Thoughts on Solar

Run on Sun has been doing Pasadena Solar for more than 10 years, but only now have we gotten around to dedicating a webpage just to Pasadena Solar! 

Who loves Pasadena Solar?

I know, kinda silly (and foolish from an SEO perspective) but we figured we were fine as we were.  But then I looked at the search results on Google for “Pasadena Solar” and it was really depressing.  I mean seriously - read some of those reviews and you know that they are fake - but still their related websites were getting better rankings than ours!  Not acceptable!!!

So now, if you want to see a webpage that proudly proclaims its love for Pasadena Solar, we’ve got you covered - complete with this iconic image!

Oh, and because we do so much work in neighboring Altadena we are hoping to do a shout-out page for them too but we need an idea for the quintessential Altadena image - if you have ideas, please let us know!

We occasionally encounter potential clients who have been given wildly optimistic proposals that promise amazing performance and use every square inch of the roof, regardless of the major shade issues of the site.  We recently drove by a house that suffered from this exact problem.

White picket fence, solar, and SHADE!

What you see here is a west-facing roof with an almost permanently shaded roof section. There are two large trees that completely shade the solar panels for about half of the day. And, since the panels are facing west, they are not going to produce very much energy in the morning when the sun is in the east.  As much as we love microinverters, they cannot save the day here!

After some research (gotta love online permit databases!), we determined that this is a 9.54 kW system consisting of 36 265 Watt panels. We analyzed the system’s potential performance assuming that the installer used the best products on the market (i.e., LG solar panels and Enphase microinverters).  Based on the satellite image of this property, we see that most of the roof is in full sun. The overall system has 5 panels south facing, 6 east, 10 on a flat roof, 6 west in full sun, and our suspect 9 panels on the west roof in almost full shade.

For our analysis, we used a 50% solar access value for those 9 panels (a very generous assumption). The rest of the system was assumed to have minimal shading.  Based on those assumptions, this system is likely to produce 217,875 kWh over the next 20 years. Of that, only 30,726 kWh will be produced by those 9 west-facing panels. What that means is that  25% of the system (9 panels of 36) is only going to produce 14% of the system’s energy, and that is based on a very generous assumption about how much sun actually reaches those panels.

Put another way, over the life of the system, at best, those 9 shaded panels provide half as much value to the homeowner as the rest of the array. 

What you see in that picture is the result of an installer who failed to provide their customer with enough information to make an informed decision. Instead, the customer was sold the biggest system possible to maximize the installer’s profit, not the customer’s benefit.  If you are comparing solar bids, and one company is proposing a much larger system than the others, you might want to ask, who will those extra panels benefit the most?

Sara multitasking at a job site.

It is with great excitement that we introduce to you the latest member of the Run on Sun family, Sara Pavey, our new Projects Coordinator!

We’ve had our eye on Sara for quite some time as she has been in the solar industry for more than five years with a variety of other solar companies.  Indeed, during her tenure at one of those companies, her bosses derided her as a “teller, not a seller,” because she has the audacity to take the time to fully explain things to potential solar clients!  Needless to say, we are thrilled to have another “teller” on our team as we are fully committed to answering all of our clients questions before they sign on the dotted line!

Sara is a proud graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Go Mustangs!), earning her degree in Mechanical Engineering. Sara demonstrated her technical insights at her very first Run on Sun jobsite, suggesting a clever re-routing of cables that was both more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing.  We look forward to putting all of her tech skills to use—as well as her “telling” approach to sales! 

Prior to joining Run on Sun, Sara honed her installation skills by volunteering with Grid Alternatives, a nationwide non-profit that “brings the benefits of solar technology to communities that would not otherwise have access, providing needed savings for families, preparing workers for jobs in the fast-growing solar industry, and helping clean our environment."  (Learn more about Grid Alternatives here.)

A native of Southern California (yes, there really are some natives here!), Sara lives in Pasadena with her husband, Kyle, and two (very) young children, Isla and Liam. When Sara is not crunching numbers or climbing on the roof, you will find her at the LA Zoo, Kidspace Children’s Museum, or a local trail. If both children are miraculously napping at the same time, she likes to paint colorful abstract paintings on any available surface, including the shower door.  (Another skill for us to tap!)

Please join me in welcoming Sara to the Run on Sun family!

As Run on Sun rings in the new year and looks forward to a great 2017, we have some big news of changes taking place on our team. Our Projects Coordinator / Solar Ninja, Laurel, has moved to Oregon to spread the joys of solar power  in her home state. She wanted to share some final thoughts with her Run on Sun solar family…

Just over two years ago I made a flash decision that would change my career trajectory in a bigger way than I ever could have imagined. I came to Los Angeles after earning my Masters in Global Public Health. While I’ve always been passionate about solutions to environment and health, I hadn’t ever thought about working in the solar industry for perhaps obvious reasons (EVERYONE asks me how I started in solar with a public health background). After a few months living in LA without finding health work, I met someone at a green event who worked for a solar company. That encounter got me thinking about the fact that there is so much sun in Los Angeles but the air pollution is literally in your face every day. I realized that PV Solar provides an incredible opportunity to work towards something of real value for people, the environment, and for broader global health reducing the impacts of burning fossil fuels. So I took a chance and after doing a little research into who was working in my nearby vicinity (avoiding commuting in LA was a big priority) and who was doing solar for the right reasons… I contacted Jim Jenal at Run on Sun. I told Jim I was happy to schlep materials around the county, handle paperwork, answer phones, and do whatever it took to get more solar into our community if he would just teach me all about the industry. I didn’t realize quite how far that deal would go. You see, one of Jim’s past lives was as a high school teacher and despite the small size of his company he is considered one of the thought leaders in the solar industry, largely through this blog.

Over the next two years he taught me everything there is to know about running a solar installation company. Its not very often that one is given the opportunity to learn every aspect of an industry with an employer who gives you the confidence and tools you need to grow exponentially in a short period of time. I ate it all up! After a year I was wearing as many hats as one can imagine in a solar installation business… Inside Sales, Lead Developer, Site Assessor, Project Designer, Project Coordinator, Safety and Health Officer, Marketing Manager, Solar Blog Writer, Boom Lift Operator and of course Solar Installer. That’s when I made my own business cards with my new self-proclaimed title - “Solar Ninja". 

Working with Velvet, Ralph, Josh, Robert, and Jim on Run on Sun’s team was more empowering and satisfying than I ever imagined working in a for-profit field could be. I was helping people to reduce their impact on the environment, lower their costs, and show their neighbors that renewable energy is a real solution everyone can be a part of. I learned that, counter to popular belief, a sales person could be honest, forthright, and down to earth. I learned that we could run our business with integrity and give people quality 20+ year products they could trust. I learned that people who want to go solar are some of the coolest people and really makes sales work a joy. And more than anything else, I learned that I wanted to stay in this exciting industry that was growing and improving exponentially before my eyes. 

It was with the support of Jim Jenal and all the know-how he bestowed upon me that I was able to earn my PV Solar Technical Sales Professional certification through NABCEP. And I was offered an exciting position managing a new solar installation branch in Bend, Oregon for a forward-thinking solar company, Elemental Energy. Elemental even has a non-profit arm called Twende, installing off-grid systems in developing countries around the world! So this truly is a dream job combining my Global Health and Solar Ninja skills into one awesome adventure!  

I am sad to be saying goodbye both to the Run on Sun team and all the wonderful clients I worked with over my tenure which we fondly refer to as our Run on Sun family. Though the sun is setting on my time in Southern California, the sun is shining bright (everything is literally whitewashed with snow currently) in Bend! I look forward to hearing how things continue to grow with Run on Sun. If ever you or someone you know finds yourself with property that needs to be solarized in Central Oregon I’d love to hear from you! 

Thank you for reading my humble Thoughts on Solar! Much love and sunshine for all — Laurel

A client of ours noted that Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) offers, in addition to its regular, Residential tiered rate structure, the option to switch to a Time-of-Use rate structure, and he asked if he would derive additional savings from making that switch. Turns out that is not an easy question to answer, and there certainly isn’t a “one size fits all” result. We decided to take a closer look into these rates both for PWP and for the folks in Southern California Edison (SCE) territory.

SPOILER ALERT - The following is pretty much down in the weeds.  You have been warned!

Defining Tiered and Time-of-Use (TOU) Rates

Let’s start by defining our terms. Most residential electric customers, of both PWP and SCE, are on a tiered rate structure. That means that there are two or more cost steps - called tiers - for the energy that you use. Tiered rates assume that there is some minimally expensive charge for the first allocation of energy per billing cycle, and that as you use more energy your cost for energy increases. For example, SCE’s Domestic rate has three tiers and in the first tier the charge is 8.8¢/kWh, in the second tier the charge is 16¢/kWh, but the final tier is 22.4¢/kWh! (There  is also a non-tiered component that adds another 6.9¢/kWh to the customer’s bill.)

PWP, on the other hand, has a somewhat perverse tier structure in that the lowest tier is very cheap, 1.7¢/kWh, the second tier is significantly higher, 13.5¢/kWh, but the final tier actually goes down to just 9.9¢/kWh! Since the whole point of tiered rates is to provide an incentive for heavy users to reduce their usage, PWP is actually rewarding those who consume more than 25 kWh per day with lower rates! Very odd.

Time-of-use rates, on the other hand, are generally not tiered. Instead, the day is broken up into segments and the cost of energy varies depending on the segment in which it is consumed. PWP refers to these segments as “On-Peak” (from 3-8 p.m.) and “Off-Peak” (all other hours). But PWP’s TOU rate retains the tiered element as well, making it a truly odd hybrid rate structure.

SCE’s approach is more involved, dividing the day into three, more complicated segments: “On-Peak” (2-8 p.m. weekdays - holidays excluded), “Super Off-Peak” (10 p.m. to 8 a.m. everyday), and “Off-Peak” (all other hours).

For both PWP and SCE there is a seasonal overlay on these rates, with energy costs increasing in the summer months (defined as June 1 through September 30).

(It is important to note that both PWP’s and SCE’s TOU rates put the most expensive energy in the late afternoon to evening time period - pricing energy to offset against the “head of the duck.” Ultimately, these rates will create the energy storage market in California, but that is a post for another day.

Analyzing the Benefits of a Rate Switch - Pre-Solar

Assuming that one can create a spreadsheet to model these different rates (not a small task in and of itself!) there is one more hangup - data. Both PWP and SCE report total monthly usage to customers on their tiered rate plans - but in order to analyze your potential bill under a TOU rate, you must have hourly usage data for every day of the year! (Because there are 8,760 hours in a [non-leap] year, such a usage data collection is typically referred to as an 8760 file.)

The standard meters that PWP has installed simply do not record that data, so the average PWP customer has no way to know whether they would save money by making the switch.

On the other hand, most SCE customers do have access to that data and they can download it from SCE’s website.

After you create an account, login to it and go the “My Account” page. On the left-hand-side you will see some options - click on “My Green Button Data” (the too cute by half name for the interval data you are seeking), select the data range for the past twelve months, set the download format to “csv” and check the account from which to download. Then press the “download” button and cross your fingers - in our experience, the SCE website fails about as often as it actually produces the data that you are seeking!

Modeling PWP

Given that PWP doesn’t have data available, is there any way to estimate what the results might be? The answer is, sort of. We took an 8760 data set from an SCE customer and used that as our test data for both PWP and SCE. (The data file does not identify the customer.) Since the data file has an entry for every hour of every day, we can segment the usage against the On-Peak and Off-Peak hours, and using a pivot table - probably the most powerful took in Excel - we can summarize those values over the course of the year, as you see in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Usage Profile for PWP

Summer months are highlighted in orange. For this specific energy usage profile, Off-Peak usage is more than twice that of the On-Peak usage (9,806 to 4,009 kWh respectively). So how does that work out when we apply the two different rate structures? The table in Figure 2 shows the details of the two rates:

Figure 2 - PWP Rates - Standard Residential and TOU

Under both rate plans, the distribution is tiered (with the perverse reverse incentive for usage above 750 kWh). Added to that is either the seasonally adjusted flat rate for energy, or the seasonally adjusted TOU energy charge.

Applying those rates to the Usage Profile in Figure 1 allows us to see what the energy and distribution components would be under both approaches. Given the hybrid nature of these rates, you might expect them to be similar and you would be correct. The distribution charge - which applies to both - comes to $1,180 for the year. The flat rate energy charge comes to $893, whereas the TOU charge is $985. Meaning that someone electing to use the TOU rate would have a yearly total of $2,165, whereas the flat rate user would have a total bill of $2,074, making the TOU rate - for this specific energy profile - 4% higher.

Beyond that, PWP has a number of other charges - such as a public benefit charge, an underground surtax, and a transmission charge - that are only tied to total usage, so the ultimate difference between these two rates is even smaller.

Modeling SCE

SCE rate structures are significantly more complicated that PWP’s. For example, the tier 1 (aka baseline) allocation varies by location. Since SCE covers such a huge and diverse area from cool coastal regions to absolute deserts, customers are allocated more energy per day in their baseline depending upon where they live. In the area around Pasadena that is covered by SCE, a typical daily baseline allowance would be 13.3 kWh in the summer and 10.8 kWh in the non-summer months. The baseline then is that number times the number of days in the billing cycle. Tier 2 applies to every kWh above baseline, but below 200% of baseline. Tier 3 applies to everything beyond that. As with PWP, the tiered rate only applies to “delivery” charges. The energy generation charges are the same all year. Here’s what that rate structure looks like:

Figure 3 - SCE’s Tiered Domestic Rate

The first thing that you notice when you look at this rate is how much higher it is than the rates from PWP, and the end calculation bears that out - the same usage that resulted in an annual bill of $2,074 in Pasadena becomes $3,227 once you cross the border into Altadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, or Sierra Madre - an increase of 56%! (There’s a reason why a growing percentage of our clients are coming from those surrounding, SCE-territory communities!)

So what would happen if this beleaguered client were to shift to a TOU rate? First, we need to re-parse the usage data according to SCE’s more complicated segmentation scheme, which gives us Figure 4:

Figure 4 - SCE’s Segmented Usage Data

Once again, the On-Peak usage is the smallest category of the three, amounting to just 23% of total usage, compared to 42% in Off-Peak, and 35% in Super Off-Peak.

Of course, SCE can’t do anything in a simple fashion, so they have not one but two basic approaches to their TOU rates, Option A and Option B.  Option A rates run from a low of 13¢/kWh (in summer Super Off-Peak), to 29¢/kWh (during summer Off-Peak) to an eye-popping 44¢/kWh (during summer On-Peak).  However, Option A includes a credit of 9.9¢/kWh on the first baseline worth of energy which reduces the monthly bill by roughly $30.

Option B deletes that baseline credit and replaces it with a “meter charge” (even though it is the same meter!) of 53.8¢/kWh/day, or roughly $17/month.  In return, the On-Peak charges are significantly reduced from 44¢/kWh to just 32¢/kWh.

So how does this shake out?  The results are quite surprising, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 - SCE Rate Structure Comparison

The two left columns show the month-by-month calculations for both delivery (the tiered component) and generation (the flat component).  The two right columns show the month-by-month calculations for the two different TOU rates.

The bottom line is striking: under TOU-A there is a savings of 5% over the tiered rate, whereas the savings jump to 19% by going to TOU-B!  That is a savings of $600/year just by changing rate plans - a switch that any SCE customer can make.

MAJOR CAVEAT: YOUR MILEAGE WILL VARY!

The results displayed here are entirely dependent on your actual energy usage and no two usage profiles are alike.   It is possible, even likely, that some usage profiles will see an increase in bills under either TOU option.

The good news is, that for a nominal fee,  this is an analysis that we could do for any SCE residential customer - we would just need access to your usage data.

So that completes our pre-solar analysis. In our next post, we will look at how these results change when you add a solar power system into the mix.