Am I charged for my electricity here in California based on what time of the day it is used?
Asked differently…
Is 6 hours of electricity the same cost regardless of what time of the day or night it is used?
I can’t speak for CA, but I know in PA and DE, there are variying rates depending on time of day. However, I think you may have to sign up for a special plan to get that pricing.
Does this imply that your meter knows what time it is?
I don’t think my meter knows that.
Oh go fall off your bicycle.
Right now it is unlikely you have time of use rates. Large industrial groups will have these rates, where it is higher during peak times and lower during off-peak times and they have higher grade meters.
California utilities are beginning to invest billions so that residential customers “can” get these rates. This is good news if you can control when you use your power (avoid usage between 3-6 p.m. on weekdays). But if you’re a stay-at-home mom, or retired, or work from home, it might not work out best for you. The meters will know what time it is (for Xenu).
The good thing is that a number of appliance makers are developing technology to receive impulses from the utility to shut down during peak periods (as long as it isn’t needed). Pool pumps are a major user of energy in California (3rd largest electricity user). The new pumps will know to cycle off during key times of the day and hopefully not allow the water to turn green and murky.
But no, electricity costs more during peak times than off-peak times due to the required use of peaking power plants.
That’d be great.
Being on, rather than falling off, I mean.
Hey, Cali, lots of sun…why not put a few solar panels on your roof and push some energy back onto the grid during the day when you’re not home? The utility has to pay you for it.
Most if not all of the meters currently out there are not capable of determining time of day usage. What some utilities are doing is installing time of day usage appliances on to your meter. This allows them to develop time of day usage programs which will bill you at a discounted rate during off peak hours.
Hey, Cali, lots of sun…why not put a few solar panels on your roof and push some energy back onto the grid during the day when you’re not home? The utility has to pay you for it.
Thats only viable if you plan on staying in the same house for the next 15 years. It takes that long to get the return on the installation investment.
Matt, Matt, Matt…tsk, tsk. Didn’t we already agree that if your only criteria for taking sustainable action is your fake ROI (you know what I mean about fake) then we truly are doomed.
You have to assign a value to the equivalent carbon emissions avoided, the benefits of distributed power over centralized systems, the good feeling you get, support of sustainable technology and pull through by being an early adopter.
If you have the cash, you should do the solar thing (only if you are down to none or one petroleum burning vehicle though). Do that first or at the same time 
Unfortunately the economics of the situation are what hold most people back from switching to solar. Here in CA developers get all sorts of credits for installing solar on new construction but we haven’t yet got to the point where existing homeowners are being incentivised. Perhaps a break on transfer taxes would help or a break on property taxes.
I have looked at installing solar but its just too expensive. I put in new dual pane energy efficient windows instead.
You’re cool with me (pun intended); I have the cash and haven’t yet pulled the trigger. I think I like fine dining and imported wine too much.
My question is refering to my swimming pool. Right now I run the pump at night and I was wondering weather I got a break in costs becase I don’t run it at peak times.
The plan is to upgrade to solar in a couple of years.
a ‘break in costs’ is relative.
if you were running a commercial operation you might pay $.10/kWh instead of $.15/kWh. But as fatmouse notes these rates currently don’t apply to residential rates. If you moved to missouri you would pay $.05/kWh all year, anytime, and in NY closer to $.20/kWh.
(responding to other posts) PV is a public relations investment. The kWh, and corresponding carbon emissions reductions are so low it’s difficult to imagine why anyone purchases them. We recently spent 75k on a new roofing membrane that cut energy use by over 1.7 MWh at one of our distribution centers. Or we could have spent 550k (after incentives) to get the same kWh savings. Even though these two measures are basically mutually exclusive, it’s tough to justify spending that much money for no return (in tennessee, where there are no energy/renewable incentives, PV shows a 55 year payback).
Art, I agree with most of your statement; conservation is always the first step in any energy investigation. But as I alluded to in my response to Matt, you are looking at the equation in the simplest of economic terms. The study of life cycle analysis includes direct and indirect costs of technology and consumption, from conception to disposal; the reason we are in the place we are now, environmentally speaking, is that we don’t pay the “true” costs of energy production. Some will say taxes are supposed to fill in the gaps to mitigate the negative effects of power production, distribution and whatnot but in the twisted world of resource extraction subsidies, the public gets left holding the bag in the form of a damaged environment and insufficient resources to fix it.
To your point of PV being primarily a public relations effort; if there was ever a cynical statement, that’s one. You have to start somewhere and the potential benefits of adopting a distributed multi-source renewable power system (of which PV would be a part, especially in the West) must not be underrated; the current grid/centralized model is insanely inefficient due to transmission losses and the potential for rolling blackouts (not to mention vulnerable to attack).
The false profit motive has fucked this country and the world; the disconnect between the pursuit of, or preservation of “wealth” and the real costs of consumption have resulted in permanent damage to the world and may end up being the thing that does all of us in. No blame here, we just screwed the pooch because we didn’t know the effects would not simply be localized but rather end up being global. Back in the day, the world and its resources seemed endless, now we know better, we’d better get on the stick.
There is a meter company that make units , that save kilo watt usage and time of use. It is sent on phone lines to the power company . You could benefit from using power at 11 pm to 4 am as the meter would record the off peak rate.
Its use has been delayed by meter readers and averaging monthly charges used by power companies.
“To your point of PV being primarily a public relations effort; if there was ever a cynical statement, that’s one. You have to start somewhere and the potential benefits of adopting a distributed multi-source renewable power system (of which PV would be a part, especially in the West) must not be underrated; the current grid/centralized model is insanely inefficient due to transmission losses and the potential for rolling blackouts (not to mention vulnerable to attack).”
We should not concern ourselves with such efforts when we can simply change the R-values in our walls and roofs and U-values in our glazing and achieve 60% energy savings. Renewable and distributed energy should come only after we have exhausted all efficiency efforts in our buildings. Most of the country is in a temperate climate zone and therefore could achieve comfortable indoor air temperatures passively. This is simple to do and does not require costly high-tech solutions and usually saves construction costs. Switching to more efficient lighting and covering our roofs with white membranes will have 100 times the effect that covering roofs with PV would.
When you mention life-cycle, you should also be aware that PV utilizes a manufacturing process that would be severly criticised in any other product. With the current efficiencies of PV, I doubt there is much of an environmental benefit when you look at total life cycle costs.
While distributed generation will be available in the future, it is not the answer, especially considering how easy it is to use less energy in the first place. Look up ‘negawatts’ and take a few minutes to learn about energy efficiency. It’s very boring, but it is the answer.
I recall some years back I was watching Meet the Press (I think) and Tim was interviewing Ralph Nader…this must have been when he was running on the green party ticket…asked about oil or energy or something, Nader said “it’s easier to conserve a watt of energy than produce it” or something similar. That really stuck with me.
“conservation is always the first step in any energy investigation”
Agreed. However, why do we still see flagrant wasting of energy at all levels?
Ignorance, laziness, not willing to make an investment up front to save money later…
I know so many people who could save just by using compact flourescent, but all three of the above apply to them…don’t know about them, too lazy to change, or don’t want to pay a few bucks extra…
Etc…