Spacedaily.com has learned that Southern California Edison, an Investor Owned Utility Monopoly in Los Angeles, has reverted to manual, paper billing by managers for correcting year-long failure with solar billing.
The indication from SCE is that the information from their Smart Meter is not accurate and solar customers will be asked for their own solar production data to come to a fair true-up settlement number.
Managers are being tasked with manually figuring out how to true-up ratepayers that have failed solar billing for a year.
Is a Smart Meter gone bad worse than a Voting Machine checking the wrong candidate? Don’t worry, SCE will save the day with paper, manual and from-seat-of-the-pants guess.
The Smart Meter trend was, and still is, a ruse by the monopoly utilities companies to “tame” ratepayers to use energy when It is cheap to supply. The basic principle is to charge much more per kWh during peak hours and thereby train ratepayers.
After freedom of time fell in Public Utility Commission (PUC) after PUC across the country, the professors from universities finally spoke up. It somehow came to learn that you can not change human behavior and after a bleep of “oh gosh I need to change” the old habits return.
The Smart Meter is failing billing for solar in more than just Southern California Edison Territory. Other advocates have reported that Montana and other locales are reporting strange Smart Meter experiences with solar net-metering. This may indeed be a nationwide problem that will lead to a recall of Smart Meters.
SCE reports a variety of responses to both solar contractors protecting their clients and the ratepayers themselves. Conversations with 14 solar contractors with solar interconnections in SCE territory showed all have customers in billing purgatory. A theme in the talks with SCE came out after multiple interactions with customer support staff at SCE, namely after three conversations on average, each solar contractor learned that RULE 17 protected the customers. Compliance for this issue for SCE is covered by RULE 21.
Like an Owl asking how many licks to the center of the lollipop, we all know it is one … two … three and crunch.
This Smart Meter Fiasco is possibly nationwide and may lead to actual manipulation of the results and thereby create inaccurate billing.
Do you trust your Smart Meter?
Solar Grid Tie Systems that make electricity from the sun are measured by SCE in Kilowatt AC size (KW AC). In 90274 Zip code the California Energy Commission solar calculator (www.csi-epbb.com) shows a solar PV system will generate 1,539 kWh in one year per 1 KW AC installed which is facing south at an 18-degree tilt. This amount is equivalent to 4.22 kWh Day / KW AC. Please note this is an optimized number actual results will vary.
Net-Metering: An annual billing system for solar systems that keep track of solar power sent to the SCE grid as a retail kWh credit for which the ratepayer uses when the sun is not shining. This is the system that is failing because of the dumb “smart” meters.
Average value of solar production is $0.25 cents per kWh and the average System size during this period for ALL SCE solar interconnects is 7.2KW AC.
SCE reports 21,202 Solar Accounts were interconnected during the period of July 1, 2019 to November 30, 2019. It seems that 100% of post July 1, 2019 accounts are experiencing NEM billing setup failure. A spectrum of impacts is seen.
Therefore, according to my calculation, $24,640,709 in direct damages may be involved.
The math scales quickly: 21,202 * 7.2KWac * 153 days (July 1, 2019 to November 20, 2019) * 4.22 kWh * $0.25= $24,640,709 in direct damages may be involved. This was before more due diligence to find other ratepayers with issues going back to March 19, 2020.
From July 1, 2019 to February 23, 2020 is 238 days. This greatly increases direct damages to: 21,202 * 7.2KWac * 153 days * 4.22 kWh * $0.25 PLUS an estimated 11,779 new installations from December 1, 2019 to February 23, 2020 (85 days). So, an estimated 32,981 SCE Solar Adopter/Ratepayers may be impacted.
32,981 * 7.2KW * 4.22 kWh/Day * $0.25 rate/kwh = $250,543 in Ongoing Daily Damages (ODD). This is ODD.
That is direct damages to the SCE Ratepayer/Solar Adopter with failed setup billing.
Therefore, the daily impact on our community is more than double the loss inflicted on the solar ratepayer. E.g. they are billing and colleting from solar clients and not giving them credit for their solar production AND they are receiving that solar production and then proceed to sell that free solar power to other ratepayers. That makes this possibly a $500,000 daily imbalance that grows with every system granted Permission-to-Operate but stuck in SCE NEM Billing Failure.
A hundred-million-dollar solar scam by SCE if only 200 days, but this seems to be at least 238 days.
What can be done?
“Not much,” said Bradley Bartz, President and Founder of ABC Solar Inc. “The California Legislature gives SCE immunity from the courts and they hide behind the California Public Commission. Basically, unless Governor Newsom orders a Solar Czar to take CPUC power and focus our state towards achieving 100% renewable per SB100, which is already law, we are all stuck with Smart-Alec Meters and greedy monopolies.”
Related Links
RULE21
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The development of next generation solar power technology that has potential to be used as a flexible ‘skin’ over hard surfaces has moved a step closer, thanks to a significant breakthrough at The University of Queensland. UQ researchers set a world record for the conversion of solar energy to electricity via the use of tiny nanoparticles called ‘quantum dots’, which pass electrons between one another and generate electrical current when exposed to solar energy in a solar cell device. The de … read more
