PG&E Residential Electrical Tariffs

Guess how many electrical tariffs there are...

The PG&E Tariff page lists 106 entries under electric rate schedules. I did a pass and extracted the ones that are most directly relevant to a residential customer like myself. Below is a brief summary, with some extra background context and a few comparison graphs.

Disclaimers: this content is biased towards a single family residence, which is our case. I’ll try to educate myself about multi-family residences. The content is correct to the best of my knowledge but the linked documents are the official descriptions. Comments and corrections are always welcome.

Background Context

Territory

PG&E covers a very large territory (official map). PG&E is an Investor Owned Utility (IOU), that owns Transmission and Distribution electrical lines and also acts as a Retailer in its territory. Other relevant entities are Public Owned Utilities (POU), and Consumer Choice Aggregators (CCAs). I wrote about all these in an earlier post: Comparing PG&E to CCAs and POUs.

Regions

Energy demands on a house will vary wildly depending on the climate it experiences. California is a big state with a territory spanning many different climates and PG&E recognizes this through climate regions (note: the California Energy Commission also has similar but somewhat different Climate Zones). We live in the SF Peninsula and our region is “X”.

Generation and Delivery

The retail cost of electricity includes a generation cost and a delivery cost. AB-117 enabled the creation of CCAs which control (most of) the generation cost, while the delivery cost is controlled by PG&E. Currently about 60% of the total cost is delivery and only 40% is generation. I wrote about this split in a couple of posts: Part I and Part II.

Rates, Time… and Location

The cost of electricity as delivered to a customer depends on many factors including cost of generation, cost of transmission and distribution, level of congestion in the grid, cost of maintaining the infrastructure… and level of demand. These values vary with time (day / year) and also with location.

Time Of Use

Many of the tariffs mentioned below have rates that vary with the time of day, and with the season (Winter and Summer). TOU stands for Time-of-Use where the rate varies with the hour within the day, and in some cases varies between weekend and weekdays.

A tariff like EV2-A has a summer off-peak rate, $0.32454, that is 50% cheaper than its corresponding summer peak rate, $0.63704. Adding a battery means you can charge when cheap and use when desired. This is why I’m a big proponent of Battery First, even for households without solar panels.

Region Independent

The PG&E tariffs do not vary with the location. All residential customers in the PG&E area are charged the same rate, regardless where the customer is located; I’ll talk a bit about the impact of location in a future post.

Rates and Electrical Loads

Electrical consumption incurred by a customer will vary significantly depending on what electrical loads are included. The loads in the early days of electrification were mostly electrical lighting but a modern electrical house uses electricity in many ways including heating and cooling, refrigeration, washing and drying, cooking, computers and entertainment systems, charging EVs, and more. These loads vary in size and also in utilization patterns.

PG&E has tariffs that are tailored to different types of loads. For example, the EV tariff is intended for charging EVs with a dedicated meter, while the E-ELEC tariff is intended for houses with all electric appliances.

Our Electrical Loads

Our house is “almost-all” electric including EV chargers, Heat Pump Water Heater, and Heat Pump HVAC. We have solar panels. We do not have stationary electrical storage and our EVs do not have bidirectional capability.

Tiered Services

In a tier service, the cost of energy depends on the tier. Two of the tariffs below (E-1 and E-TOU-C) have tiers associated with an allowance baseline: consumption below the baseline is charged at a lower rate than consumption above the baseline.

Baselines

The allowance baseline is intended to represent between 50 to 60% of electricity needs of the average customer in each region, taking into account whether the customer has “electric” heat. The allowance varies between Summer and Winter, and there are also medical allowances. The value has to be recalculated every 3 years and the CPUC needs to approve it.

Allowances

The official regions table lists the baseline allowance for each region. In our case, we live in the SF peninsula and our region is “X” and our allowances are:

• Basic Electric

  • Summer: 9.8 kWh/Day

  • Winter: 9.7 kWh/Day

• All-Electric (Electric Heat)

  • Summer: 8.5 kWh/Day

  • Winter: 14.6 kWh/Day

Our electrical consumption in our house is significantly higher than any of these allowances although a large part of the load comes from charging our EVs. We recently instrumented our electrical panel and I now can provide more insight on the contribution of each of our electrical loads; more on that in a future post.

CARE, Medical Baseline Allowance and Others

The California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) program is a monthly discount of 20% or more on gas and electricity. Qualification can be based on income or enrollment in certain public assistance programs. The PG&E main page is HERE. I believe the applicable tariff is D-CARE.

The Medical Baseline Program assists residential customers who depend on power for certain medical needs. The program provides energy at the lowest price on the customer’s rate plan if they have qualifying medical equipment in their home, or a medical condition with specific heating or cooling needs. The PG&E main page is HERE.

Delivery Minimum Bill Amount

Many tariffs have a minimum bill amount that is expressed as $$ per day per meter. For example, the minimum for EV2-A (our tariff) is $0.39167. A few tariffs, like E-ELEC don’t have a minimum bill amount.

California Climate Credit

The climate credit provides ratepayers with their share of the benefits of California’s Cap-and-Trade Program. Usually, these credits are distributed twice a year, in April and October, this year it was $55.17 in each of those months. Check this page for more details.

Some Future Changes

The California PUC approved an Income Graduated Fixed Charge that will be phased in in the next year or two. The IGFC has been quite controversial. Details from PG&E are HERE.

FERC 2222 has been implemented by CAISO; this should have an impact at some point in the value of exported electricity through VPPs. Several CCAs have pilot projects, as well as PG&E, SunRun and Tesla.

Tariffs

Here are the main tariffs that would apply to a household like ours.

E-1 (PDF)

This is the tiered residential services. There are two tiers, one up to 100% of baseline allowance and the other from 101% and above. There is a minimum delivery charge.

E-ELECT (PDF)

This Time-Of-Use tariff applies to customers with one or more of these technologies: EV charging, electric storage (BESS), or Heat Pump Water Heater (HPWH) or Heat Pump Heating and Cooling (HVAC). There are restrictions on the BESS qualification, including having an approved interconnection with PG&E.

E-ELECT is compatible with NEM 2.0. Customers using the new NBT must use E-ELECT. E-ELECT has peak, part-peak and off-peak daily TOU intervals. E-ELEC does not have a minimum delivery charge.

E-TOU-C (PDF)

E-TOU-C is a residential Time of Use tariff with tiers and daily peak period between 4 and 9 pm. There is a mild reduction in the rate below the baseline allowance. There is a minimum delivery charge.

E-TOU-D (PDF)

E-TOU-D is a residential Time of Use tariff with daily peak period on weekdays between 5 and 8 pm. Weekends and holidays are off-peak. There are no tiers. There is a minimum delivery charge.

EV Charging Tariffs

EV (PDF)

This tariff is for EV Charging. There are two versions, EV-A for houses with a single meter that is used for normal loads and EV charging, and EV-B for houses with a dedicated meter. I believe EV-A has been replaced by EV2-A. EV-B has peak, part-peak and off-peak periods. There is a minimum delivery charge.

EV2-A (PDF)

This is a newer EV charging tariff for households where the EV shares a meter with the other loads. This is the schedule we use. There is a minimum delivery charge.

Comparison Graphs

Below are some graphs attempting to show how the rates compare. The graphs use the winter rates. I used a google spreadsheet to create these graphs.

“Suggested” Tariffs

The PG&E customer website can suggest alternatives to the tariff a customer currently uses. This graph shows the rates for these tariffs: EV2-A, E-ELECT, E-TOU-C and E-TOU-D. They are all pretty close to each other.

EV Charging

This graph shows the two tariffs focused on EV charging.

Export Tariffs

Electrical tariffs cover not just imports but also exports. In the PG&E territory we have only two main export tariffs:

NEM 2.0 (PDF)

Net Energy Metering, exports are compensated at retail rate. Our house account uses EV2-A with NEM 2.0. I wrote about our situation at My Solar Bill, Solar and NEM 2.0.

NBT (aka NEM 3.0) (PDF)

The successor to NEM 2.0 is the Net Billing Tariff, also commonly referred to as NEM 3.0. NBT must be used with E-ELEC. NBT export rate is much less generous than NEM 2.0 and exports using the ACC (Avoided Cost Calculator) rate. The ACC remains controversial and I think there are much better ways to manage exports so they benefit the grid and homeowners. I recently wrote about how Australia is trying an alternative: Two-Way Tariffs.

Our House

Last month was the first anniversary of the permit-to-operate on our solar panels and we went through the end-of- year PG&E true-up. I wanted to write a note on our consumption and costs this last year and I thought it would be useful to have some background on tariffs… and that ended up being this long writeup. Stay tuned for the end of year note.