March 2024 Utility Rates Newsletter

IMPORTANT MONTHLY UPDATES & ANNOUNCEMENTS

In this month’s newsletter, we cover updates to SDG&E’s rates, explore Arizona Public Service’s (APS) recent rate case, overview a new Energy Use Profile feature for supply-related exports, and share our quarterly numbers. 

SDG&E Rate Increase

A sizeable increase to SDG&E’s rates went into effect this March due to wildfire hardening work and investments. SDG&E’s system average electric delivery rates increased by $0.015/kWh or 8.7%. The following is a comparison of the previously effective $/kWh rates compared to the newly implemented rates for each customer classification: 

This results in total rate changes of $0.0274/kWh (6.36%) for Residential; $0.01984/kWh (6.05%) for Small Commercial; $0.01157/kWh (3.73%) for Med & Lg C&I; and $0.02324/kWh (7.62%) for Agricultural customers. 

Demand charges increased significantly for commercial customers as well. For example, the non-coincidental demand charge for rate schedule AL-TOU increased by 6.7% and the demand charge for schedule AL-TOU2 increased by 15.7%. We compared AL-TOU’s blended utility demand rate from January to this March update and found that it went from $66.72/kW to $73.01. 

These ever-increasing demand rates make solar + storage projects more favorable, and with the recent release of ourGrid Services feature, there has never been a better time to consider an energy storage system! 

Despite these energy increases, the current system average rates are still slightly below what they were for most of 2023. In January 2024, SDG&E’s total bundled system average electric rates decreased by $0.067/kWh or -17.1% — this March update slightly minimizes that decrease. There are more rate updates slated for SDG&E in 2024, so expect more to come! If you’d like information on electric rate inflation or how and why California IOU’s rates increase, then check out ourElectric Utility Bill Inflation in California Whitepaper that details everything there is to know about California electric rates. 

Arizona Public Service's March Rate Case

APS’s most recent rate case was approved and went into effect March 8, 2024. This rate case introduced base rate increases for all rate classes and multiple rider updates. 

The average residential customer’s bill is expected to increase by 8% or $10.00 per 1000 kWh consumed. Along with the base rate updates, multiple riders changed as well. The Power Supply Adjustment, which is used to recover the cost of fuel used for generation, decreased for all customer classes, and the Federal Environmental Improvement Surcharge was eliminated as a standalone line item and incorporated into the base rates instead.  

Overall rate increases for businesses customers vary based on the size of the customer. Small business customers will experience greater increases in their rates as APS tries to reallocate their revenue distribution away from large business customers to smaller ones. 

Our globally available ETB rates for APS now include the updates outlined in this newest rate case. 

New Feature: Applying Supply Charges as Exports in the EUP

We’ve added a new feature to the Retail Supply Details section in the Energy Use Profile that enables users to apply their retailer supply charge to their exports. 

This feature is helpful for users working with Retail Energy Suppliers, CCA or Direct Access customers on NEM 3.0 in California who need to change their supply charge and want to easily tell ETB what the supply-related export rate should be. This supply-related export rate is usually built into the global rate schedule and can be replaced by creating a custom rate; however, with this new feature, users can apply their supply charge to their exports, thus overriding the exports marked as supply within the rate schedule and eliminating the need to create a custom rate.  

For example, NEM 3.0 customers in California are compensated for both supply and delivery exports by their utility. A Direct Access customer, who receives their supply from a retailer, might be compensated for exports differently according to the agreement between the customer and the supplier. Using this new feature, this customer can change the value of their supply-related exports to match the supply rate from the retailer while keeping the value of any applicable delivery exports the same. 

If you have any questions regarding this feature, feel free to reach out to our utility rates team at utilityraterequest@energytoolbase.com and we’d be happy to help! 

1st Quarter Numbers

Our utility rates team enjoys sharing our progress with ETB users because much of it comes from user requests! Every utility and rate we add signifies expanding opportunities for solar, and we think that is pretty neat! We quantify our Q1 successes below:  

• New global rates added: 266
• Updated global rates: 1980
• Pre-Proposal Service turnaround time: 2.3 days
• New utilities added: 32
• 19 different states
• 5 in Minnesota
• 3 in Louisiana