This section of my web site is concerned with SDGE and solar system. My email is at the bottom.
There are some organizations working on action to make things better regarding electric power.
The first calls themselves: San Diego 350. Their site is here: https://sandiego350.org/
From their web page: SanDiego350 is building a movement to prevent the worst impacts of climate change and climate injustice through education and outreach, public policy advocacy, and mobilizing people to take action.
Next is Public Power San Siego, PPSD, https://www.publicpowersd.org
Their goal seems to be to reorganize SDGE or create a new public company to serve the public and save us several billions per year. You can email them here: info@publicpowersandiego.org
On to my reasons for this web page.
First, this web page is here: www.mbkelly.net/power.htm
The Microsoft Word version of this web page is here: www.mbkelly.net/power.docx
The workbook is here: www.mbkelly.net/may_2026.xlsx
I am concerned that some will not download the workbook because of possible viruses. I cannot guarentee not virus, but can cay it is from my personal home system. If you really want a PDF version, please contact me at the email near the end of this message. Still, any person slightly knowledgeable of Excel will be able to capture their own data and make their own workbook. The goal here is to make the reader aware of the situation.
We installed a solar system with 24 panels and 3 batteries. We expected to get compensation for the power that we export to the grid. But how much? We have never really been happy with the amount of compensation but until recently did not expend the effort needed to understand the actual situation. Now we have.
From SDGE we discovered two sources on their website. One provides the power levels for fifteen minute intervals. We can download the numbers for any selected time period. It shows power usage and generation for every fifteen minutes. When I pressed some questions the representative on the phone provided directions showing how they compensate us for power generated. These pages provide the compensation for each billing cycle.
Those pages were a complete surprise.
So much that I captured all the pages they have and examined each of them. I downloaded them, opened with Microsoft Excel, and added some numbers. Here is the surprise. There are a lot of time periods in which SDGE sets the compensation rate to zero. Said in other words, there are many time periods in which we export power but they do not provide any compensation for that power.
Here is a list of the pages by the time of service. The first bill with zero compensation times was in March of 2025. In that month there were 144 fifteen minute period where their compensation was set to zero. During those times, we supplied to the grid, 108 kWh of power. In that month, they cheated us out of compensation for 108 kWh of power.
The same concept applies to each of the bills shown.
Oct 2024 none
Nov 2024 none
Dec 2024 none
Jan 2025 none
Feb 2025 none
Mar 2025 144 cells zero compensation, 108 kWh not compensated
Apr 2025 800 cells zero compensation, 682.06 kWh not compensated
May 2025 976 cells zero compensation, 752.59 kWh not compensated
Jun 2025 440 cells zero compensation, 370.535 kWh not compensated
July 2025 none
Aug 2025 none
Sep 2025 none
Oct 2025 none, the CSV format could not be downloaded
Nov 2025 none
Dec 2025 none
Jan 2026 none
Feb 2026 none
Mar 2026 180 cells zero compensation, 150.395 kWh not compensated
Apr 2026 692 cells zero compensation, 512 kWh not compensated
May 2026 768 cells zero compensation, 597.59 kWh not compensated
Jun 2026 308 cells zero compensation, 216.66 kWh not compensated
In Jun 2026, a circuit breaker tripped for our solar system and it stopped supplying power. We did not know this had happened until late October. This is where I stopped gathering the data.
I am not a good write and don’t know how much data will be appreciated by the average reader. I suspect this will be sufficient to spark the attention of many solar system owners so the narrative stops here.
The Data
I put a copy of my Excel workbook on this page at this link.
Here is how to find the numbers for your system.
Log on to the SDGE web site here: https://myenergycenter.com/portal/PreLogin/Validate
From the tool bar line select Usage -> Usage -> Green Button Download
The page asks for a range of dates. Enter the same dates as from your bill, leave the selection to .csv, and click download. The data will be downloaded to your Downloads directory. It will open with Excel as a CSV. Save it as an Excel workbook to work the numbers.
I don’t know who might visit here, so I include details that many will not need.
This is the critical part. Log on to the SDGE web site here: https://myenergycenter.com/portal/PreLogin/Validate
From the tool bar line select Billing -> Billing History -> View Additional Solar Bill Details
Go to the desired bill date and at the far right click on CSV. I did Excel a few times and all the numbers in the Excel book were in text format. Excel won’t do anything like averages with text based data. The CSV, Comma Separated Values, worked out for me. This downloads the data. With that format we can add columns with formulas.
Edit the workbook
Please have a copy of the work book available for viewing and reference.
At the top of each workbook is a bunch of identifying information. I deleted the first 13 rows or 22 rows of data to get to the interesting parts. Then I deleted columns such as meter number and a column which showed the interval for that row was 15 minutes. It was always 15 minutes so that is a wasted column.
Begin with the usage numbers. After editing there are five columns of numbers. I wanted to look at their compensation day by day, and by rate periods. I presume the reader understand what that means. To make it easier to read I add a column marking the beginning of each day of the week, MON, TUES, etc. Next add three columns for Supper Off Peak, Off Peak, and Peak hours of usage.
In this bill the first day of the will is WED. In column for Supper Off, go down to row for 5:45 AM and add the formula:
=SUM(E2:E25)
This provides a summation of how much power we consumed or sent out during that time period. Do the same for the Off Peak and Peak columns. Then copy paste those columns for each week day of the rest of the month. Yes, a lot of effort.
Then use the SDGE time periods from their bill, do the weekends, and finish up the entire billing cycle.
At the end of the workbook you can add a bunch of sum and average cells to get a better picture of what you consume, generate, and what SDGE does. Leaving those details to you, lets go to the compensation data.
Compensation
For this first workbook, I grafted the compensation columns into the first workbook. Those columns are:
Export kWh, Delivery Export Price, and Deliver Export Credits per interval.
They were interesting, until,…, I noticed some rows in the column Delivery Export Price. The numbers were zero. No compensation for anything exported during that 15 minute period. This was extremely surprising.
Making this short, I added a new column with this formula in the top row of column O:
=IF(L2=0,K2,0)
Column L is the Delivery Export Price. Column K is the amount of energy exported during that time period. Copy that formula down to the remainder of the workbook. The result is, in column O, for each row of data where the compensation is zero, put the amount exported into column O. Put the value 0, zero, in where there is a non-zero price. Now go to the bottom and sum this column. Here is the amount of exported power for which SDGE gave me no credit. In this particular workbook, that number of -597.587 kWh. More than half a megawatt hour of power was exported with zero compensation.
Just to get a better feel, add this to the bottom of column L:
=COUNTIF(L2:L2884,"=0")
Count the number of columns with the compensation value of zero. In this workbook, that is 768. This works out to 192 hours without compensation, or eight days total.
Now I reference the bill for that month. It shows we consumed a total of 60 kWh and were charged $36.06. The bill acknowledges 934 kWh of exports, but gives us credit for $0.37 cents. Their compensation numbers does show 933.665 of export, an agreement. But omits the compensation for 597 kWh of exports.
This is Huge.
This is about my limit, and probably more than what most people will read. For suggestions and comments please send me a message using this address, the word politics followed by the shift 2 character then followed by mbkelly, the period, then net. Hopefully you can create that address but AI will not do be able to. Please put the word power as the first word of the subject line. I get a huge amount of spam at that email so created a rule to put your email in a separate folder making it easy to find.
Your suggestions are solicited.
Thank you for your time and patience.