PG&E best rate plan for folks with Solar Systems

I am not getting any definitive answers to this question hence this thread. I have seen on Tesla boars that many were using E-9 tiered plan, but it was replaced by the EV-A and EV-B plans, which are essentially time of use plans. They would have been great but I work from home and in summers the AC runs full time when it is hot. I have a 4.5kW solar system which generate 15kWH of electricity on average and am signed up for the Basic Tiered plan. As I work from home didn't see the value in moving to any other plan.

Appreciate suggestions on what people are signing up for, especially ones with Solar.

Thanks

You really need to analyze your specific usage pattern. Unfortunately, PG&E does not offer a tool to do this for NEM (solar) customers. You can try the iOS App "PG&E Toolkit", but it requires your PG&E login information. At the very least, change your password to something temporary, try it out, then change your password back. When it was first released I found that it was not that accurate, but it has probably been improved. I also developed an Excel spreadsheet that I used to analyze my usage from data downloaded from PG&E in CSV format. It can be found on Google Drive here. There was a rate change on January 1, 2016 which is not entered in that spreadsheet. I will probably do that and create version 1.8b later this month.

Here is an example of a full year analysis I did on my home with that spreadsheet. However, I don't have A/C, so my daytime usage is probably very different than yours.



I changed to the EV rate in October 2015 because the second EV pushed me over so that I didn't have any negative dollar months in the summer of 2015 and the higher tiers on E-9A are more expensive in the winter than EV. Just November and December 2015 were $26 cheaper than E-9A.

miimura said:

You really need to analyze your specific usage pattern. Unfortunately, PG&E does not offer a tool to do this for NEM (solar) customers. You can try the iOS App "PG&E Toolkit", but it requires your PG&E login information. At the very least, change your password to something temporary, try it out, then change your password back. When it was first released I found that it was not that accurate, but it has probably been improved. I also developed an Excel spreadsheet that I used to analyze my usage from data downloaded from PG&E in CSV format. It can be found on Google Drive here. There was a rate change on January 1, 2016 which is not entered in that spreadsheet. I will probably do that and create version 1.8b later this month.

Here is an example of a full year analysis I did on my home with that spreadsheet. However, I don't have A/C, so my daytime usage is probably very different than yours.

I changed to the EV rate in October 2015 because the second EV pushed me over so that I didn't have any negative dollar months in the summer of 2015 and the higher tiers on E-9A are more expensive in the winter than EV. Just November and December 2015 were $26 cheaper than E-9A.

Click to expand...

Thanks for creating the spreadsheet, I will run my numbers to see what works for me. What rate plan were you on before EV?

jeep said:

Thanks for creating the spreadsheet, I will run my numbers to see what works for me. What rate plan were you on before EV?

Click to expand...

E-9A, the original "experimental" EV rate plan with the whole house on one meter.

Thanks for sharing. I'm on E-6, didn't even know about E-9A. Will have to look in to this.

johnnylingo said:

Thanks for sharing. I'm on E-6, didn't even know about E-9A. Will have to look in to this.

Click to expand...

Sorry. E-9 has been closed to new customers since about July 2013. If you have an EV, the EV-A rate is the one to get. I only had E-9 in the spreadsheet because some of us were grandfathered in. I don't think there is any normal situation where E-6 is better than EV-A

This is such a difficult question as it really is a system by system house by house answer and not a one size fits all....

I was on E-6 and switched to EV-A ( when we bought our EV) and just yesterday switched back to E-6. I did after running the house for 4 months and doing some comparisons between to two options. Because we have a very large solar system the numbers just did not work for EV-A and with the data on hand we worked out we get a better return via net metering and E-6.

Everyone should also note that PG&E is getting rid of E-6 on February 29th 2016 and replacing it with two new flat rate plans which are not cheep if you have an EV so the window on this as a option is very small....

sfsoundguy said:

This is such a difficult question as it really is a system by system house by house answer and not a one size fits all....

I was on E-6 and switched to EV-A ( when we bought our EV) and just yesterday switched back to E-6. I did after running the house for 4 months and doing some comparisons between to two options. Because we have a very large solar system the numbers just did not work for EV-A and with the data on hand we worked out we get a better return via net metering and E-6.

Everyone should also note that PG&E is getting rid of E-6 on February 29th 2016 and replacing it with two new flat rate plans which are not cheep if you have an EV so the window on this as a option is very small....

Click to expand...

E6 was the best, I gladly switched to it before they closed the plan while keeping it running for whoever already was in the plan. E7 apparantly was even better but that one they shut down completely.

The EV-A and EV-B don't seem attractive to a solar household in comparison, even with two electric cars, and their TOU plans also seem to be designed to not give you full credit when the solar generates the most.

Skryll said:

sfsoundguy said:

This is such a difficult question as it really is a system by system house by house answer and not a one size fits all....

I was on E-6 and switched to EV-A ( when we bought our EV) and just yesterday switched back to E-6. I did after running the house for 4 months and doing some comparisons between to two options. Because we have a very large solar system the numbers just did not work for EV-A and with the data on hand we worked out we get a better return via net metering and E-6.

Everyone should also note that PG&E is getting rid of E-6 on February 29th 2016 and replacing it with two new flat rate plans which are not cheep if you have an EV so the window on this as a option is very small....

Click to expand...

E6 was the best, I gladly switched to it before they closed the plan while keeping it running for whoever already was in the plan. E7 apparantly was even better but that one they shut down completely.

The EV-A and EV-B don't seem attractive to a solar household in comparison, even with two electric cars, and their TOU plans also seem to be designed to not give you full credit when the solar generates the most.

Click to expand...

I disagree with this. The peak time periods actually do coincide with peak grid demand in California, so from a system perspective that is when the prices should be the highest. If you can charge your cars during the Off-peak period and don't use a lot of power in the late afternoon, EV is the best rate plan. I have done extensive analysis of my own usage and the only plan that was even close was E-9, but that's been closed for several years already and it was only cheaper when we had only one EV. Now that we have two, the EV rate is cheaper.

miimura said:

Skryll said:

E6 was the best, I gladly switched to it before they closed the plan while keeping it running for whoever already was in the plan. E7 apparantly was even better but that one they shut down completely.

The EV-A and EV-B don't seem attractive to a solar household in comparison, even with two electric cars, and their TOU plans also seem to be designed to not give you full credit when the solar generates the most.

Click to expand...

...
I disagree with this. The peak time periods actually do coincide with peak grid demand in California, so from a system perspective that is when the prices should be the highest. If you can charge your cars during the Off-peak period and don't use a lot of power in the late afternoon, EV is the best rate plan. I have done extensive analysis of my own usage and the only plan that was even close was E-9, but that's been closed for several years already and it was only cheaper when we had only one EV. Now that we have two, the EV rate is cheaper.

Click to expand...

I agree with you, I was wrong for all I can tell the rate difference is so high that despite the less favorable TOU timeslots, the EV-A is a lot better than the E6, assuming you charge your car late enough to be in the lowest rate. I am planning to switch from E6 to EV-A based on what I see on the PG&E toolkit app, hopefully accurate enough...