SDGE EV meter removal

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ybitz

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 1, 2010
Messages
87
Location
San Diego, CA
I have two electric meter, one for the house (DR-Residential plan) and one for the Leaf (EVTOU). I just recently got solar, and from what I gather, with solar and net metering, it's more advantageous for the house and the ev charging to be on the same meter. I called SDGE describing what I want, but the reps seem puzzled. They said they could remove the EVTOU meter, but my charger (EVSE) that's fed off of that meter will no longer work. I was thinking that the meter could be deactivated/removed and the EV charging would just be fed off the main meter without any changes to wiring. Is that not possible? I figured there must be plenty of folks here that have done just that.
 
If you talk to the right person at SDGE ( Randy Schimka), the second Meter could be left in place as a research meter without charging you a monthly fee. But the main meter is required to be on TOU now if you go solar and NET metering.

I was in the same situation last year in December. There are not many of Us with the two meter set up, one sub meter for EV w/TOU and one meter for home with straight two tiers (used to be three or four tiers.). I was told by the Solar installer that if I kept both meters I would be charge a separate monthly fee so better to remove the separate EV meter, so that is what happened. Later I found that I might have been able to keep it as a SDGE Research meter without the monthly fee.

But I am now living with only one home Meter, with Solar and battery backup and loving it. Particularly enjoy being able to see the monitoring/solar production and electric use display.
 
Hi ybitz,
lkkms2 is correct. Your setup was from the Ecotality / Blink / LEAF experimental rate project from a few years ago...

It is correct that if you're adding solar, you mostly likely would want all of your generation and consumption to go through a single meter for maximum flexibility, and after summer 2017 your new solar system would be considered a Net Energy Metering 2 installation (which requires that you be on a TOU rate). The natural choices for that rate would be EV-TOU2 or EV-TOU5, because they don't have any tiers (which is beneficial for EV drivers charging their cars).

Which rate would be best for you?

It depends on how much energy you're going to be buying from the utility on an annual basis after your solar is installed. If the answer is "not much" because you will be generating what you consume, then EV-TOU2 is probably the best rate. No monthly fee, and a $10 minimum monthly bill if you actually didn't buy any energy from the grid. If your answer to how much energy you'll be buying is "A decent amount because my consumption is higher than my generation", then EV-TOU5 would probably be better. It has a $16 monthly fee, and then you can buy super off-peak energy for a little over 9 cents per kWh.

When you decide which rate you want to be on, I can work with you to have your current second meter turned into what we would call a "load research meter" or a "non-billing meter". It would remain in its position, the charger would still work, and there would be no monthly bill that would come from the second meter.

Your main house meter would be on the TOU rate that you choose, and everything would work like it should.

If you'd like me to help, please send me a private message with your contact information, account number, the meter numbers from your two meters, and what rate you'd like your main meter to be on. I can send a request to the right group to get the ball rolling. It may take a billing cycle or two to get everything changed.
 
^^ Very informative.
Can a storage battery be added ?
If so, what restrictions are placed on its use in terms of energy flow(s) (other than arbitrage) ?
Would any extra fees or schedules apply ?

I was thinking about this the other day when a troll was was whining about SDG&E rates. A well balanced system works out to as low as 11.3 cents a kWh before financing if SDG&E does not get in the way.
 
Sagebrush,
It's no problem to add a storage battery. I don't have one yet, but am thinking about it.

The thing that many people may not realize is that the NEM rules in California are based on renewable energy being the source. It gets a little more complicated with batteries...You're not supposed to export non-renewable energy back to the grid and get paid for it...

Here's a web page that explains how it works here in San Diego...

https://www.sdge.com/residential/solar/solar-batteries-and-energy-storage
 
smkettner said:
Your solar installer should be able to sort this out or at least connect the evse to the main house meter.

My installer (SolarMax) wouldn't help; they said from the onset they don't handle that. Other solar contractors I talked to during the quoting process said the same. Apparently having two meters is different/weird enough that they don't want to deal with it.
 
Randy said:
If you'd like me to help, please send me a private message with your contact information, account number, the meter numbers from your two meters, and what rate you'd like your main meter to be on. I can send a request to the right group to get the ball rolling. It may take a billing cycle or two to get everything changed.

Thanks Randy! Will follow up with you via PM for sure. I was dreading having to call back to SDGE and dealing with reps that don't know how to handle this.

EDIT: someone from SDGE just called me and he was actually super knowledgeable (I didn't catch his name...so maybe it Randy?). Anyway, he was able to get the ball-rolling on changing the ev meter to a research meter, and I was going to stay on DR-SES rate and re-evaluate later on plans.
 
I had the same scenario (submeter from Ecotality program, added solar). I simply bought a remanufactured meter from Hialeah meter and plugged it into the empty meter socket myself. Problem solved. I did it before the solar contractor did their work. It's logged over 35MWh of EV charging over the last 7 years.

https://www.hialeahmeter.com/eawame.html

ez-read-3.jpg
 
Randy said:
The natural choices for that rate would be EV-TOU2 or EV-TOU5, because they don't have any tiers (which is beneficial for EV drivers charging their cars).
Randy...the solar is sized about 120% of my yearly usage, so it sounds like EV-TOU2 is better for me than EV-TOU5. However, I don't quite understand how "tiers" work with respect to solar+net-metering. I read that the higher tier kicks in when you're over 130% of the baseline. Is that net consumption for the month? Those with solar should be well below the baseline right?

Does the TOU-DR1 make more sense than EV-TOU2? For the summer pricing, TOU-DR1's super off-peak is 19 cents vs EV-TOU2's 25 cents, and On-Peak is 46 cents vs 54 cents.
 
Randy said:
Sagebrush,
It's no problem to add a storage battery. I don't have one yet, but am thinking about it.

The thing that many people may not realize is that the NEM rules in California are based on renewable energy being the source. It gets a little more complicated with batteries...You're not supposed to export non-renewable energy back to the grid and get paid for it...

Here's a web page that explains how it works here in San Diego...

https://www.sdge.com/residential/solar/solar-batteries-and-energy-storage
The CA stuff would not be and issue for Sagebrush as he lives in another state.

A good place to start to get information about NEM rules, Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), State and Local Energy Incentives, and California's SGIP Program:

https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/learn/incentives
 
ybitz said:
smkettner said:
Your solar installer should be able to sort this out or at least connect the evse to the main house meter.

My installer (SolarMax) wouldn't help; they said from the onset they don't handle that. Other solar contractors I talked to during the quoting process said the same. Apparently having two meters is different/weird enough that they don't want to deal with it.
I find it hard to believe a solar installer will not connect an evse.
Any electrician will do it. Yes SDGE would need to come and collect their meter.
Solar City did my install and offered to take care of everything and anything inside to home too.
 
@iplug is right -- CA does not personally affect me, although the policies utilities like SDG&E force on consumers certainly may arrive some day.

Regarding SDG&E my thought was the following:

Battery to cover evening and early morning use. It gets cycled up to twice a day: once from PV during the day for evening use, and once at night from the grid for early AM use.
PV to cover sunlight hours and to charge the battery for evening consumption
Nightime grid use for the battery charging and and EV charging
 
Sorry for contributing to thread drift a bit here, but would also like some day to add home batteries with cycling use in a similar fashion.

At the moment, home batteries still seem to be relatively high hanging fruit, mostly due to initial capital/install cost and dismal utility reimbursement rates beyond net zero metering. Utilities will always be able to do this substantially cheaper than a home resident, though may not pass that savings on to the customer. Shocking, right? :D

Even if they did, there is still a potential value to being able to decouple from the grid, such as during natural disasters when power could be out for hours to days to weeks. Right now, all of our solar is useless in a power outage as it has auto shut-off to protect line workers on the grid.

There could also be a bit of TOU arbitrage fun in the future if/when advanced TOU plans and metering sufficiently advance to allow electricity to be bought and sold by the second.
 
ybitz said:
doesn't work in CA per Randy, right, since you can't get paid for exporting to the grid from battery?
Not legally. But even if one found a way to still do this, it's a pretty bad idea (economically). PG&E for example, California's largest utility, only pays to the resident ~$0.02-0.03/kWh for electricity net generation.
 
ybitz said:
iPlug said:
...There could also be a bit of TOU arbitrage fun in the future...

doesn't work in CA per Randy, right, since you can't get paid for exporting to the grid from battery?
The utility does not want to buy its own dogfood back at a higher rate than it charged, but nothing prevents you from being credited peak rates for PV generation, and then using that credit for non-peak kWh at a lower rate.
 
iPlug said:
ybitz said:
doesn't work in CA per Randy, right, since you can't get paid for exporting to the grid from battery?
Not legally. But even if one found a way to still do this, it's a pretty bad idea (economically). PG&E for example, California's largest utility, only pays to the resident ~$0.02-0.03/kWh for electricity net generation.
The idea would be to send e.g. a kWh of PV generation to the grid during peak and then collect ~ 2 or 3 kWh at night from the grid
 
SageBrush said:
The idea would be to send e.g. a kWh of PV generation to the grid during peak and then collect ~ 2 or 3 kWh at night from the grid
Would imagine on a hot summer day, after the sun went down, residential AC units still running hard, the utility would likely be interested to buy residential battery stored electricity above wholesale rates, maybe at something like $0.10-20/kWh (or whatever spot price is at the moment) then turn around and sell it to ones neighbor at $0.467/kWh (current max rate on my plan). :lol:
 
iPlug said:
ybitz said:
doesn't work in CA per Randy, right, since you can't get paid for exporting to the grid from battery?
Not legally. But even if one found a way to still do this, it's a pretty bad idea (economically). PG&E for example, California's largest utility, only pays to the resident ~$0.02-0.03/kWh for electricity net generation.

iPlug,
I can't speak for PG&E, but down here in San Diego you get full retail pricing credit for exported solar energy, based on the pricing plan you're on and at the time of export (if you're on a TOU rate). This policy is good up to the point where your annual generation equals your annual consumption. If you generate above that amount, during your annual true-up you will get the wholesale energy price for all energy ABOVE your annual consumption. So for the bulk of most people's generation, you're getting full retail pricing credit.
 
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