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PG&E came to my house today to review my layout and options. Because I have solar, and I told them I was still on E1, I wanted to know what was best going forward. The cost for a second meter would involve a lot a work and probably cost around $5-6k to complete, so E9b was out. I asked about E6 and he said that E7 was better. I also asked about E9a, and again he said E7 was better, and by far better than E1 for me. He's going to give a call tomorrow after reviewing my usage...he also stated that the Smartmeter that they installed maybe the wrong type for my solar....I guess we are all learning here.
 
I read PG&E's website to say that E7 is no longer available. Wonder what's going on.

I'll have to think about E9A vs. E1 for my house with EV and PV solar setup. My PV output should be enough to knock me down to tier two in the summer except for the hottest weeks. I went with E9A for now - great winter rates.
 
DeaneG said:
Here is more than you'd ever want to know about the kV2cs net meter - how to read it, plus a lot of technical information. The meter can be triggered to display more data using a magnet on the face at 3 o'clock:

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/metering/en/downloads/kv2ci_oi.pdf
Click to expand...
The meter guy showed up unannounced today (I am not home) to replace my SmartMeter with a GE i210 :

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/metering/en/utility_revenue_meters/i210_elec.htm

This is quite a bit different from yours. My wait is slightly over 5 weeks, a little shorter than your 7 weeks. Maybe it's because I have emailed them twice this week to request a status update. ;-)

BTW, I am sticking to E1, and that perhaps explains why my meter is different from yours.
 
DeaneG said:
I read PG&E's website to say that E7 is no longer available. Wonder what's going on.

I'll have to think about E9A vs. E1 for my house with EV and PV solar setup. My PV output should be enough to knock me down to tier two in the summer except for the hottest weeks. I went with E9A for now - great winter rates.
Click to expand...


E7 has been gone for a long time, it was too good for consumers:)
 
EVDRIVER said:
DeaneG said:
I read PG&E's website to say that E7 is no longer available. Wonder what's going on.

I'll have to think about E9A vs. E1 for my house with EV and PV solar setup. My PV output should be enough to knock me down to tier two in the summer except for the hottest weeks. I went with E9A for now - great winter rates.
Click to expand...


E7 has been gone for a long time, it was too good for consumers:)
Click to expand...

There were 3 people from PG&E and he handed the printout for E7...I even asked...don't you mean E6, and he said no E7....hopefully it wasn't a tease. Still waiting on a callback....was suppose to be today, but since it's almost midnight, I guess it won't be until next week :roll: .
 
I just got my first bill for TOU metering (E9A). Much of it is Greek to me. It only includes the period 11/15/-11/19/2010 and only includes the electric. Our regular bill for gas and electric for November went to 11/19 but the electric on that stopped at 11/15. So I assume I have half a day on 11/15 plus another 4 days for 4.5 days total. The charge is $6.60. I do not have an EV yet and have no solar. This is just standard electric usage for the house. I was surprised to see I went into tier 3 slightly, since we don't usually, but then right after the meter was put in we had a nasty cold snap so the furnace ran a lot. It's a gas furnace but the electric fan motor is a large one. We have a 4-BR ranch-style house & just two of us unless the our kids visit.

The bill is 8 sheets, most of them two-sided. If someone's interested I'll post images of some, but here's a text summary, with their headings in caps:
p. 1 BILLING SUMMARY, TOTAL OF OAS (whatever that is) - shows taxes, special fees.
p. 2 Meter read info - 3 lines (peak=0) Part peak=48 Off-peak=18 (kwh) total 66
also shows usage summary by tier/rate T1Part=36.655 T2part=10.997 T3Part=.348, etc.
p. 3 RATE APPLICATION only 2 useful lines Baseline=50.4 Meter charge=$0.88 (22 cents a day)
pp 4-5 have massive tables full of acronyms I don't understand like DWR, OCF, 1DR, Tier 3 non-LIRA, etc. with 15 columns mostly filled with numbers. I think there are 27 lines for every day (would be only 18 if I didn't go into tier 3, I think).
p. 6 TRANSMISSION REVENUE BALANCING, etc., ENERGY COMMISSION TAX, UTILITY USER TAX CALCULATION
p. 7 one line showing the Utility user tax. Why separate lines for the calculation and then the tax on the next page I don't know, especially since there is plenty of blank space on most pages to combine a lot of this stuff.
p. 8 UNBUNDLED RATE COMPONENTS More gibberish in a small table. Mostly blank.
p. 9 USAGE HISTORY one line showing 48 kwh part peak 18 off peak total 66. (both of which are set forth several places earlier). 90% of page is blank.
p. 10 (back of 9) blank
p. ? (no number) page with nothing but my address and account number - the part that shows through the window envelope.

Maybe for those of you with solar you are used to this but I found it daunting, redundant, and incredibly wasteful. I'm killing more trees by buying an electric car than I'm saving by having no exhaust. These are all heavy 8.5x11" sheets, too, not the smaller pages in the regular PG&E bill. The funniest part: on p. 1 at the bottom it says "QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS BILL CAN BE DIRECTED TO: UNASSIGNED". We have automatic pay to PG&E for our bill, at least up to now, and our regular bill says our account has been accessed to pay the bill. This one does not, and it does not enclose a return envelope or tear off stub to return, so we don't know if we are supposed to pay this bill (and it does say it is a bill) or just wait for them to debit our account. I think PG&E's E9 is not ready for prime time.
 
I know the feeling. That's the sort of paper stack I started getting four years ago when I went to E6. Fortunately they started trimming it down, and now I get two (8 1/2 x 11) pages each month, except for the "true-up" month when I get three. Hopefully they will do the same thing for E9 before long (and no true-up needed for you).

In case you're interested, I, too, get one unnumbered sheet with nothing but name and address, and the statement (not really a bill) still comes in a large (about 9 x 12) envelope with a window. The numbered sheet has an annual true-up history on one side, shown in tabular and graph form. The other side has: (1) meter information, broken out by peak, part, and off; (2) baseline information; (3) a box showing total current month's billed amount, with a paragraph that breaks it down; and (4) a box showing current month's energy charge or credit and cumulative charge or credit within the billing year.

Curiously there is not even a table that breaks down the amounts by tier, and there certainly is nothing that addresses unbundling, except a bit in the box that shows the (rather small) billed amount.

In our case the current month's billed amount does show up as a charge on our regular PG&E bill. I expect yours will, too. (The annual true-up amount for us also shows up there.)

As for going up into tier 3, that should be independent of whether you are on E1 or E9. The rate schedule doesn't change your baseline amounts, and the tiers are determined strictly by percentage of baseline, calculated on total usage regardless of peak/part/off split. Now, the price you pay in each tier, that is quite another matter, but I'm sure you know all about that.
 
Just found this thread via google, very informative. I'm actually purchasing a Chevy Volt, please don't kick me out of your forum though. :) I am trying to figure out if I should switch to E9A (from the standard rate plan, E1 I guess that's called?). I don't have solar. I have everything I need to create a spreadsheet and do the calculations, but I am unsure of the the following:

Does each time period (peak/partPeak/offPeak) have it's own baseline allowance, or is there a single baseline that is somehow split across the time periods? I found this spreadsheet at PGE website which shows the baseline allowances: http://www.pge.com/nots/rates/tariffs/ResElecBaselineCurrent.xls. I am in territory Q which has 12.6 KwH per day allowance in winter on the basic electric plan. Is there an equivalent spreadsheet for E9?

EDIT: I found this pdf at PGE website (http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-9.pdf), which shows just a single baseline for E9 (it is just the same 12.6 KwH as E1 for winter). Still unsure how to figure out how to predict costs based on known hourly usage, I'm hoping I don't need to accumulate total chronological usage across time periods to determine when each tier is crossed? That would get complicated.

Thanks for any info,
Fred
 
frede said:
Does each time period (peak/partPeak/offPeak) have it's own baseline allowance, or is there a single baseline that is somehow split across the time periods? I found this spreadsheet at PGE website which shows the baseline allowances: http://www.pge.com/nots/rates/tariffs/ResElecBaselineCurrent.xls....I'm hoping I don't need to accumulate total chronological usage across time periods to determine when each tier is crossed? That would get complicated
Click to expand...
Baseline should be based on total usage for the billing period, not per day, I thought (12.6 x # of days for region X), and I think that's what they are doing. The bill definitely shows 6 usage readings with separate amounts for tiers 1-3, 3 for Part peak and 3 for off peak. They appear to take total usage, figure out how much is over baseline, then allocate that pro rata to the two TOU groups. So once they read the meter and determine that 18/66 (~27%) of my usage was off peak and the rest part peak, they just apply that percentage to each tier. 27% of tier 1 usage is off peak, 27% of tier 2 usage is off peak, etc. So you don't have to measure baseline usage across time periods.
 
Rat said:
frede said:
So once they read the meter and determine that 18/66 (~27%) of my usage was off peak and the rest part peak, they just apply that percentage to each tier. 27% of tier 1 usage is off peak, 27% of tier 2 usage is off peak, etc. So you don't have to measure baseline usage across time periods.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yup, exactly as Rat said.
 
planet4ever said:
Rat said:
frede said:
So once they read the meter and determine that 18/66 (~27%) of my usage was off peak and the rest part peak, they just apply that percentage to each tier. 27% of tier 1 usage is off peak, 27% of tier 2 usage is off peak, etc. So you don't have to measure baseline usage across time periods.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yup, exactly as Rat said.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarifying, that makes sense.
 
garygid said:
Fred,
You are welcome here, and we are happy that you have chosen to participate.
When will you get your Volt?
Merry Christmas
Click to expand...
Thanks for not kicking me out! :) My Volt is in transit by rail from Michigan. I've heard that it might be here (SF Bay Area) by tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath. There is a very active thread over at gm-volt.com forums about people tracking their Volts, and the rail shipments seem to be moving at a snail's pace. GM shipped the first few Volts by truck so there are some in CA that have already received their Volts (and their tax break), so you might see one on the road.
 
frede said:
garygid said:
Fred,
You are welcome here, and we are happy that you have chosen to participate.
When will you get your Volt?
Merry Christmas
Click to expand...
Thanks for not kicking me out! :) My Volt is in transit by rail from Michigan. I've heard that it might be here (SF Bay Area) by tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath. There is a very active thread over at gm-volt.com forums about people tracking their Volts, and the rail shipments seem to be moving at a snail's pace. GM shipped the first few Volts by truck so there are some in CA that have already received their Volts (and their tax break), so you might see one on the road.
Click to expand...

Fred,
Congrats on the upcoming delivery of your Volt! My LEAF should be here by Jan 5. I'm in the camp of the more EV/Plug-ins the better! Can I ask if you were able to get your Volt at or close to MSRP?

Thanks!
 
planet4ever said:
Rat said:
frede said:
So once they read the meter and determine that 18/66 (~27%) of my usage was off peak and the rest part peak, they just apply that percentage to each tier. 27% of tier 1 usage is off peak, 27% of tier 2 usage is off peak, etc. So you don't have to measure baseline usage across time periods.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yup, exactly as Rat said.
Click to expand...
I sat down to create a spreadsheet to compare E1, E6 and E9a. I have a question regarding how the percentage usage for peak, part-peak and off-peak are calculated.

For simplicity, let's talk about winter with only part-peak and off-peak. If my part-peak usage for the month is 10 kWh and off-peak uage is 20 kWh, then my usage percentage would be easy to compute:

Part-peak 33%
Off-peak 67%

We get 33% from taking 10/(10+20) = 33%.

What about if my part-peak usage is -5 kWh (net generation from solar PV) and off-peak usage is the same 20 kWh? How would the percentages be computed?

Would it be the following?

Part-peak = 5/25 = 20%
Off-peak = 20/25 = 80%

I am guessing that the denominator would be abs(-5) + abs(20) = 25 since if I do not take the absolute value, I would end up with a denominator which is zero if there generation = consumption.

Can anyone please comment?
 
No, no. Not at all. If your total usage is less than your baseline then all of your usage, positive or negative, is tier 1. You don't want to use absolute values for anything. In this case just multiply the actual kWh for each period by the tier 1 rate for that period. The answer, positive or negative, is what you are charged or credited.

Actually, now that I think about it, my spreadsheet does the same thing with multiple tiers. What I really compute is the percentage of total usage that falls into each tier, and then, within each period (peak/part/off) multiply the signed kWh for that period by all of those percentages and add them together to give the total charge or credit for each period.

I use IF(..;..;..) logic to calculate the percentages, so I would not end up dividing by zero even if my total usage was zero (which it never has been). For example, my formulas for the tier 1 and tier 2 fraction cells are, in effect:
Tier 1 fraction: IF(net<baseline;1;baseline/net)
Tier 2 fraction: IF(net<baseline;0;MIN(net-baseline;0.3*baseline)/net)
 
planet4ever said:
No, no. Not at all. If your total usage is less than your baseline then all of your usage, positive or negative, is tier 1. You don't want to use absolute values for anything. In this case just multiply the actual kWh for each period by the tier 1 rate for that period. The answer, positive or negative, is what you are charged or credited.

Actually, now that I think about it, my spreadsheet does the same thing with multiple tiers. What I really compute is the percentage of total usage that falls into each tier, and then, within each period (peak/part/off) multiply the signed kWh for that period by all of those percentages and add them together to give the total charge or credit for each period.

I use IF(..;..;..) logic to calculate the percentages, so I would not end up dividing by zero even if my total usage was zero (which it never has been). For example, my formulas for the tier 1 and tier 2 fraction cells are, in effect:
Tier 1 fraction: IF(net<baseline;1;baseline/net)
Tier 2 fraction: IF(net<baseline;0;MIN(net-baseline;0.3*baseline)/net)
Click to expand...
Thanks. I think I have got it figured out now.

After I put in my (expected) consumption and Solar EV generation data, here's my cost summary (30 days):
Code: 
                     E1      E6     E9a
Winter without EV  $28.45  $30.70  $25.04
				
Winter with EV     $66.35  $61.05  $43.52
Summer with EV     $43.07  $22.48  $35.18
Mean (with EV)     $54.71  $41.77  $39.35
I have included a 30-day meter charge of $7.59 for E6 and $6.56 for E9a.

When I get my Leaf, E9a is better in winter while E6 is better in summer. I think I should move to E6 or E9a. I will have to eat my words from several post earlier in which I said I will stick to E1.
 
Good news, PG&E has a new rate analysis tool that they will run for you over the phone that will put in what type of EV you have, number of miles you estimate to drive per year and it will compare your current rate with E9a or E9b to see which would be best given your usage history. I found out the my solar company was wrong for keeping me on E1, my cost will actually drop an average of $10 month from my E1 rate (without the car) to the E9a rate (with the car). Don't call the main number but their 877-743-7782 (new construction) number if you want them to do the same for you. They are also going to run an analysis using the E6 rate, but that takes 7-10 business days, so I'll see if that is actually better before I switch.
 

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