Energy Toolbase April 2022 Utility Rates Newsletter

Important Monthly Updates & Announcements

Spring is in the air, and many electric utilities are changing with the seasons. April marks the start of the second quarter of the year, which means many utilities will likely update their electric rates. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll highlight significant rate changes implemented by major utilities in Colorado and California.

Xcel Energy - Colorado Rate Changes

This month marked the beginning of a gradual rate transition for Xcel Energy Colorado’s residential customers and a general rate increase for all customer types. This rate transition comes as Xcel Energy seeks to eliminate tiered rate structures in favor of Time-of-Use (TOU) structures. The timeline for this transition stretches through 2025, and customers are transitioned following the installation of either an Advanced Metering Infrastructure meter or an interval data recorder meter. The residential rate transition schedule for Schedule R to Schedule RE-TOU customers can be seen below:

Commercial customers are also scheduled to begin transitioning from Schedule C to Schedule C-TOU on October 1, 2022, and that transition will conclude in 2025. ETB Developer’s rates database already includes the standard and TOU options for these rates, and our rates team will continue to update them through this transition process.

Customers will also see increases in their monthly bills beginning April 2022. The average residential and small business customer will see an increase of roughly $5.24 (or 6.44%) and $6.64 (or 6.24%), respectively. Secondary, Primary, and Transmission larger commercial customers will see increases of about $124 (or 5.88%), $1,913 (or 5.32%), and $20,078 (or 4.67%). These increases are part of the utility’s plans to generate an additional $469.7 million in revenue to further increase capital investments into its grid infrastructure. These increases are caused by the General Rate Schedule Adjustment (GRSA), which can be applied as either an energy charge or a percentage increase to the base rates. The approved rate case also stipulates that Xcel must modify its base rates in six months to eliminate these rate adjustments. Our rates team will be sure to update our rates to reflect this base rate change once it goes into effect later this year.

Continuing California Updates

There were a few updates in California that took place this month. Southern California Edison (SCE) released a minor mid-month update on April 15^th, which our rates team worked quickly to input into our database. SCE implemented a minor decrease to the Public Purpose Programs Charge while the Distribution energy charge increased slightly. Overall, SCE’s rates increased by about 0.20% to 0.50%.

Last month, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) implemented substantial changes to their electric rates, affecting the Power Cost Indifference Adjustment. Several of the Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) utilities related to PG&E are still adjusting its rates in relation to PG&E’s update. One such utility is Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) which updated its generation charges on April 1^st. Our rates team has already updated our database to reflect SCP’s rate changes, resulting in an overall decrease in energy charges and a slight increase in demand-related charges.

Lastly, the number of rate options for CCAs that we maintain has increased steadily over the past few months. Most CCAs have multiple supply options that vary in price based on whether the energy is sourced with renewable energy. For example, Sonoma Clean Power has two options—their standard CleanStart service and a renewable-friendly EverGreen service. Our database of rates for SCP and other CCAs has increased to include the various supply options. The expansion of the rate database of ETB Developer is a direct result of our active users and dedicated team. If the rate option needed cannot be found, please contact the Utility Rates Team atutilityraterequest@energytoolbase.com, and we’ll be happy to create the rates you need!

Utility Rates April 2022 FAQ Video: 
What does the 'Effective Date' shown for rates in ETB Developer mean?

Did You Know? - ETB has a Blog

Energy Toolbase has a very active blog in which we share solar and storage market updates and insights. In addition to this monthly newsletter, the ETB team regularly posts articles highlighting net metering changes, ETB platform features and updates, Acumen EMS™ whitepapers, upcoming webinar notifications, and much more. Also, the Utility Rates team has started hosting a monthly training session for our ETB Developer users. We also highly recommend subscribing to our monthly newsletters, checking out theETB blog, and connecting with us onLinkedIn and other social media outlets to stay up to date on all things solar and energy storage!