Time of use pricing

Hey folks,
This isn’t a replacement for a built-in ToU calculation, but this web app I constructed does let you look at any Sense month or billing period. It uses a simple ToU pricing table that everyone seems to think is good enough. It runs directly off a Sense exported hourly CSV for any month or billing period you provide it.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/SenseToUCalculator/

To use it, you all have to fill in and supply a ToU pricing table that tells the price across all 24 hours in a day for each month. A sample table, that has 4 different ToU periods, off-peak and peak, for both summer and winter, is below.

PriceTable.csv (2.4 KB)

The columns show the cost of each day, with the different colors representing different ToU prices. As you can see, I have solar, so there are some days that have ToU periods with negative pricing, which reduces my bill.

Try it and enjoy ! And have a happy and safe 4th !

3 Likes

One more useful web app associated with Time-of-Use (ToU) pricing. This one gives you insight into how many kWh and how many $$ you are expending on each major device in your household over a billing period. This one does a lot of calculations so it will take a little time once you supply both files.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/ToUDevCalc/

It takes two inputs:

  1. A Sense hourly export file for a month or billing period
  2. A pricing table that holds the ToU cost info for every hour throughout the year. You’ll need to customize for your ToU specifics, but here’s a starting point.

PriceTable.csv (2.4 KB)

The top graph shows kWh by device. The bottom shows $$ by device.

I think another great feature to go along with the time of year’s pricing would be time of use alerts!

It would be nice to be alerted about my electric dryer running during a specific time, or time of use tier.

Or if my total usage exceeds a specific wattage during a tier or time period

3 Likes

One more improvement in the web app. It can display either daily cost or kWh subtotaled by either device/category or ToU price. Solar generation is negative and usage is positive.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/ToUDevCalc/

Cost by Device / Category per per day

Cost by ToU per per day

1 Like

New and Improved ! A version of the ToU use pricing web app that works off of the OpenEI database of US utilities data. Export your billing period and upload, then select your state, utility and ToU rate plan. If it’s in the database, you’ll see your rough costs by device and by ToU period.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/UtilityToUCost/

Cost By Device

Cost by ToU Period

A few caveats. This calculator uses a single ToU table from the OpenEI databases

  • No separate pricing / period table for weekends and holidays
  • No tiering or demand charges
  • Doesn’t do different buy/sell pricing or pricing adjustments
  • Doesn’t do fixed minimum costs
  • No funky DST timing adjustments (PG&E uses those)
  • You may see an occasional error message when you change state/utility/rate plan. It should disappear after the calculation takes place. (Error:attempt to select less than one element in get1index).
  • Only implemented for public utilities in the OpenEI database. No municipal, governmental or coops.
  • U.S. Utility Rate Database

Update
Web app now includes weekday and weekend ToU rate tables. But it treats holidays like the day of the week they occur on, since holidays vary depending on utility company. Below is a Baltimore rate schedule that uses a single lower cost period for all hours on weekends, though the pricing is different between summer and winter. Sorry the periods aren’t named, but they are only numbered in the OpenEI database.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/UtilityToUCost/

Now with Data Tables as well !

Extended to include single price rate plans so you can pop between and compare.

2 Likes

Super cool tool, I’m really liking it. I’m hoping that demand charges are added later but even without demand it tracks my bill fairly closely.

2 Likes

Even Better version of my “Rate Plan Cost Comparator” web app is done.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/UtilityToUCost/

Improvements

  • Includes flat rate, single ToU rate plans, so you can do more comparisons (still no tiered rates, separate buy/sell rates, or demand charges)
  • Includes built-in PG&E holidays - treated as weekends
  • PG&E EV2-A rate plan added by hand
  • Calibrated against my recent bill (details below)

I added the PG&E EV2-A rate plan to square against my bill, only to discover that I’m still on the original EV-A plan, when the numbers weren’t lining up. To test things, I built a special calibration (Cal) Sense export file that aligned with my last 05/21/2020-06/21/2020 bill, by adding 06/21 data to a 5/21-6/20 file. I was struggling to make sense my results for the EV2-A rate plan I had hand added, when I noticed some detailed on my bill that helped explain the mismatch - the ToU periods I entered didn’t agree with the fine print on the bill, on the lower right.

The great news is that once I set the correct rate plan (EV-A) and made a couple tweaks, the ToU kWh subtotal lined up nearly perfectly.

But when I compare the cost side, there’s a big difference.

But that’s a complicated story. I actually buy my energy through a community choice aggregator that offers 100% renewable energy. So I end up paying PG&E a Power Indifference Adjustment, but also get credit for the actual energy costs (non-transmission and non-distribution) plus some other credits. And I have a whole separate section of my bill for the energy from PCA, the community choice aggregator.

Sadly, it turns out that the OpenEI pricing for EV-A is reflective of the 2014 update, not the new 2020 post-Paradise fire rates…

Current OpenEI database
Screen Shot 2020-07-10 at 9.05.38 PM

New May 1, 2020 PG&E Ratebook pricing

EXPENSIVE ! But I’m happy I have solar.

@schadenfreude, @RTraphan, @rex, @derek.nheiley, @schenkzoola, @stephan.hesmer, @johnhmccauley, @shaver.deyerle, @Craft21, @david1, @tmdatanet, @Bubuski, @jimsar9, @aaron1, @doug1, @noel.hastings, @kevin8, @mike_gessner, @franklyn, @jij.pers, @mikeahechtman, @paul.moceri, @reuben.sterling, @dchurco, @bfach82, @brucewhitneyvt, @gobbel, @benjamin.t.brannon, @brandon.keilman, @dmitrysml777, @TheTrystero

All you guys indicated a very strong need for a way to look at your Sense data with ToU pricing. There’s now a way. I have created two web apps that run off of an industry-wide database of rates, OpenEI. The first web app enables you to upload a monthly or billing period hourly exported Sense CSV, select your ToU plan, then see costs and kWH by Sense device and by ToU period.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/UtilityToUCost/

The second web app allows you to visualize the rate table for your rate plan coming out of the OpenEI database. That’s important because I have discovered that some of these rates are out of date. For instance, the May 1 price changes to the PG&E plans haven’t been entered yet.

https://pgstats.shinyapps.io/RatesChecker/

You also might not find your rate plan in my app yet for a variety of reasons, if it includes:

  • Demand charges
  • Tiering
  • Separate buy vs sell pricing

Your rate might not be in the database or wrong if:

  • It is relatively new
  • You get your power from a municipal supplier or coop. Those are in the database, but there are thousands of rates associated with those and bloat the database.

Try it out. Let me know your thoughts and feel free to ask questions either here or via PM. If your rates are out of date, or if you have a pure ToU plan that’s not visible, let me know and I can try to update.

3 Likes

I appreciate this and all the work that you do. Question - I’m on PG&E E-6 TOU rate plan. Have you considered adding it to the database? Thanks.

1 Like

I already added PG&E EV2-A, the rate plan I thought I was on. I’ll look at E6-TOU and add unless I have any issues…

@kevin1, the amount of energy you consume on the on-peak rate makes my heart skip a beat. A dual Tesla powerwall would probably pay for itself in 6 years on EV-A if you charged off-peak and discharged at-peak every day; EV-A makes for good price arbitrage with battery.

Or solar. I would have assumed you had solar already given your interest in energy analysis.

@james_reilley,
I have solar, though not enough. It’s enough to offset much of the usage from morning until about 2pm, but then the AC dominates. Almost all my EV charging is off peak, but I would need that PowerWall to keep my wife cool during the 2-9pm stretch :wink:

@jimsar9,

Aha ! The PG&E E-6 TOU rate is in the OpenEI database, but I haven’t added to my web app calculation yet is because it is both ToU and tiered. There are two tiers in each ToU period, one for below 6.8kWh per day, and one for above that daily usage. Will be working on that additional calculation in my spare time this week. Tiering adds an additional table to track accumulated usage for each ToU for each billing cycle or day (depending on the plan - PG&E E1 has tiers based on accumulates usage throughout the entire billing period). One of the reasons pricing calculations are harder than meet the eye.

See if the numbers and ToU grid match your current rates / hours.

ps - PG&E also separates rates by zone. Do you know which zone your are in ?

I believe I’m in PG&E Zone 3, if memory serves. I failed to qualify for a certain PG&E rebate for an appliance that was Zone 4 qualified, years ago.

I make use of the TOU schedule published by PG&E by making lifestyle adjustments, for example, avoiding laundry and running the dishwasher during peak time. Also played with my heat pump hybrid water heater by essentially putting it on vacation mode during peak hours as well. It may not dramatically affect kw usage, but cost-wise it should be significant savings.
Here’s where I took my schedule:

I’m not too worried about Tier-2; my 5kw solar takes care that I don’t hit Tier-2.
Thanks again for all your work.

OK @jimsar9, I think I have updated both apps so they work for PG&E E-6 ToU. It took three steps:

  1. Allowing tiered rate plans into my database, including the E-6 ToUs. I was filtering them out before.
  2. Editing the calculation so that it ignores everything but the tier 1 rates in the database. I still plan on adding multiple tiers to the calculation but it requires creating an accumulated usage table and adjusting how I deal with the database.
  3. Adjusting the pricing for the 10 different E-6 ToUs for each PG&E regions/baseline territories (The regions have letters in the rate names, Q-Z, no U). PG&E updated all rates on May 1, 2020 but the OpenEI database hasn’t been updated yet. So I had to update 50 entries (will be 150 with tiering) for my database updater. The good news is that the periods tables, that determine the ToU period (ex. summer peak) based on month and hour, haven’t changed.

Two other caveats about this rate.

  • Most PG&E rates treat holidays like weekends so my calculator uses the weekend period table for holidays. But the E-6 TOU rates specifically treat holidays differently than weekdays or weekends, but I don’t have a way of doing that, so I treat holidays like weekends for purposes of calculation. You’ll see slight differences due to this.
  • Even though some PG&E rates vary by region/baseline territory, this one does not. I’m torn as to whether to consolidate all E-6 TOU rates into one entry, Right now I’m keeping them separated, because there is always the potential that PG&E might diverge the pricing, as happens with other rate plans in the database.

That said, give the apps a try. Tier-free E-6 TOU is working…

Thanks for you hard work. Is it possible to add LA DWP. The prices for the ToU are here:

https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/wcnav_externalId/a-fr-elecrate-schel?_adf.ctrl-state=mxv9rnjav_4&_afrLoop=127116487816887

Click on the R-1B tab.

This is precious. I’ll allocate some time to look at this closely and use it, in the next few days. (tax crunch, ouch)
Jim

3 Likes

Hi @dmitrysml777,
I have tried to only focus on utilities that are public companies (about 130 companies with 500 residential rates), just to reduce the numbers a little. But LAWPD is probably one of the few municipal suppliers that has a million or so customers. LAWPD is in the OpenEI database, so I allowed its rate plans into my web apps, but it’s pretty clear that the OpenEI grid and rates are both out of date. I’m going to edit / amend but I’m going to need you to check the results. Are you OK doing that ?

@dmitrysml777,
LAPWD R1-B is live ! Because the OpenEI database structure only had 6 ToU periods, I had to do a hack to shoehorn the rate matrix you provided into only 6. I combined them as shown, even though the baseline prices are slightly different. And because Oct-Dec is blank, I just assigned those months the same ToU periods / times as July-Sept.

Here’s a visualization of your rate grid.

You’ll be able to see your energy costs by ToU or top 10 devices, though the cost won’t match up with your bill since I don’t included the fixed monthly fee, other fees or taxes.