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Yes.
1.) The # of billing days SAM uses is the # of calendar days/month. This is inaccurate. If the #of billing days on your bill agrees with the calendar, it's a coincidence. There are 21 billing cycles and they change yearly. This screws up the monthly baseline. It also screws up how much solar is offset per billing cycle.
2.) There is no daily allowance for electric only customers. The daily allowances are thus way low for those users and no mention of it. This screws up the ( SAM calculated) bills for elec. only users and makes solar appear more cost effective than it actually will be for those cust. because it decreases the tier one allowance and thus increases the upper tier usage.
3.) There is no DWR bond charge or added taxes that all users pay. I understand that some very local municipal taxes that some users pay cannot be accounted for. DWR and ubiquitious taxes apply to all users. This makes all the rates appear lower than they actually are, making solar appear less cost effective.
4.) The rates are out of date. The latest are effective 04/01/2014.
All this has the effect of making the SAM published rate structure unreliable - some months high, some low. Some tier rates are off by 10% or so. I like and use SAM a fair amount, but I've found it best to plug in my own (correct) rate structure and adjust for the billing days manually. The mo./mo. billing date diff. as it interacts w/ daily solar output is something I'm still trying to figure out.
The plug & chug rate structures are a nice touch, but I think the subcontractor supplying the data ought to be replaced.Comment
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