Jestersix

Get ready for environmental increase to your electric bill!

Well seems they're FINALLY going to start transitioning customers to a Time of Use schedule for their electricity, and all under the guise of "helping the environment" which in itself is another argument to enact this system with private investor owned utility service and do so with a punishment based system that really shows it only hurts people (look at electric bills of those in super hot climates, so much for them staying under that baseline!) ... but all of that is an argument for a different topic.

So what I know is this is happening, I don't know if there is an opt-out available for this, I'm probably thinking no but that's because I don't feel like diving in any deeper. Now why am I not diving deeper? Because NEMs (aka solar customers) that are grandfathered into the old system aren't being transitioned to ToU, and I have solar so yay me! Also if you have an EV and are on some different schedule that may not affect you at all.

For more information look here
specifically to when
Alameda seems to be leading the charge with a May transition, and other bay area counties in the months after (Except Contra Costa which is in Feb 2022 for some reason)

Now fundamentally I can get behind the concept of a time of use system, however how it is implemented often involves lifestyle changes that don't exactly transition very easily. In case you don't know "peak" period will be between 4-9pm, and for things like doing dishes, laundry, etc, you can fairly easy change the schedule for that, however when you come home from work sometime in that time frame, are you just read a book? No watching TV, cooking dinner (hope you have gas!), etc until after 9pm? Those with A/C, on hot days do you do a solid and have the thermostat a bit higher than normal because no sense keeping an empty house cooler? I'm willing to be that's going to change as people bring down the overall temperature of an empty house paying for "cheaper rates' so that later on they don't have to cool as much, doesn't sound like that's going to help the environment.

Now is it all doom and gloom? Maybe not, it will greatly depend upon how well you can adjust your life. So one benefit to TOU plans is that there are simply two tiers, baseline and over baseline, there also are two seasons, summer (June 1 to Sept 30) and winter (the rest of the year duh!). Now in the "winter" time the off peak is 3 cents lower versus current baseline & up to 400% baseline, and the peak is even cheaper by a penny! So heating the tank in cold months will actually be cheaper! Now the real kick in the nuts is that "summer" off peak rates are 2 cents more per kWh, and during peak times they're 9 cents more per kWh. So this part is where your lifestyle comes into play, now me being in San Francisco (no a/c) there's less electrical usage for me in the summer by and far by a lot (even if I didn't have solar), those of you with conditioned air though you'll probably end up paying more though, doubly so if you run a chiller on your tank!

Here's the PDF with the rate info, and yeah the cynical side of me thinks this can all change in an instant if people do end up "saving energy" as the "investor" part of that investor held utility (aka PG&E) will want more money... although I do firmly believe this will on average end up making PG&E much more money, sure someone who lives in SF may get off pretty well due to that lack of a/c thing, but most of the bay I don't think is as lucky. https://www.pge.com/pge_global/comm...rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf

So there ya go people, if you have any sort of energy monitoring equipment, may want to see exactly when things you do use the most power, if you can in fact "read a book" and put the tank on "low energy mode" for 5 hours a day, then it may not be so bad. Otherwise just keep an eye out for how hard you may get spanked by this, god knows it's expensive enough as it is to live here.
 
I really dislike pg&e they have absolutely screwed the people of California. Continued rates raise and not building out or properly maintaining infrastructure. Jellous of the people in Santa Clara that had a city owned power. It’s cheaper and more reliable.
 
The changes to time of use has screwed those with solar as well.
Solar stops working around 4-5, just as the peak hits. Need a powerwall I guess.

Perhaps a large battery on the LED lights. Those are fundamentally DC based, and
current drivers can usually handle a large variation in voltage. Hmmm.

TIP: Program your heaters to turn off from 4-9.
With Apex, pretty easy.
The tank will not get cold that fast, and heaters are a huge percentage of power used.

Never do dishes or laundry during that time. Those are huge power hogs.
 
Never do dishes or laundry during that time. Those are huge power hogs.


The Front load washers hardly use any energy and I have a gas dryer that only uses electricity to rotate the drum. Dishwashers on the other hand because they both have a electric heating element and a high output water pump that just suck power.

- Randy
 
The Front load washers hardly use any energy and I have a gas dryer that only uses electricity to rotate the drum. Dishwashers on the other hand because they both have a electric heating element and a high output water pump that just suck power.

- Randy
I thought that about washers also but ....
I have a front loading LG washer, and it is significant.
The thing is, it also has a heating element, much like a dish washer.

Things can surprise you.
I went around the house with a cheap kill-a-watt usage monitor.

One of the worst was an old Sony stereo receiver.
It had a very high power off (standby) state, like 20W, going 24/7.
 
I thought that about washers also but ....
I have a front loading LG washer, and it is significant.
The thing is, it also has a heating element, much like a dish washer.

Things can surprise you.
I went around the house with a cheap kill-a-watt usage monitor.

One of the worst was an old Sony stereo receiver.
It had a very high power off (standby) state, like 20W, going 24/7.

Just wash in cold water with good detergent designed to work in cold water. In the long run it saves money.
 
oh steam washer... fancy

so I thought it was a joke until I owned one. Well worth the money.

the other thing is it has built in WiFi and alerts you when the laundry needs to be swapped etc. I am not lucky enough to have the laundry room in my house so I could never hear when it chimes to switch loads. This is a total godsend. Before I had to hack together relays and a raspberry pi to do this with smart things.
 
Doesn't the city of Alameda have the same? I think it is like a Co-op or something. I could be mistaken though.
Cities may have their own power company, not sure about the ones mentioned, San Francisco "kinda" does, they claim to buy from "green sellers" (aka ME! :D) but ultimately it's still PG&E with the infrastructure and the ones delivering the power. But regardless if the city really has it's own power, or it does like SF, the whole TOU thing is coming down at the state level I believe, so it really doesn't matter who gives you power time of use is in your future.

The changes to time of use has screwed those with solar as well.
Solar stops working around 4-5, just as the peak hits. Need a powerwall I guess.


TIP: Program your heaters to turn off from 4-9.
With Apex, pretty easy.
The tank will not get cold that fast, and heaters are a huge percentage of power used.
When did you get your solar? You may be grandfathered into the old NEMs schedule, which means you're good to go. I believe you know you are if you are currently not doing ToU, as stopped allowing new solar to get tied into the "standard" (watt for watt) system. Something to definitely look into as you may not be screwed. But yeah something like a Powerwall would be ideal if it gets to that as I think you program it to exclusively use power from the battery at certain times, it's just something you need to calculate whether or not that expense is worth what you'll lose to ToU selling of power, but again if you're already on ToU then you really aren't changing anything.

Good advice with the heaters though, or if you use your controller to directly control them and the heater thermostat is the secondary, you could set them to have a lower heat point, like 75 instead of 77 or whatever just in case you don't go too low.

Just wash in cold water with good detergent designed to work in cold water. In the long run it saves money.
... I have kids. Kirkland brand tide pods. Work wonders in a LG steam washer.
These two statements are not mutually exclusive... run in cold water then .. I have a steam washer!
 
These two statements are not mutually exclusive... run in cold water then .. I have a steam washer!

The point is with the right detergent cold water can clean just as well as hot water. I find that the Costco tide pod knock offs clean great in cold water tank in my LG washer.

cold water uses less energy.
 
The point is with the right detergent cold water can clean just as well as hot water. I find that the Costco tide pod knock offs clean great in cold water tank in my LG washer.

cold water uses less energy.
Yes cold water uses less energy, however if you have a gas water heater that may be a moot point, since electricity isn't heating the water in a normal washing machine. That said with a steam washer it most definitely is using electricity to raise the temperature of water.
 
If we are talking cost only then yes gas is cheaper, but it isn’t necessarily really “cleaner”, of course depending on where/how the electricity in question was generated.
 
The point is with the right detergent cold water can clean just as well as hot water. I find that the Costco tide pod knock offs clean great in cold water tank in my LG washer.

cold water uses less energy.
Disagree.
Sure, cold gets the dirt out fine.
But with underwear, you really need a bit of extra cleaning to make sure you do not have bacteria buildup. Especially if you have kids.
So warm water at least, maybe a bit of bleach.
 
My washer has a really good spin cycle it seems, and often with a lot of the clothes I wear they come out of the washer dry enough so that I can hang dry them and they are dry really fast, of course there are some things which this is impractical for and it is more work, but especially during this last year when the diversity of things I wear has been low it has saved me a ton on electrical costs. Even running an extra spin cycle if they are a little wet still has saved me a couple hours of drying time.
 
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