California Utilities Still Freeloading on Independent Power Producers - Part III

What you've all been waiting for--part III of the ongoing saga. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I suggest reading Part I and Part II for background.

But if you want to skip the details, here is the quick summary:

Part I Recap
We operated a solar photovoltaic grid intertie with Net Energy Metering on our home from 2001-2011. The year we sold the house, 2011, we had a big surplus of generated electricity, since the house generated electricity all summer but no one was living there to use it. This electricity was worth $154.52. In December 2011, I was told we would only be paid only four cents per kWh for this valuable, renewable, distributed, peak-hours electricity, or a whopping $18.52. SCE (Southern California Edison) was 10 months behind in sending out letters, and when we got ours we should send it back saying how we wanted to be paid, and then in another 3 months we'd get our check.

Part II Recap
Two years later, in November 2013, we got the letter. After overcoming considerable confusion about what it was, and why it was being sent to us, and what we were supposed to do, I re-read part I (see link above), and then I filled out the form and sent it back.

Part III

Welcome to Part III! This may be the end...

In February, 2014, we got another envelope in the mail from SCE. I opened it. I laughed. What was inside? Nine double-sided pages of account statements. The first page said "Do not pay. Your account has a credit balance of $5.48.



Okay, this seemed too low. The next page had another summary, with some different and some same numbers and time periods, but the same total: $5.48. It was hard to understand the difference between the first and second pages. The rest of the pages, a page for each month, had the following totals: 18.91, 0.11, -43.49, -58.34, -52.80. When I add these numbers, I get a net $135.61 that SCE owes us. What did it mean? And where was the check?

Almost a month later, in March 2014, another envelope from SCE came in the mail. This one contained a check! Finally! After all this ti-- ...wait a minute. The check was for... yes, you guessed it, five dollars and forty-eight cents. Was this the first check in a series of checks? Or was that it?

There were also ten pages of account statements: the same nine they sent the previous month, plus one that showed a zero balance on the account.

Okay, it seems pretty clear--We got $5.48. I'm not expecting anything else. Was it the full four cents per kWh that we were owed? It seemed less than the $18.52 I had calculated three years ago, but I'm not inclined to dig up my old records and compare my calculations. Ahh, there was the answer, on the back of each page: 2.9 cents per kWh for delivery charges, and 3.629 cents per kWh for the excess 151 kWh of electricity generated by our system. So they ignored the time of use (TOU) billing our account had been based upon, treated every kWh the same, and paid us based on the net kWh surplus. They ignored that the peak hours surplus far exceeded this 151 kWh, and was far more valuable than 3.6 cents per kWh.

So we got $149.04 less than what I calculated we should have been paid three years ago had it been a level playing field. $149.04 that a giant utility takes out of the pocket of a little guy. They paid us 3.5 cents on the dollar and kept the other 96.5 cents.

Now THAT is cheap electricity. Too bad the big utilities are the only ones able to pay rates like 3.6 cents per kWh for peak-hour renewable electricity during the summer. The average price of electricity in California in December 2013 was 13.6 cents per kWh (in May 2011 it was 13.5 cents).

I guess SCE's lobbyists at the California Public Utilities Commission earn their keep.

And that, my friends, is the end of the story. Don't expect fair prices for distributed generation. Unless you want to move to Germany, where I hear a fair price for solar electricity can be had.