In response to a number of posts online expressing “sticker shock” over July energy bills, Southern California Edison shared a few tips Monday on how ratepayers can “make the most” of their recent plans.
While SCE actually lowered its per-kilowatt charge rates for energy usage nearly 2% starting June 1, according to Reggie Kumar, spokesman for SCE, the utility understands that its surge rates combined with higher energy usage in the summer — e.g. air conditioning to make a recent string of heat waves less sweltering — can make utility costs more difficult.
“We do offer money-saving tools and programs to help (ratepayers paying higher bills),” he said in a phone interview Monday.
Tiered and Time of Use
SCE offers customers a tiered rate plan and a time-of-use rate plan, which was phased in during 2020, he said, adding the choices are meant to give ratepayers options if they can shift their usage away from the most expensive hours of operation, which is 4-9 p.m.
“With a tiered rate plan, monthly bills are based on total energy consumption, not on time when energy was used — and there are more expensive peak hours and less expensive non-peak hours,” Kumar said.
“Customers on a TOU (Time of Use) rate plan can save on their monthly bill by shifting their energy usage to less-expensive non-peak hours,” he added, explaining how the plans the utility phased in back in 2020 can allow for flexibility — if the demand can be flexible.
“So, with a TOU rate plan, the cost of delivering energy changes throughout the day, so energy is less expensive before 4 p.m. and after 9 p.m.,” he said, with the idea being to encourage usage then.
Most residential customers were transitioned from the older plans to the newer TOU plans as of December 2021, he said, but ratepayers do have the option to look at the tiered plan if that works better for them.
The TOU rates released June 1 for the peak hours during the summer season help explain why some people might have seen a jump in their bill they didn’t anticipate.
The TOU-D-PRIME might be a popular option for local homeowners who have a pool to maintain, an electric car to charge, or both, according to the utility’s website. That’s because the rate has a fixed daily basic charge that allows for lower “Off-Peak rates.”
“This is ideal for customers who use clean energy technologies and can shift that usage to lower-cost times,” according to the SCE website.
However, for those who might have found themselves at home in June and using their power more than usual to keep cool, it cost them more than double the previous month, based on the TOU rate that’s in place from June to September.
During those four months, the weekday cost of energy goes from 25 cents per kilowatt/hour to 61 cents per kilowatt/hour from 4 to 9 p.m. On the weekends, the cost rises to 38 cents per kilowatt/hour.
For reference, an average washing machine uses anywhere from 0.5 to 1.4 kilowatts, and the average home is estimated to use approximately 12,000 kilowatt-hours per year — a figure that can change wildly depending on the size of a home, its construction and features.
Ultimately, the new plan options have been helpful in two ways, Kumar said: It offers a way for customers to make their bills lower and it helps reduce strain on the state’s electric grid during peak hours.
Solar incentive
A program called net energy metering provides a strong incentive for California homeowners to install solar panels, according to a February report by the Public Advocates Office for the California Public Utility Commission.
In addition to it having a potential to lower the energy bill, in California, if you don’t have solar, you’re basically paying for someone else to have it, based on how the state’s program initially was incentivized, according to the report.
“Our analysis estimates that in 2024, more than 15% of the average household’s electricity bill will go to subsidizing the program across all utilities if they do not have solar,” the report states. “The amount has trended upward in recent years: The program made up 8% to 17% of the average customer’s bill in 2022, according to a prior CPUC estimate.”
The report states that the discrepancy is created by the fact that “net energy metering compensates rooftop solar owners for the electricity they generate by more than seven times its relative value to the electric grid.”
The report states that the reasons why solar panel owners are costing non-solar panel owners to the tune of about $6.5 billion this year are two-fold, according to the report, which also states the costs have doubled since 2021.
“The recent cost increases are driven by two main factors: a surge in customers installing solar prior to the phase-out of unsustainably lucrative program compensation terms; and higher compensation to customers with rooftop solar for the excess energy their systems generate,” according to the report.
“This subsidy is effectively paid by other customers that choose not to install solar or do not have the means to do so,” according to the consumer advocate. “Over 1.5 million households that are served by the state’s three largest electric utilities have rooftop solar.”
Sticker shock
For Deobrah Huffman, a Saugus resident for more than two decades, she didn’t think a cost increase as significant as she’s seen could possibly be chalked up to increased usage.
Her home is about 3,000 square feet, she said, but she only uses one air conditioning unit, and she shuts it off around 7 p.m.
Still, her energy bill tripled in a one-month span from $300 to $900, she said in a phone interview Tuesday.
“It’s set at 79 degrees and it gets shut off at night,” she said, estimating it runs about six hours per day, admittedly during some of the “peak hours” as well.
She said she wasn’t entirely clear on the new rates, but also that she’s had trouble getting help from SCE customer service in the past.
“Customers can change their rate plan through their SCE customer account,” Kumar said in a follow-up email, mentioning that customer service representatives can help ratepayers make determinations on the best plan for them based on their bill.
Kumar also directed ratepayers to tips that SCE shared on its blog, “Energized,” which is a list of ways for customers to keep their energy bill lower:
- Avoid heating up your kitchen. Try some no-oven or no-stove recipes that use a slow cooker, toaster oven or microwave to limit the heat created.
- Cook earlier in the day or batch cook over the weekend when there are no on-peak periods; freeze the meals, then re-heat.
- Try spending some nights using one screen or use laptops or tablets, which use much less energy than big-screen TVs.
- Consider making some nights “screen-less” and break out some board games.
- Lighten the load on your air conditioning: During on-peak hours, turn your air conditioner up by two degrees and use fans to conserve energy.
- Try pre-cooling. In smaller spaces, lower your thermostat to 75 degrees for one hour or up to three hours for larger spaces, then back to 78 degrees once on-peak hours begin.
