TIme of Use Metering with Sonoma Clean Power

[vdeva]

Does anyone know what the financial impact will be on individual customers who were contracted with PG&E with TOU (Time of Use) metering for their solar systems.

I have called Sonoma Clean Power twice taking hours to get the answer that I will have to do all the figures myself. This is not a good sign.

I save hundreds on my bill yearly because we are so mindful on this property about the timing issues. I pay 4x more for power in most months for electricity between noon and 6pm. But this is cancelled now so I can only assume my bill will increase a lot. Does anyone out there with a TOU system know the financial impacts on TOU customers?

[Barry]

Does anyone know what the financial impact will be on individual customers who were contracted with PG&E with TOU (Time of Use) metering for their solar systems. ...

From Sebastopol Mayor, Patrick Slayter:

This thread was called to my attention. As Sebastopol's representative on the SCP BOD I reached out to staff to get an answer.

Here's what I heard back from staff (in only a matter of minutes):

From Nelson Lomeli, Project Assistant at Sonoma Clean Power:

Sonoma Clean Power's NetGreen program for solar customers works almost identically to PG&E’s Net Energy Metering (NEM) program. For customers that are currently on Time of Use (TOU) rates with PG&E, they will still see the same TOU brackets and times with SCP. The difference between NetGreen and PG&E’s NEM program is that we true-up monthly and PG&E trues-up yearly.

As a result of the monthly true-up, a customer might have to pay SCP a monthly bill during months when their system is not generating enough power to cover their net usage.

However, since solar systems tend to over generate during the summer and accrue credits, these credits will help them offset charges during the winter. It’s entirely possible a customer might run out of credits and therefore have to pay SCP a monthly bill.

The other financial impact a customer might see is if a customer is a yearly net generator. If they are a net generator and the customer has excess credits totaling more than $100 in April, then SCP will send them a check for the full value of their credits.

A general rule of thumb is if a solar customer has paid PG&E at their yearly true-up, they will most likely pay SCP and PG&E for electricity they consumed. If a solar customer has been a net generator at the yearly true-up, then they most likely will receive compensation from SCP.

If they want to learn more about our NetGreen program, direct them to our website www.sonomcleanpower.org/netgreen. If they have any further questions and want to talk to me, have them email me at [email protected] and I’ll personally respond.

[vdeva]

Thank you for this! I called Sonoma Cean Power twice and was told that there was no TOU metering with the new system! I was an original TOU customer and followed a Rate Schedule E.....noon to 6pm was a low cost time period for buying electricity. I hope I will be continuing under this Rate schedule and not the more complicated one that came in the years after I did my installation. I will call Sonoma Clean Power and check this out too. The reps I talked with did tell there would be monthly true ups though. Thank you for shedding some light on this.

From Sebastopol Mayor, Patrick Slayter:

This thread was called to my attention. As Sebastopol's representative on the SCP BOD I reached out to staff to get an answer. ...