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Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts? Generally seems like not much difference, however the rub with me is that they reset the NEM period for solar customers and because I usually rack up additional credits during Spring for the end of my true-up in May that erase my charges I'd have to pay SCE a couple hundred based on the early Feb 1 transition rate. Not cool. I think I'm opting out.
 
Valdemar said:
Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts? Generally seems like not much difference, however the rub with me is that they reset the NEM period for solar customers and because I usually rack up additional credits during Spring for the end of my true-up in May that erase my charges I'd have to pay SCE a couple hundred based on the early Feb 1 transition rate. Not cool. I think I'm opting out.

Not familiar. Do you have any sources of information? Is this something that's being forced on us unless we opt out?
 
Valdemar said:
Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts?

Service in our city is set to auto-enroll. Upside is there are 3 pricing options, with a "Green Power" option that buys 100% renewable. Attractive to me as Solar is prohibitively expensive, with structural and shading issues on our house.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-public-energy-programs-20170430-story.html

Downside is the unknowable;

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-southern-california-edison-125-million-20181213-story.html

I'm going with it. <shrug>
 
mwalsh said:
Valdemar said:
Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts? Generally seems like not much difference, however the rub with me is that they reset the NEM period for Solar customers and because I usually rack up additional credits during Spring for the end of my true-up in May that erase my charges I'd have to pay SCE a couple hundred based on the early Feb 1 transition rate. Not cool. I think I'm opting out.

Not familiar. Do you have any sources of information? Is this something that's being forced on us unless we opt out?

This may be depending on where you are. Clean Power Alliance is one of the "Community Choice Aggregators" it seems. Yes, it is being forced on unless opt out and I just got the first notification letter only 3 days before they switched me!

https://www.sce.com/partners/partnerships/community-choice-aggregation/-Implementation-and-Operation-

KeiJidosha said:
Valdemar said:
Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts?

<span>Service in our city is set to auto-enroll. Upside is there are 3 pricing options, with a "Green Power" option that buys 100% renewable. Attractive to me as Solar is prohibitively expensive, with structural and shading issues on our house.</span>

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-public-energy-programs-20170430-story.html

Downside is the unknowable;

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-southern-california-edison-125-million-20181213-story.html

I'm going with it. <shrug>

I'm close to you on the South side of the hills and same applies here... If we didn't have solar or the true up date change wouldn't end up costing me I'd probably went with it. Solar works pretty well for us with SCE however, no real reason for the switch-over and it can be done later too. I called this morning and opted out, they said the true-up date shouldn't change, we'll see.
 
I'm super mad as despite me opting out of this stupid program my NEM period has been reset and I now owe money to SCE. Hopefully someone will class-action their asses for this.
 
Well, turns out my NEM date will be restored and all charges will be reverted. Wish I spoke with the right person when I called first time. Sigh. On a related subject, seems the good days for solar are gone, current SCE TOU schedule is structured very anti solar with "off peak" ending at 4-5 pm, which makes me happy I'm still grandfathered on TOU-D-A, but unclear how long that will last.

https://pages.email.sce.com/TOU/en/

Edit: actually it is known how long it will last, 5 years from the date permission to operate was signed but no later than 7/31/22, for me it will be May next year. Too soon.
 
Valdemar said:
Well, turns out my NEM date will be restored and all charges will be reverted. Wish I spoke with the right person when I called first time. ...
I think the CCA transition is adding some (a lot?) of confusion at SCE, as they are still responsible for billing. My billing converted to "paperless" over the summer, not at my request. Then my January bill never arrived, and I had two undelivered invoices with penalties in February when I checked on-line.

I would recommend people check their SCE billing carefully, whether they move to the CCA or not.
 
Reading on the SCE web site this week to try to learn more about the changes SCE has implemented since March 1 has passed.

1) All TOU rates except the 4-9 pm and 5-8 pm ones have been eliminated for new enrollments or transfers between and they are now listed as “Grandfathered”
But don’t be too relieved if you’re in one of the grandfathered plans. The site clearly states that most currently in grandfathered TOU plans will only be grandfathered until late 2020 (other research indicates this date is October 2020). The only exceptions are customers whose solar systems went live recently (prior to March 1) and they’ll have 5 year grandfathering from the live date of their system.
So most of us with older solar systems will only be grandfathered until Oct 2020.
This includes the two-meter TOU-EV plan, so if you shelled out extra shekels for a second meter, sorry, your rate plan will be going away as early as next October.

2) The only rate plans that currently show on the rate comparison tool are the Domestic Tiered and the TOU 4-9 and 5-8 plans. But there’s also a new TOU PRIME plan that doesn’t yet show on the comparison tool (more on this in a minute)
I’m pretty sure that the Domestic Tiered plan will be the next to go, as SCE has said that they’ll be moving all customers into TOU plans soon.

3) The TOU 4-9 and 5-8 plans are disastrous for EV owners with solar because the lowest rates, 22 to 23 cents in Summer, 17 cents in winter are much higher than the 13 cents we currently pay for car charging under TOU-A for example, AND the 17 cent lowest winter rate is only during the daytime hours of 8am to 4pm, while many are at work and can’t charge their cars.
Meanwhile the Peak rates occur beginning at 4 or 5 pm, when our solar is making little to no power. And the Peak rates are lower than our old plans’, so what little solar credit we can glean will be at low rates, so our billing credit banks will be much lower to offset charging costs.
West facing solar arrays will fare a bit better under these plans than south facing arrays because there is still some summer solar available after 4 pm, especially facing west.

4) A new TOU rate plan (TOU-D-PRIME) designed exclusively for EV drivers is now available to all customers, but non-EV drivers have only until April 30, 2019 to switch to it.
For the rest of us EV drivers, apparently this TOU PRIME rate will be available to us after our grandfathering ends, or even right away, if we choose.
Fascinatingly, this PRIME plan has rates of 13 cents all day, except higher rates between 4 and 9 pm. (BUT it does carry a daily basic charge of 40 cents, which is about $12/month.)

This rate plan seems to be the best for the future for many of us because we can charge our cars at any time except 4-9 pm and we’ll only incur 13 cents/kWh, which is what many of us pay for charging at night right now. AND we could move a lot of our heavy power use into any hours of the day except 4-9 pm and pay the same 13 cents for that usage, which is much lower than we pay off-Peak right now.

For my family, we would probably do as much air conditioning and cooking as possible during the daytime hours before 4 pm, really chill the house in summer before 4 and then try to use little to no AC or cooking or laundry or dishwashing between 4 and 9 pm. Our solar generation would cover much of this daytime usage, and we’d probably still charge the EVs overnight, or during the day if our other usage and our work schedules permit.
Smart EVSEs that interact with our solar arrays would help us to keep daytime car charging within our solar generation profile, so we could charge from the sun and not dip into the 13 cent grid power if we don’t want to.

TRUE, we wouldn’t any longer get the benefit of large solar credits to offset our charging costs, but this PRIME plan offers by far the lowest rates for charging and any other power use during most of the hours in the day once our current grandfathering expires.

I will say that starting in 18 months or so, gone will be the days of zero electric bills at settle-up except for those with huge solar arrays and probably storage batteries.

Thoughts?
 
I agree the best of times will soon be behind us. My system has fully recovered the install cost so even if the return is lower the solar will still help.

I have been super chilling the house during the hottest times during the super off peak hours. This probably used far more power than otherwise needed but it comes at the lowest cost. Often both my air units would run non stop from 2 am to 6 am so that I could coast through the day to make the 8 pm cut. These new rates will make this a bit easier to chill the house during the day and probably even make 10 pm to begin cooling in earnest to get a good night sleep.

Will be easy to move some appliance use to daylight hours for lower rates. I mostly charge the car at work at no cost to me.

The writing has been on the wall for some time as more utility energy is made with solar power during the day at a lower cost. Expensive fossil fuels now focus on carrying the grid into the evening and through the night.

The TOU switch may also make a home battery a bit more lucrative to save solar production to power into the evenings. Selling low and buying high will get old fairly quick.

Currently I only produce 50% of my energy to almost zero out my annual bill. Times are changing.
 
I agree with the analysis. This will make solar a more difficult sell I think but overall this is a move in the right direction as it will hopefully make battery storage more popular which will help to stabilize the grid. I'm one of those with an EV meter, now decommissioned since we got solar. Overall it paid for itself before we got solar so no regrets, but there is now little hope it might be useful in any way in the future. My solar offset is 70-80% but the bills are 0 due to credits, not counting non-avoidable charges.

All in all this may work out acceptably as expect my Leaf to end its useful life in a year or 2 which will coincide with the TOU-D-A grandfathering expiration. By that time our solar array will pay for itself and I will need to ponder if getting another EV makes sense under the new TOU realities. The absence of an EV will save about 4000kWh a year which should then help to keep the bills low. Yes, long term solar ROI will suffer but we all knew this day would come.
 
Boomer23 said:
But don’t be too relieved if you’re in one of the grandfathered plans. The site clearly states that most currently in grandfathered TOU plans will only be grandfathered until late 2020 (other research indicates this date is October 2020). The only exceptions are customers whose solar systems went live recently (prior to March 1) and they’ll have 5 year grandfathering from the live date of their system.
So most of us with older solar systems will only be grandfathered until Oct 2020.

My understanding is that all grandfathered rates will expire on 7/31/2022 or sooner depending on the permission to operate date. This doesn't give full 5 years for systems that went live after 8/1/2017. Also it seems those w/out solar but who were already on legacy TOU before 3/1/2019 might have until Q4 2020 to install new solar systems and remain grandfathered until 7/31/2022, if they don't install solar by Q4 2020 they will be transitioned to the new TOU rates at that time.

https://youtu.be/81BVsLEoNv8?t=771
https://www.energytoolbase.com/newsroom/blog/sces-final-decision-rates-pt-1-residential-rate-changes
 
I just did some quick calculations using TOU-PRIME. This rate plan has such simple details that it makes it pretty easy to estimate your yearly cost if you have your annual usage and your annual solar generation. That’s where the good news ends, though. My calculations yielded annual costs for our household of between $1300 and $1600.

Since the rate plan charges 13 cents/kWh except between 4 pm to 9 pm, I just subtracted my solar output from my total usage and multiplied the remainder by 13 cents. Then, assuming that I won’t be able to keep my 4pm to 9 pm usage to zero, I assumed a usage of 2 kW per hour during those 5 hours per day. I multiplied 2 kWh times 5 hours times 365 days, and then I added the $12/mo monthly charge. I realized that I need to subtract that 10 kWh per day from my total usage in the first part.

We might make a few dollars back from credits for solar generated after 4 pm during summers, but I don’t expect that to amount to much.

Anyway, I’m not thrilled with the results I’m getting, even with this PRIME plan. At least this’ll give me some information to go forward with in deciding whether to get home battery storage.

EDIT: I did a few further calculations using my data from 2016, 2017 and 2018 using the PRIME rates, and things looked better. We had a very heavy usage year in 2018, and my estimate for that year came up with $1,000 cost for the year using PRIME as long as we keep our AC use low during the 4-9 Peak hours (we might very well not be able to do that). I also noticed that we do generate some energy after 4 pm during Peak hours, and that might earn us some valuable credits.
Looking at other years when we used less power and less AC, my estimates have us closer to $500 per year. That’s not terrible for running a busy household with two EVs. But it’s a big change from paying basically nothing for the past 12 years.
 
I'm not convinced that the PRIME plan is better for solar due to off-peak being much lower than on-peak compared to other plans, also there is no baseline credit and higher daily basic charge.
 
You may well be correct.

Still, those other plans have no good rates for car charging.

At least we have a year or so to do some detailed analysis and figure which is best for solar and EV both.
 
When the time comes I will ask SCE if they will allow me to have a different rate assigned to my EV meter aggregated with the main meter on NEM terms, that way I could maybe benefit from lower rates at night for EV charging combined with solar. I doubt they will, but it was an option with the legacy TOU rates.
 
Actually I think the abundance low cost solar energy during the day will help business and the economy. While this does not always help home solar generators... the switch will be for the best. With any luck wind, hydro and batteries will supply power overnight even if it comes at a higher cost.

I have an idea the utilities that have fought against home solar will soon realize they can put the expansion of home solar out of business with large utility scale solar producing power at a lower cost.
 
Valdemar said:
Anyone here being transitioned to the Clean Power Alliance for energy source? Thoughts? Generally seems like not much difference, however the rub with me is that they reset the NEM period for solar customers and because I usually rack up additional credits during Spring for the end of my true-up in May that erase my charges I'd have to pay SCE a couple hundred based on the early Feb 1 transition rate. Not cool. I think I'm opting out.
So here is a data point. This is my first bill from SCE where Clean Power Alliance, our new Community Choice Aggregation (CCA ), is the energy provider. SCE still does the Delivery and Billing. I chose the 100% renewable “Green Energy” plan.

https://cleanpoweralliance.org/rate-options/

I used 638 kWh over 32 days. 63% Super Off-Peak (for the car), 29% Off-Peak and 8% Peak (everything else).

CPA “Generation” charges totaled $28.83 and SCE “Delivery” charges totaled $82.64.

Generation costs averaged 4.5¢ /kWh and Delivery cost averaged 13¢ /kWh.

Apparently, Manufacturing power is cheap. It's the Shipping costs that are expensive :?
 
You made the environmentally responsible choice given that solar isn’t a good option for you, but Uncle Edison sure makes sure he gets his cut, right?

By the way, I miss seeing you on FB and bumping into you at meetups and focus groups. Hope all is still fantastic with you.

I keep getting aced out of focus groups lately. I’m thinking the big 70 in the Age field on the screening form is a big factor. Grrr. Or sometimes they tell me they have enough males and they’re looking for females. I try to speak in a higher register, but it never works. :D
 
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