Bloomberg: California Considers Following China with ICE Ban

[mspohr]

Most commercial service has demand and volumetric charges. Whereas most residential is only volumetric. Here in NM commercial service is ~$10/kW and $0.03/kWh. To a large extend volumetric AND demand fees combined better reflect the actual cost of providing electricity. That 500MW transmission line is there wether you're drawing 500MW for an hour or 20MW over 24hours. The cost should reflect the capacity factor of the infrastructure...

Thanks for this. I never understood how peak demand fees worked and I think I understand now. Sounds like a good argument for installing solar (to reduce daytime peak demand) and a battery pack to shave off those peaks.
I have a small office building (8,000 sq. ft.) with commercial service but don't have these peak demand charges. I assume that the draw is relatively small and constant during business hours so I haven't been targeted in the same way an industrial enterprise would be. I haven't installed car charging there since it's close to my home and no one else has an electric car. This is something to be aware of if I do install EV charging at the office.

 

[McRat]

The higher demand fees are to some extent a GOOD thing. ...

Let's say you own a business and you want to install three 6.6kW level 2 chargers for your employees. 20kW peak demand.

Hardware and signs, $10,000. Solar array to keep demand rates from climbing? Roughly $100,000. Per 3 cars. This is the same if you ever plug in 3 cars concurrently per month. Before you argue $100,000, you normally re-roof commercial buildings that you are going to put solar on. And you must rework all ADA aspects of the building to the most current specifications. You need PE's to stamp off everything, even if it's silly or redundant. Then your property tax increases.

Now, let's go on last year's tariffs:

Hardware and signs, $10,000. Power use 9hr x 20kW max = 180 kWh x .17/kWh day rate = $30.60 per day or $1,000 per month max. Less if any the cars do not need 9 hours of charging. I'd predict never higher than $10,000 per year.

Assuming value of capital of your business is 10%, the solar array never pays itself down. At best it doesn't pay for itself for 30 years.

Cliff Notes: Demand Tariffs are a damn good reason for an employer not to put in EV chargers, especially if they want to run solar.

 

[cpa]

The only thing that the new Peak Demand tariffs seriously harm are daylight EV commercial site charging. The faster you charge the higher the penalty.

The new tariffs simply give businesses a very good reason not to provide EV charging.

To the best of my knowledge there is no residential Demand Based TOU plans in California at all.

With the scores of municipal and irrigation district owned utilities in California, you can be forgiven!

Turlock Irrigation District currently has demand charges for residential customers who self-generate. I do not know how to copy the Acrobat file here. But you can go to the TID website and look for Schedule DG. There you will see that the winter demand charge is $1.74/kW, and the summer demand charge is $2.00/kW.

 

[ohmman]

For a minute there I was annoyed that this was turning into an off topic political tug of war. But look at us - learning from each other! Who’d have guessed that forums could be used this way?

 

[mspohr]

For a minute there I was annoyed that this was turning into an off topic political tug of war. But look at us - learning from each other! Who’d have guessed that forums could be used this way?

Don't know what happened there... it was looking iffy but we pulled it out of the fire. Stranger things have happened.