with the EV meter?
Click to expand...
The SDG&E rep at the CCSE workshop last night said that there would be no meter surcharge for EV Project participants during the course of the project. After 2013, it remains to be seen what might happen. The PUC has to rule on their proposed rate schedules for EV-TOU that come out of the project study data.

TT
Click to expand...

I was at the meeting last night also, and heard exactly what is stated above. The only thing about the EV Project Participant rules that bother me a little is the fact that rates will be "randomly" assigned initially,( in order to give the study folks a more realistic usage pattern, they say).
Click to expand...

About the randomly assigned rates; Yes, one of those rate tiers IS more expensive than regular TOU rates. But don't forget that you're getting easily $1000+ worth of free EVSE (arguably the nicest one of the EVSE offerings) + free installation. So even if you get stuck with the highest rate, in the end, you're virtually guaranteed to come out ahead.

Assume you charge 24kWh into the car EVERY day for 3 years. The difference between .14/kWh and .17/kWh over 3 years is $788. Considering the free BLINK EVSE and install, are you really getting screwed? Go check the AV folks and the estimates for THEIR EVSE + install!!!!!

Besides....we all know that if we get the highest rate, we'll just use 110v whenever possible and avoid the higher charge.

Much ado about nothing, IMHO.
 
Good info, Jimmy. I figure that the value of the ECOtality project is about $3,100 to me.

$1,200 for the EVSE, $1,200 for the installation, and $700 for the free DC Fast Charge port...

I'm willing to pay a little extra elsewhere to get these benefits, but who knows, we may get lucky with the assigned rate....
 
Jimmydreams said:
About the randomly assigned rates; Yes, one of those rate tiers IS more expensive than regular TOU rates.
Click to expand...
The SDG&E guy made a point of claiming that the WORST rate in the experimental table of 3 was EQUAL to the current rate, and that the other two were better. I don't see how this is true, considering the highest Super Off-Peak-Summer rate in the experiment will be $0.13873/kwh and the current EV-TOU rates are about $0.096. The other two groups will be paying $0.07634 and $0.06722/kwh respectively, so they will be paying less for Super Off-Peak-Summer usage, but their On-Peak and Off-Peak rates are higher than the first group, should you need to charge at some time other than the middle of the night.

Assume you charge 24kWh into the car EVERY day for 3 years. The difference between .14/kWh and .17/kWh over 3 years is $788. Considering the free BLINK EVSE and install, are you really getting screwed? Go check the AV folks and the estimates for THEIR EVSE + install!!!!!
Click to expand...
I agree, but it is not even that bad. First of all, you have only a 1 in 3 chance of being assigned to the EPEV-L group rate (the highest). Then, you do not have to stay at that rate for 3 years. The project only lasts 2 years, and according to the EV Project residential agreement, after 12 months on the assigned PEV-TOU rate, you can switch to another one. So your assumption of 3 years above is high, as are your usage assumptions (they equate to driving over 35,000 miles a year), although your rate delta assumptions don't agree with what I have read and sound low. The difference is not $.03/kwh, but more like $.06 or .07/kwh. A more realistic estimate of the cost difference between the highest and lowest rates in the project might be 10 KWH/day for 12 months (3650KWH total, which equates to 14,600 miles of driving in a year) times the $.07 difference in rates, which equals $255. This is less than 1/10 of the benefit from being in the project. That is trivial, in my way of thinking.
Besides....we all know that if we get the highest rate, we'll just use 110v whenever possible and avoid the higher charge.
Click to expand...
I don't think I will be doing that. On my standard DR rate schedule, even with my paltry current home usage, I already routinely exceed my baseline allocation of 317KWH and get into the Tier 2 rates. Using an additional 2-300 KWH/month charging my car will put me into the Tier 3 rate of $.19/kwh and even Tier 4 rate @ $.21/kwh, costing me more than even the highest experimental PEV-TOU rate of $.13 and taking twice as long to charge the car.

Maybe it's different for you guys already on TOU metering or on solar, but that's the way I see it for my situation.

TT
 
I get it -- I know that the three EPEV-L/M/H are, at worst, comparable to some TOU rates.

I think part of the frustration is that the early adopter set has a high concentration of engineers, or people very very interested in their energy costs. We're trying hard to do the computations needed to decide if EVs make sense for us.

Having SDG&E assign a *random* price schedule to my power really throws a wrench in my "Should I?" calculation. This is what bothers me most.. My spreadsheets are more complicated with the fact that my five hours of night charging will cost either 7 cents, or twice as much, and I have no control.

And worse, my neighbor could be driving for half the price per mile than I do, just because of some dice at SDG&E.

I get it, I know why they are doing it, but I believe this plan will cause frustration in 1/3 of the early adopters, who will make more than 30% of the noise about it, and confuse people who haven't done the same research.

You really have to put a lot of work into this to understand the impact to your power bill, so having some kind of card game involved doesn't help. Can you imagine explaining this to a coworker?

"So what does it cost you to drive 1000 miles".
"Well, it's complicated.. what it costs me isn't what it would cost you, see... <30 minutes later>"
"Hell, I have a tax advisor for that kind of thing. Screw that."
 
GroundLoop said:
I get it, I know why they are doing it, but I believe this plan will cause frustration in 1/3 of the early adopters, who will make more than 30% of the noise about it, and confuse people who haven't done the same research.
Click to expand...
Remind them of the benefits of participating in the project, which far exceed the negative impact on 33% of us, and mention that they can always go charge their car FOR FREE until June at the publicly available infrastructure. It is also likely that they will find some of the charging stations remain free even after June, depending on who is operating them.

Can you imagine explaining this to a coworker?

"So what does it cost you to drive 1000 miles".
Click to expand...

It would be easy for me to answer that (if I were still at my old job): "It costs me almost nothing! Didn't you know that our employer (UCSD) provides free EV charging stations right here on campus? I just charge my car while I'm parked at work every day."

There will be many ways to work around the charging situation for the last 6-7 months of this first year's experiment, with a little creativity and research, I believe. What will get weird is when there start to be multi-thousands of EVs on the road locally and not hundreds. Then there will be different questions to be resolved, like public charging etiquette, etc.

TT
 
Then there are the SDG&E customers NOT in the EVProject, like me, north of San Diego, in Orange County. And, to complicate matters, there is PV production to consider, and only the "standard" rates.

But, it is still very confusing. The necessary information to evaluate PV over-production under TOD metering seems to be missing from the SDG&E website.

However, with the additional EV charging, the OVER-production might disappear.

Then, with large A/C loads, the one-meter TOD rates, EV or not, might not be any better than simple Net Metering.
 
If your PV regularly overproduces during peak hours (because you don't use A/C, for example), then it seems like a TOU structure could be advantageous. That was my reason for trying it, and I was surprised to find that the overall increase in the cost of off-peak energy (from DR) and Winter was swamping my production credits during the Summer day.

I went back to DR, since Baseline/130% under DR is so affordable, and the whole year is one simple number of total kWh.

With EPEV, and the extreme spreads between peak/off-peak, the same question comes up.

What if I can apply my PV during the peak time to generate credits at a huge multiplier? If the EV meter "runs backwards", that would be the way to go -- relocate the PV to the secondary meter and get PAID at $0.38 while paying $0.06 to charge at night. Somehow, I doubt the EV meter will be enabled for generation, and that's some electrical work to attempt.

A more likely abuse would be non-EV loads on the EV circuit. If there are five hours of $0.07 power every night, wouldn't you want to charge up a large UPS and power your computers the rest of the day? Even with the UPS battery losses, you'd be money ahead of DR.

Or build your own DC fast-charger -- pump up a bank of cells every night, and then dump the energy into your EV any time of day via DC.
 
drees said:
Wow - that's impressive. Do you have the corresponding PV generation to go with the consumption?
Click to expand...

Code: 
Date         Usage  Generation
05/01/09   1024    139.5
06/02/09   1176    1265.5
07/01/09   1282    1139
07/31/09   1445    1213
08/31/09   1427    1220
09/30/09   1601    1061
10/29/09   1155    897
12/01/09   1099    889
12/31/09   1480    633
02/01/10   1258    712
03/03/10   1043    791
04/01/10   1074    1038
05/03/10   1294    1145
06/02/10   1142    1168
07/01/10   908      1094
08/02/10   1358    1068

Once I update/groom the data a bit, it'll be posted on the web monthly...just haven't gotten to it.

drees said:
I'd wager you have some big vampire draws of power that you aren't aware of. Do you have a pool or hot tub or something?
Click to expand...

Big vampire draws...but am aware of them. No pool, but yes, 240v hot tub (which is surprisingly efficient, btw - I swear it costs more to run the filter cycle then it does to keep it at 101F).. and 2 3-ton A/C units which get a good amount of use and a ton of equipment.

drees said:
I averaged your last 12 months - came to 1235 kWh/mo.
My last 12 months averaged about 445 kWh/mo. The variation in your bill is more than what I use in a typical month! I've got a small aquarium a computer/server that's on 24/7 and electric range. Have AC, but don't use it more than a few hours here and there when it gets real hot.

1235 kWh/mo comes to an average constant draw of 1715W. The only thing I can think of that would generate that kind of load would be pool pumps, hot tubs, or running the AC a LOT - and it's been a mild summer so I can't imagine that you use the AC that much. Maybe just a really big house? Or if you're a geek - 3-5 servers running 24/7 or something? Attic fan? Hot water circulation system? Fountains?
Click to expand...

No aquarium...but tons of equipment. Let's put it this way... I count more than 30 actively-registered network-enabled devices on my non-public network. Gas range, Gas Dryer, and again, we use the A/C like it's going out of style. 2 3-ton A/C units (18 Seer, I believe) and a big house. A/C is a big piece but the equipment draw is significant as well. Some day, I'll figure out what the spread is.

drees said:
BTW - I'd estimate that your PV system generates about 10,000 kWh/year and should be big enough to generate a surplus most of the summer months between April-September unless you have a really big consumption month - am I close?
Click to expand...

Very. 11,716 kWh if I look at the previous 12 months.
 
ttweed said:
...according to the EV Project residential agreement
Click to expand...

Is this link (http://173.201.179.178/questionnaire/participant-agreement/) *the* residential agreement? I don't remember seeing it initially and actually put in a request to ECOtality last week for it (they were searching for it and said they'd send a link if they could find it).

While we're on the subject of agreements, has anyone seen production verbiage for the Leaf Warranty?
 
wsbca said:
From what the SDG&E EV manager told me, the second meter will be between the main meter and the EVSE, and the cumulative second meter usage will be subtracted after the fact from the main meter. They can't/won't use data from the BLINK unit.
Click to expand...

Right. The same was confirmed at the Oct 4 lecture by Joel Pointon. I still have questions about the specific wiring and location. The Blink charger will be in the interior of the garage. Where will the second interposing rate meter go? It can't go on the exterior because there is no room for it. It would have to wire between the breaker and the interior wiring, so the EV Project installer would have to allow for that during the charger install.

If the meter is installed inside, how will they read the meter? (Zigbee smart meter?) How much wall space will it take up?

The Blink data is apparently good enough for EV Project's data collection, but not good enough for billing.
 
GroundLoop said:
I still have questions about the specific wiring and location. The Blink charger will be in the interior of the garage. Where will the second interposing rate meter go? It can't go on the exterior because there is no room for it. It would have to wire between the breaker and the interior wiring, so the EV Project installer would have to allow for that during the charger install.
Click to expand...

I actually have a copy of the results from my surveyor (their worksheet) as well as the photos and full 'package' that they then sent to Ecotality. It makes *no* mention of a second meter and none of the questions are formatted in a way that would give Ecotality (or SDG&E) this level of info/confidence.

It solely focuses on the existing meter, it's capacity/situation/location, the runs to the location for the EVSE, and details about the location of the EVSE...
 
GroundLoop said:
Right. The same was confirmed at the Oct 4 lecture by Joel Pointon. I still have questions about the specific wiring and location. The Blink charger will be in the interior of the garage. Where will the second interposing rate meter go? It can't go on the exterior because there is no room for it. It would have to wire between the breaker and the interior wiring, so the EV Project installer would have to allow for that during the charger install.

If the meter is installed inside, how will they read the meter? (Zigbee smart meter?) How much wall space will it take up?

The Blink data is apparently good enough for EV Project's data collection, but not good enough for billing.
Click to expand...

I think the second meter will be outside so it can be read by SDG&E and will be under my existing meter. My present meter is to the left of the breaker panel. That compartment is as large as the breaker panel compartment, and most of it is unused. I think the second meter could go there, and be connected between the EV circuit breakers and the Blink charger.
 
sdbonez said:
No aquarium...but tons of equipment. Let's put it this way... I count more than 30 actively-registered network-enabled devices on my non-public network. Gas range, Gas Dryer, and again, we use the A/C like it's going out of style. 2 3-ton A/C units (18 Seer, I believe) and a big house. A/C is a big piece but the equipment draw is significant as well. Some day, I'll figure out what the spread is
Click to expand...

I installed a kWh monitoring system several months ago from EcoDog Inc and it monitors usage at the circuit level in kWh and $$ so you can see how much it costs to run AC, a load of laundry, bake a cake, etc. It records the data in hour increments on each circuit. If you want to check it out see www.ecodoginc.com. The system is appropriately called Fido.
 
Frank said:
I think the second meter will be outside so it can be read by SDG&E and will be under my existing meter. My present meter is to the left of the breaker panel. That compartment is as large as the breaker panel compartment, and most of it is unused. I think the second meter could go there, and be connected between the EV circuit breakers and the Blink charger.
Click to expand...

There are so many complexities in this, it just doesn't seem likely.

First, most recent residences have a "load center" with a solid bus bar going from the meter to the service panel. They don't have any way to run a second service rail into your existing panel, so a new sub-panel would be needed. On my house anyway.

If they install a second meter, then they also have to install a new breaker for it, in a new panel to house the breaker and feed from the meter. There is nowhere to put this on the exterior. The wall space is limited, and stucco is not easy to work in.

Then, they have to run wire/conduit from that new panel to the charger.
Like sdbonez, none of this is covered in my ECOtality estimate, and they are working the assumption of using an existing breaker in my existing panel.
Who is going to pay for the extensive electrical work? What contractor is going to do it?

The only way I can figure this is if they install the meter on the *interior* and rely on their new SmartMeter/iTron/Zigbee network to read it. I haven't seen any interior power meters, but I suppose it's possible?

There might be some "second meter" facility in my load center that I don't know about, but I'd be surprised. It's pretty clear how all the breakers are bussed together.
 

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