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Sorry that this is such a local topic but many of our experts here live in this region.
LIght background. San Diego Community Power is a non-profit, eco-focused power delivery company that has been rolled out in the City of San Diego over the last year or so. Most (all?) customers were opted in by default to move from SDGE to SDCP. SDCP only provides power and SDGE does everything else such as deliver it to your home and handle all the billing, tracking your NEM status, etc... SDCP is a little abstract but focuses on renewable energy options and appears to work to be about 1% less expensive than SDGE equivalent. In their first year I've read that for most customers they are 1-2% under or 1% higher than SDGE. As far as NEM 2.0 customers go I've found the following differences they tout. 1) They offer $.0075 per kWh in addition to the base wholesale rate at annual true-up. 2) By default they do monthly true-up for solar customers rather than annual although you can opt into annual true-up.
The SDPC website has power rates but not total costs which make it difficult to do a true apples/apples comparison to SDGE. They did build a bill calculator but they don't show their math which makes it seem pretty untrustworthy. I've seen some posts claiming they are not trustworthy but I suspect they are well intentioned and will likely give a better value than SDGE in the long term but I'm trying to verify that they are ready for our business now. I have seen people claim that SDCP costs more monthly for Solar customers than SDGE but I can't find any real facts to back it up. Two main discussions I've seen have been monthly true-up and NBCs being handled differently. I have been able to do some research I'll share on the first topic and would appreciate the forum's knowledge on the second.
For NEM 2.0 SDCP appears to have the concept of the annual cycle but has put into place a monthly true-up (at least on paper). They market the monthly true-up as something to protect customers from an unexpected large bill that comes once a year. I spent an hour on the phone with their customer service department and they exposed a pretty big problem. SDCP has no way to collect payments directly. They let SDG&E handle all billing and collections. My first months bill after being moved to SDCP (auto opt-in after my annual true-up) was about $320 of which $42 was for SDCP since they only get the power generation piece. However there is no way for me to pay them the $42 they are owed. I explained my SDGE bill specifically said I'd owe nothing until December 2023 at my annual true-up the CSR said that SDGE hadn't caught up to how SDPC does business. They said that in practice monthly true-up was same as annual unless my SDPC portion went over $250 at which point I should expect SDGE to send a notice that a portion of my bill was Past-Due and needed to be paid. So it seems like the policy is very anti-solar on paper but not in practice (at least for most people) since you can ignore the charges until annual true-up unless your solar really doesn't produce much compared to consumption. Note that they allow you to opt-into an annual true up which appears to mirror how SDGE traditionally does it but only before your year starts. Once you get a bill you're locked in until next true-up.
There has been a discussion on reddit where some users claim that the NBCs not counting towards your monthly minimum has to do with SDCP and the extraction of power generation billing from delivery billing. The discussion tapered off without a clear answer to this question but I know many here are self-taught experts at how NPCs are calculated. I'm taking a deep breath because older threads about NBCs seem to require a lot of squinting at fine print in the bills followed by casting chicken bones and reading the results. this riddle may be unsolvable at this point but I should be one of the latest NEM customers rolled into SDPC so I'm hoping some of you have better insight.
LIght background. San Diego Community Power is a non-profit, eco-focused power delivery company that has been rolled out in the City of San Diego over the last year or so. Most (all?) customers were opted in by default to move from SDGE to SDCP. SDCP only provides power and SDGE does everything else such as deliver it to your home and handle all the billing, tracking your NEM status, etc... SDCP is a little abstract but focuses on renewable energy options and appears to work to be about 1% less expensive than SDGE equivalent. In their first year I've read that for most customers they are 1-2% under or 1% higher than SDGE. As far as NEM 2.0 customers go I've found the following differences they tout. 1) They offer $.0075 per kWh in addition to the base wholesale rate at annual true-up. 2) By default they do monthly true-up for solar customers rather than annual although you can opt into annual true-up.
The SDPC website has power rates but not total costs which make it difficult to do a true apples/apples comparison to SDGE. They did build a bill calculator but they don't show their math which makes it seem pretty untrustworthy. I've seen some posts claiming they are not trustworthy but I suspect they are well intentioned and will likely give a better value than SDGE in the long term but I'm trying to verify that they are ready for our business now. I have seen people claim that SDCP costs more monthly for Solar customers than SDGE but I can't find any real facts to back it up. Two main discussions I've seen have been monthly true-up and NBCs being handled differently. I have been able to do some research I'll share on the first topic and would appreciate the forum's knowledge on the second.
For NEM 2.0 SDCP appears to have the concept of the annual cycle but has put into place a monthly true-up (at least on paper). They market the monthly true-up as something to protect customers from an unexpected large bill that comes once a year. I spent an hour on the phone with their customer service department and they exposed a pretty big problem. SDCP has no way to collect payments directly. They let SDG&E handle all billing and collections. My first months bill after being moved to SDCP (auto opt-in after my annual true-up) was about $320 of which $42 was for SDCP since they only get the power generation piece. However there is no way for me to pay them the $42 they are owed. I explained my SDGE bill specifically said I'd owe nothing until December 2023 at my annual true-up the CSR said that SDGE hadn't caught up to how SDPC does business. They said that in practice monthly true-up was same as annual unless my SDPC portion went over $250 at which point I should expect SDGE to send a notice that a portion of my bill was Past-Due and needed to be paid. So it seems like the policy is very anti-solar on paper but not in practice (at least for most people) since you can ignore the charges until annual true-up unless your solar really doesn't produce much compared to consumption. Note that they allow you to opt-into an annual true up which appears to mirror how SDGE traditionally does it but only before your year starts. Once you get a bill you're locked in until next true-up.
There has been a discussion on reddit where some users claim that the NBCs not counting towards your monthly minimum has to do with SDCP and the extraction of power generation billing from delivery billing. The discussion tapered off without a clear answer to this question but I know many here are self-taught experts at how NPCs are calculated. I'm taking a deep breath because older threads about NBCs seem to require a lot of squinting at fine print in the bills followed by casting chicken bones and reading the results. this riddle may be unsolvable at this point but I should be one of the latest NEM customers rolled into SDPC so I'm hoping some of you have better insight.
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