PG&E NEM 1.0 cap estimates? Safe to proceed with June/July solar install?

[ltbighorn]

I noticed when looking at PG&E NEM tracking page that there's a second table (not sure if it's new or if I never noticed it before). It lists:

"Total NEW Requests Pending as of 4/24" as 432.15 MW.
This is described as "Total Submitted requests pending customer action such as providing final building permit to PG&E",
"Remaining MWs to NEM Cap Assuming All Pending Requests on the Line Immediately Complete their Projects...." 0.0 MW.

I thought people couldn't submit until they had been inspected already? Anyone have insight as to the significance of this number? There can't possibly be 432 MW coming online in the next 1-2 months? As of 4/24, the tracking page says 396.04 MW remaining to cap (NEM CAP minus (Cumulative MW installed under NEM + NEW MW In Queue)).

I'm hoping to get in under NEM 1.0 and have reroofing schedule for late June. Under my previous understanding understanding of the installation trends, there's been about 50 MW/month of installations, leaving about 8 months remaining (for 396 MW remaining), or if one were to assume an increase to an average of 80 MW/m, then ~5 months (September).

Under those estimates, it seems like I should be pretty safe installing in late June and turning on in early July. Am I missing something? The only other date that's relevant is the July 1, 2017 deadline, correct? Any thoughts on whether I should be safe to go ahead and sign a contract with a solar installer on this schedule?

NEM 2.0 doesn't look too bad, but I'm concerned that there's more things they can tweak in it which could lead exposure down the line, especially with the forced TOU. Under NEM 1.0 it's nice to know that I can at least switch to non-TOU, should they screw with the TOU schedules too much.

Thanks!

[cebury]

I'll try to answer the easy ones.

You submit your interconnect agreement with the details of the system to PGE. They approve or send it back for corrections. Once approved its in those stats. Yes I'd assume there are many "dead" applications, though SWAG it's a small percentage. I'm not sure what happens after 90 days of no activity, they use to have procedures in place if your project needed it. But now they use electronic doc signing that will expire after the 90 days of each step's submission. After the application is approved (pending) and you get inspection done, your application is complete and you sign the NEM agreement.

That's July 1' 2017 deadline is expiration date of NEM 1.0 IF they don't ever reach the % MW cap. It doesn't help your case, it's an absolute not-to-exceed date.

I can't remember if that second table has always been there.

Call the PGE Solar hotline if you are concerned and ask them. You may be on hold a while but they have first and second tier support for answering questions. They were helpful for me when I had them do a google search that landed on their pge page to ask them a specific question. Point is they took the time to do the search rather than just saying "well I don't know what page you are looking at, /shrug."

[cebury]

From their Descriptions, sedond table has a lot of dead apps in it. That second table is applications that were incomplete or incorrect and are not Complete. That's good news for you.

An application is submitted, when it's done correctly is Completed, when not correct it's Incomplete, when permit received its Approved as PTO.

[sensij]

I could certainly be wrong, but I think if you install in the next couple of months you will get in under NEM 1.0. Even though all the available cap space is spoken for through applications, the rate at which those application turn into installed systems is really the number that matters. For example, you could put your application in now and be part of that number, but when you actually get PTO is what will determine your tariff.

If you use SDG&E as the example, you can see actual PTO rates haven't increased dramatically as we've approached the cap.

http://www.sdge.com/clean-energy/net-energy-metering/overview-nem-cap

PG&E customers might behave differently, but I'd still be looking at actual installation completion rate to estimate when the cap will be hit, maybe with a 10-20% bump to account for some acceleration.

[ltbighorn]

Thanks guys, appreciate the sanity check there. It'd be nice if PG&E posted the monthly growth as easily digestible as the SDG&E. Much easier to pull the trigger on the install knowing that getting NEM 1.0 is still more likely than not.

[JJNorcal]

PG&E updated their NEM tracking site twice in past couple of weeks. Cut-and-paste most recent data below (not sure how well it will render here).

Cap remaining was at 396 MW on 4/24 and 382 MW on 4/30. Not sure what to make of the fact that they have started to update tracking site so frequently.

For what it's worth, we received notification that we were pending interconnection on yesterday, and then we received PTO today; we were in queue just one day.

First Table

Total Available MW Cap		2,409 MW	5% of 48,177 MW
Applications Received as of 04/30/16 (New requests for NEM interconnection)	6,009	109.18 MW
Total NEM Applications in Queue² as of 04/30/16 (Total pending requests for NEM interconnection)	1,037	18.08 MW
Cumulative NEM Installations³ (Projects approved for NEM interconnection)	244,135	2,009.07 MW
NEM Installations and Pending Applications (Cumulative MW installed under NEM + NEM MW in Queue)	245,172	2,027.15 MW	4.21%
Remaining MW to Cap (NEM Cap minus (Cumulative MW installed under NEM + NEM MW in Queue))		381.85 MW

Second Table

Total NEM Requests Pending4 as of 04/30/16 (Total submitted requests pending customer action such as providing final building permit to PG&E)	12,513	436.72 MW
Remaining MWs to NEM Cap Assuming All Pending Requests on the Line Immediately Above Complete Their Projects and Provide PG&E With the Final Building Permits Required To Be Approved for NEM.		0.00 MW

[nomadh]

Talking to SDGE they are pretty cagey in answering but they admitted it could be about a month. From my reading I suspect less. I just got my install in and need the placard and final inspection and I'm still worried a hiccup will stop me getting nem1. I dont think you have a snowballs chance on a summers day solar panel. good luck, maybe the uncertainty of getting nem 1 will make the number of applicants slow way way down. I could have used a reroof too but too much time and money. I'll have to get another 10 years out of mine.

[ltbighorn]

PG&E updated their NEM tracking site twice in past couple of weeks. Cut-and-paste most recent data below (not sure how well it will render here).

Cap remaining was at 396 MW on 4/24 and 382 MW on 4/30. Not sure what to make of the fact that they have started to update tracking site so frequently.

For what it's worth, we received notification that we were pending interconnection on yesterday, and then we received PTO today; we were in queue just one day.

Thanks for the update JJNorcal. It is a little concerning to me that they've changed their reporting pattern, but I don't know what to make of it either. Wish I had an archive of all their detailed updates.

That's 2.365 MW/day between those two periods, which if kept up for a month would be 70.95 MW/month. At that rate, 381.85 MW would last until October 11th. Hopefully that remains true. I'm pretty confident I could get turned on by mid-July -- it's 72 days until July 15th. At 100 MW/month it'd fill late August. So the install rate would have to more than double to cut me off -- 159.10 MW/month or greater -- though it could end up being pretty stressful.

Unless someone has some additional insight I'm missing, the odds still look good for me, so I'll probably go ahead and sign a solar contract in the next couple weeks, with some heavy incentives to not miss dates. In the seemingly unlikely case I get pushed into NEM 2.0, the consequences are unpleasant but not disasterous. I think the $ math largely pencils out the same, just with the greater exposure to TOU muckery due to the forced TOU plan usage. The increased minimums don't seem too severe.

Interesting that yours got approved so fast, yet they still have 18.08 MW ready but in queue.

Talking to SDGE they are pretty cagey in answering but they admitted it could be about a month. From my reading I suspect less. I just got my install in and need the placard and final inspection and I'm still worried a hiccup will stop me getting nem1. I dont think you have a snowballs chance on a summers day solar panel.

nomadh, do you mean you don't think someone on SDGE has a chance of a NEM 1.0 install in July? If so, yeah, totally. No way I'd sign in SDGE territory for anything but an early May install at the latest. This thread is about PG&E though, which while certainly uncomfortably close still seems like it should be OK.

[JJNorcal]

Ltbighorn, I’m not following your math, but I may well be missing something.

I suspect that PG&E authorizes PTO only on weekdays (just a guess), and given 5 weekdays between 4/24 and 4/30 (1 PG&E work week), I think most recent fill rate is 14 MW per week. Doesn’t change your cap date prediction much, but if PG&E continues to update weekly, then it should be easy to gauge progress.

I noticed inclusion of the second table essentially the same time you did, and I can tell you for certain that this was the first time PG&E included second table. I started to use the wayback machine in March to archive PG&E tracking site (looks like I missed last weeks though). You can fish out some data here: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/...ing/index.page

Note that wayback does not crawl the web page on its own; I forced archiving using Save Page Now feature. Now that I’m PTO, I don’t think I will be triggering future archives (though I did today).

Back down the for what it’s worth path, I believe we were in the first row of second table back on 4/7 (date we signed NEM agreement), we jumped to third row of first table on 5/2 (email indicating queued for PG&E engineering review), and finally to forth row of first table on 5/3 (email authorizing PTO).

Finally, a few observations still very much in the for what it’s worth category:

1. We signed original contract on 3/6, so contract to PTO was almost 2 months. But turned out our MSP had to be updated (FPE fire hazard), change order required, all of which possibly delayed things along the order of a week.
2. The first row of first table (apps received) is pretty meaningless. These folks quickly flow into first row of second table. I think!
3. The first row of second table (requests pending) buffers on the order of 1 month of folks that are in process of getting panels installed, building permits, etc.
4. Requests pending must contain a large number of dead projects. There is language in the NEM application that indicates not considered stale for 1 year.
5. At the end of March, requests pending was 15,336 and it is now 12,513. Down 2,823.
6. NEM installations + pending apps went from 239,218 to 245,172, up 5,954. Given cap availability went down 53.58 MW, average nameplate capacity was about 9 KW.
7. The fact that #6 difference is larger than #5 difference might imply that 3,071 folks jumped straight from table 1 row 2 to table 1 row 3; they weren’t in the queue long enough to register in table 2.
8. If there are a lot of dead projects, then I would expect requests pending would generally stay flat (sometimes up, sometimes down); number of folks entering pending state should roughly equal number of folks entering queue or obtaining PTO.
9. Congratulations if you got this far. I can get carried away...

[sensij]

Some older data is included here:

https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum/solar-panels-for-home/solar-panels-for-your-home/16586-sdg-e-nem-cap

The monthly updates are public record, if you know what to look for you can find them on CPUC's site, maybe SDG&E's. I'd start by searching all "advice letters" between then and now.

[ltbighorn]

Ltbighorn, I’m not following your math, but I may well be missing something.

I suspect that PG&E authorizes PTO only on weekdays (just a guess), and given 5 weekdays between 4/24 and 4/30 (1 PG&E work week), I think most recent fill rate is 14 MW per week. Doesn’t change your cap date prediction much, but if PG&E continues to update weekly, then it should be easy to gauge progress.

Same math really. 396.04 - 381.85 = 14.19. 14.19 / 6 days = 2.365 MW/day. If you assume that the results would have been the same for the 7-day period including one more weekend day, then it'd be that 14.19 MW/week or 2.027 MW/day.

At 2.027 MW/day it'd be 188 days, a little better than if the 161 days if it were 14 MW per 6 days. Nov 5th vs Oct 8th'ish.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/...ing/index.page

Note that wayback does not crawl the web page on its own; I forced archiving using Save Page Now feature. Now that I’m PTO, I don’t think I will be triggering future archives (though I did today).

Thanks for the link! I'll take up the mantle for saving the pages through my install...

It does seem like there must be a lot of dead installs. Good find on the stale after 1 year language. Will just have to keep an eye on it. If they do update weekly now, that'll give me another week or two of data before I have to sign contract.

Some older data is included here:

https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum...-sdg-e-nem-cap

The monthly updates are public record, if you know what to look for you can find them on CPUC's site, maybe SDG&E's. I'd start by searching all "advice letters" between then and now

Thanks. I'll fish through and fill in the gaps.

[nomadh]

Are the pge and sdge totals different? I thought nem 1 was a total state number. Not surprised if I'm wrong. Or just forgot.

[sensij]

Are the pge and sdge totals different? I thought nem 1 was a total state number. Not surprised if I'm wrong. Or just forgot.

It is not a state total. Each of the three investor owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, SDG&E) has its own allocation of NEM 1.0 installations, based on its peak demand.

[ltbighorn]

Looks like they may indeed be going to weekly updates now.

Went from 381.85 MW as of 4/30 to 368.51 MW as of 5/8. That's 13.34 MW over ~1 week (8 days, 4/30 was a Saturday, 5/8 is a Sunday).

That's either 1.6675 MW/day (8 days) or 1.9057 MW/day (7 days), which would be 220 days (Dec 14) and 193 days (Nov 17) remaining respectively. If you average the last 2 weeks (396.04 - 368.51 = 27.53 MW), then it's 1.9664 MW/day, or 187 days remaining (Nov 11). So this week was a bit slower than last week.

Whereas the month of March was 53.58 MW (435.43 - 381.85), or ~1.786 MW/day (30 days). If the rest of May goes at the average of the last two weeks, then May would be ~60.96 MW filled. An increase but not a shocking one, still exhausting early Nov (the 5th).

"Total NEM Requests Pending" from the second table went up less than 1 MW in the last week. Still fits with the mostly dead apps theory?

Table 1:

Total Available MW Cap		2,409 MW	5% of 48,177 MW
Applications Received in May 2016 as of 05/08/16 (New requests for NEM interconnection)	1,316	11.35 MW
Total NEM Applications in Queue² as of 05/08/16 (Total pending requests for NEM interconnection)	619	16.91 MW
Cumulative NEM Installations³ (Projects approved for NEM interconnection)	245,875	2,023.58 MW
NEM Installations and Pending Applications (Cumulative MW installed under NEM + NEM MW in Queue)	246,494	2,040.49 MW	4.24%
Remaining MW to Cap (NEM Cap minus (Cumulative MW installed under NEM + NEM MW in Queue))

Table 2:

Total NEM Requests Pending4 as of 05/08/16 (Total submitted requests pending customer action such as providing final building permit to PG&E)	12,172	437.64 MW
Remaining MWs to NEM Cap Assuming All Pending Requests on the Line Immediately Above Complete Their Projects and Provide PG&E With the Final Building Permits Required To Be Approved for NEM.

[sensij]

Sort of on topic with this thread, the CPUC just released a new proposed decision with directives on how progress toward the NEM caps should be reported:

http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M162/K005/162005384.PDF

Some interesting discussion in it about how each IOU has approached its reporting system.