A Bump in the Road—Newfangled Gizmo Charges

Now I believe in giving credit to PG&E for their E9 Electric Car rates—they are a boon to both electric cars and solar power. However, I have learned that there are two catches: "meter charges" and "minimum charges". The meter charge is 22¢ per day and the minimum charge is 15¢ per day. With a few other nominal charges this comes to about $12 per month. This raises the cost per kwh for our system to 13.25¢ per kwh, which is higher than the regular Tier 1/Tier2 combined rate of 12.3¢.

On the one hand, the price is still pretty close, and the real reason for solar panels is to stop using fossil fuels, so it may not be a big deal. However, I do feel that we are very close to the point where solar panels will be cheaper than fossil fuels. At that point, even people who are not environmentalists will want to add solar panels. So this is an important issue.

So I asked PG&E what the justification is for these extra charges. The answer was something about it being "in the tariffs," i.e. because it was legal. Obviously this doesn't explain what the actual cost to PG&E is for using a Time of Use (TOU) meter. In fact, it reminded me of the early 1970s when we first got a telephone answering machine. The phone company tried to tack on a monthly charge because "we were attaching this [newfangled gizmo] to their phone lines." After some shouting at increasingly higher level supervisors, the telephone company backed off and dropped the charge.

At the very least I think PG&E should not call the 15¢ per day a "minimum charge". From that title, I assumed that it would only apply in the summer when we generate more solar electricity than we use. In the winter, we already pay for more than the minimum charge for our electricity. But PG&E says this 15¢ gets added on every month. So I think it should be called "additional charge" rather than "minimum charge". In fact, it could be called "solar penalty fee" since it makes solar less competitive.

These charges raise the whole question about why PG&E doesn't accept feed-in tariffs from people who produce more solar power than they use. We sized our system to zero out the PG&E bill since they won't pay for more. Now we learn that their monthly charges don't zero out, but come to around $144 per year. This definitely deserves more attention. Stay tuned.