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Time-of-Use Service VS Standard Service dilemma for Los Angeles DW&P?

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Has anyone tried both the Standard and the time of use services for LA DW&P? I have to wire up my new home for the roadster and looking at the rate options it seams like you could easily endup paying more for the Time-of-use metering.

According to the LDW&P website I have 2 options for the EV rates (LADWP: Residential Electric Rate Options for EV Owners)

Option 1: install a second meter I would have to pay for installation but then only the car is on time-of-use and the house stays on normal standard rates.

Option 2: switch the entire house to time-of-use and potentially pay higher rates if we use electricity durring the day time.

Anyone else face this dilemma, what did you do and how did it work out?

Rate Info from LA DW&P: LADWP: Schedule R-1 - Residential Service
 
I'll have the same decision to make here in San Diego. SDG&E allows me to download my hourly usage history in CSV format, so I plan to make a spreadsheet to compare my current plan against the TOU plan.

Oh, neat. I didn't know that. We started on TOU (with Solar and a Roadster) but found that it was cheaper to be on the standard rate. But with a second vehicle, it'll almost certainly be worth going back on TOU. I've gotta say SDG&E is a real pain to deal with though.
 
I feel your pain. I too live in LADWP territory and had to make that decision when I installed my solar system almost two years ago. I opted for a single NET meter and TOU billing. As an EV owner with a single meter, LADWP just gives you a flat $25 per billing cycle credit since they have no way of calculating your actual EV usage. Unfortunately if you also have a solar system, their billing system has no way to deal with a NET TOU meter so you will get a regular bill that says "delayed billing" for the power portion and then you will get another bill a few weeks later with a spreadsheet that calculates the NET TOU amount. Although the spreadsheet they send it correct they have no way of entering that information on the actual bill so you just have to guess and pay what you think is the correct amount. There is only one guy at the LADWP who can actually make it all make sense (Edward Aranada). When I last spoke to him last year I was only one of two customers in LA that had a solar system with TOU billing and an electric car.

So the long and short of it is that TOU is great if you have an EV and solar. It might be good if you just have an EV without solar and don't use much electricity during the high peak time of 1-5PM M-F. It can be worse to have TOU if use a lot of electricity during high peak and low peak times during the summer (the only time TOU is in effect for LADWP).

I'm more that happy to discuss it with you if you want more info.
 
I'm on SDG&E too and have solar and the Roadster. I really struggled with this. The EV program manager there really pushed me to do TOU. It's a little hard to judge since I got both at the same time, but I think I'm getting a better deal. I produce more energy than I use during the summer, but it drops way off during the winter. The daytime rates are way higher during summer months, so I get a huge credit from that. But I'm not 100% certain.

Markb1, the hourly CSV is news to me. When I did the analysis it was Google Powermeter which was very hard to use. I'm going to have to check that out. Thanks for the info!
 
Yeah, it's not easy to find on SDG&E site. When you log into your account, click the "My Energy" tab, click the "Energy Charts" link, and click through the disclaimer. You get to a page with graph. On the left side of the page there's a green button labeled "Green Button Dowload My Data". That's what you want.

Now I just have to figure out what the actual rates are. Are these rates current?

EV Rates | San Diego Gas Electric

Do those rates refer to distribution plus generation? Summer or winter? All inclusive or are taxes and bonds separate? They don't make this stuff easy to decipher.
 
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Yea, that makes no sense. I'm 90% sure the rates are different in summer and winter. In Feb I was charged about $.16 per kwh total for peak. It's impossible to tell in Mar because I went negative and so my bill shows a rate of $.00 even though I will get a credit at the end of the year. Super off peak last month was .13 which is lower than shown on the page you posted, and taxes are tiny. I also think it varies between coastal and non-coastal.

The guy I talked to via email was:
Jason Greenblatt
Clean Transportation Program Specialist
Assuming he's still there, if you fillout an info request on that page I think it goes to him. He was pretty helpful, but it's still very confusing. Or PM me and I'll send you his email address. I also talked to him by phone.
 
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Several of you mentioned you installed solar, I plan on doing that once funds become available. What size panels did you install? Do you recommend it, and has the energy produced met your expectations/ been worth the investment?

Absolutely... I have posted about our high rates here in San Luis Obispo. Here is by last year's usage with 9.5 Kw. 7.0 installed last April. I have enough extra to drive quite a few miles. If I need more I will add when necessary. I spent about $35K in parts and pieces to produce this much power. I did the installation/permits myself. This last install I did not even apply for the California rebate. It is a ton of paperwork and not worth the return IMO.

Lloyd
 
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Absolutely... I have posted about our high rates here in San Luis Obispo. Here is by last year's usage with 9.5 Kw. 7.0 installed last April. I have enough extra to drive quite a few miles. If I need more I will add when necessary. I spent about $35K in parts and pieces to produce this much power. I did the installation/permits myself. This last install I did not even apply for the California rebate. It is a ton of paperwork and not worth the return IMO.

Lloyd, are you saying you have a 9.5+7.0 kw system, so 16.5kw total? Yea, that's a huge system. BTW, I love the SLO area. I grew up going to my grandfather's house in Cambria every summer.

Frequencydip, I have a 10kw system which is using every bit of my south facing roof. I love it, and I'm saving $1,000's a year. I had mine professionally installed for about the same cost as Lloyd's. There are tall trees in the distance that cast shadows during the winter months so at the depth of winder I'm only geting 1-3kw during the day. During the summer it cranks out the full 10kw much of the day. I got high efficiency Sanyo panels because they produce more kw per sq foot, and I wanted as big a system as I could get. I also got a Tigo system, which is similar to micro inverter systems, which allows it to capture power from just the cells that have sun, even if part of the roof is in shade. The SolarCity offerings at the time (more than a year ago so don't know about now) couldn't do that. As I understand it, with a regular system, if part of the roof goes into shade the whole system's power output collapses.

I figure I have < a 10 year payback despite the winter shade issues. You can get a much faster (<5 year) payback on paper if you are on a baseline (tiered) power plan (if your power company works that way--that's how most people are billed in San Diego) and you just do a large enough system to get you out of the higher tier rates. But it was worth it to me to knock out as much of the grid power as I could.


It would be so nice is LADWP actually had a billing system like PG&E that could account for Net metering.

Yea, same for SDG&E. I get a letter once a year showing my credit from the past twelve months which then shows up as a negative amount worked off on future bills. But I don't see all that info on a monthly basis like Lloyd.