Warning! PG&E E-9 Massive Rate Increase

I just reviewed the January PG&E rate increase and I must say PG&E is really trying to screw EV owners that have elected to stay on Schedule E-9. This is the "Experimental" rate schedule that was developed to encourage customers to charge their Electric Vehicles Off Peak. This rate plan has been closed to new customers since Schedule EV was introduced. The tariff has stated that customers would eventually be kicked off this rate plan around this time. It looks like they are getting some resistance to kicking people off, so they just cranked up the rates to encourage people to leave. Let me tell you, it looks like it will work. If you don't have solar, don't even think about it. Call PG&E and change to Schedule EV immediately.

Here is the problem.



Let's look at Winter for a moment. You can see that they increased the Part Peak rates by about 1c/kWh across the board. No problem, they do that all the time. The problem is the Off-Peak rates. They increased the Tier 1 and Tier 2 rates by about 2c/kWh, but they increased the Tier 3, 4, 5 rates by 12c/kWh. They more than doubled Tier 3 from 11c/kWh to 22.7c/kWh. Summer is similar, Off-Peak was increased more than 10c/kWh in Tier 3, 4, 5.

I calculated my January usage on E-9A and EV and this was the result.



Since I have solar, I will be running a comparison of my full year 2014 usage at then-current rates and these new rates. I'm pretty sure I will be calling PG&E to change to Schedule EV.

ecarfan said:

I have never been on the "Experimental" rate schedule. I have been on the EV rate schedule for over a year.

Why do you not want to change to the EV schedule?

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I do now! During 2013 and 2014 E-9A was cheaper in my situation due to my solar system. Summer Off-Peak was 4.85c/kWh until August 2014, when it inched over 5c/kWh. The thing I'm upset about is the drastic change made to the rate plan without notice. Also, my billing cycle is in the middle of the month, so my January bill only had half of the impact of the new rate, so it was higher than expected, but not so alarming.

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rickgt said:

Received my MS in December, and EV plan started Jan 6th... Really recommend the EV rate plan. Jan bill was lower than my average pre-Tesla. YES!

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Yes, Schedule EV is a very good rate plan. If you are in a coastal area that does not use a lot of A/C, yet your home uses a relatively large amount of power, you can add Off-Peak charging and not have you bill increase much, if at all. In my situation EV was the second best and only about $20/year more than E-9A based on my analysis of 2013 usage. Now, even one winter month is over $50/month more.

Well, just to confirm my suspicions, I ran my full year 2014 usage with 2014 actual rates (including rate changes effective Jan, Mar, May, Aug, Oct) and the 2014 usage with January 2015 rates. Here are the results:



Keep in mind that I have solar, so I only get hit with the big increase in the winter months when I get into Tier 3. If you don't have solar, do yourself a favor and get off E-9 ASAP. I'm calling tomorrow to change to Schedule EV.

The full analysis can be seen in PDF on Google drive here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2boNz94iJHhelFrckV3MHFpOGc/view?usp=sharing

It was brought to my attention by a member at MyNissanLeaf that I mistakenly used the E-9B rates thinking they were a rate increase for E-9A. I will update the analysis when I have a little time.

Nothing to see here.... sorry for this alarmist thread.

miimura said:

It was brought to my attention by a member at MyNissanLeaf that I mistakenly used the E-9B rates thinking they were a rate increase for E-9A. I will update the analysis when I have a little time.

Nothing to see here.... sorry for this alarmist thread.

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Here is the revised analysis summary based on actual January 2015 E-9A rates, not E-9B as I mistakenly used before.



So, as you can see, the rate increase from 2014 actuals to the full year with 2015 rates, is only $48.26/year more, not the $223/year I had posted earlier. My annual total will still be less with EV-A, so I'll just change now.

Jeffgtx said:

am i correct from your original post that you generally seem to go into tier 4 each month? im surprised that EVA didn't give you more benefit even before the rate increase for 2015? is it just because of the winter period being in effect?

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For me, Tier 4 (over 200% of baseline) is over 654kWh in a given 30 day month. Since I have solar, it pushes down my billable kWh a lot more in the summer. You can see the Yellow highlighted cells indicate the winter months that I'm in Tier 4. Due to the different the TOU schedules and my specific usage pattern, there is not one rate that is always cheaper. However, you are not allowed to flip back and forth between rates, you can only change once each 12 months unless there are special circumstances.



During the same period, my solar generated 5,830kWh. Pay no attention to the "Estimated" figure below. I don't have any shading adjustment in the production model which is why the estimate is too high.

Jeffgtx said:

where can the 2015 e9x rates be found? i clicked all over the pge website and all i ever got was a chart that said low, mid, high. thanks

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Pacific Gas & Electric - Tariffs
Electric Schedule E-9 PDF

Remember that each page of the tariff has its own effective date. So, the page with the TOU schedule, for example, has a different effective date than the page with the Total Bundled Rates. Effective dates are in the bottom right corner.