Pasadena Sends out AB 920 Compensation Forms

In a mail­ing dated Jan­u­ary 18, 2011, Pasadena Water & Power (PWP) sent its solar cus­tomers elec­tion forms to deter­mine how they will be com­pen­sated for any sur­plus energy gen­er­ated. We pre­vi­ously wrote about PWP’s pro­posal and the City Council’s adop­tion of that pro­posal for net sur­plus energy com­pen­sa­tion. Here is our analy­sis of the cur­rent form and our recommendation.

As we noted pre­vi­ously, PWP’s com­pen­sa­tion pro­posal fails to fairly com­pen­sate solar power cus­tomers for the excess energy that they pro­duce.  The present form does noth­ing to improve on that sit­u­a­tion, but does reveal that com­pen­sa­tion on a monthly basis will not actu­ally result in a check being cut unless and until the amount owed exceeds $50.  This is appar­ently another “admin­is­tra­tive sav­ings” for PWP that was not dis­cussed when their pro­posal was brought before the City Council.

Curi­ously, nei­ther the cover let­ter nor the form itself dis­closes what the actual com­pen­sa­tion rates will be.  From our ear­lier post, here are the amounts:

While the com­pen­sa­tion is greater under monthly billing, in nei­ther case is the total com­pen­sa­tion equal to the fully loaded PWP price which is closer to 19¢/kWh.  Since under the monthly billing option sur­plus energy cred­its are con­verted to cash (even though they are not paid to the cus­tomer until they exceed $50), you actu­ally would lose money every month.  The bet­ter option is to roll your excess energy cred­its for­ward every month for the year, and that is espe­cially true if you are only a net energy pro­ducer in some months, but a net energy con­sumer in others.

So here are our rec­om­men­da­tions, box-by-box, on how to fill out PWP’s form:

1. Pro­vide the required con­tact infor­ma­tion here.
2. Check Yes.
3. Check the top box for “I pre­fer annual net meter­ing.”
4. Check the box assign­ing the RECs to PWP.  At this time there does not appear to be a sep­a­rate mar­ket for res­i­den­tial cus­tomers for their RECs. How­ever, that is likely to change in the future and at that point you will prob­a­bly want to rescind this assign­ment, but for now, you may as well get the extra 2.5¢ (just don’t spend it all in one place!).

It is unfor­tu­nate that sur­plus energy pro­duc­ers can­not receive full com­pen­sa­tion for the value of the energy pro­duced — just as it is unfor­tu­nate that we are see­ing rebates dis­ap­pear with no feed-in-tariff to take their place.  For now, the above rec­om­men­da­tions reflect our best advice on how to max­i­mize your ben­e­fit under the exist­ing rules in Pasadena.