Why Consolidated Billing for Solar and Utility Energy is Better

Aside from the obvious reason that receiving a single, easy-to-read energy bill is always better than receiving two energy bills - one from the utility and one from the solar provider - consolidated billing solves a data problem. Typically, when billing for onsite solar usage or any other distributed energy resource (DER), bills are more often than not based upon some percentage of the solar production, an amount estimated to offset some consumption. Given that utilities are not great at matching actual solar usage to solar production across an entire property or subscriber base, this inevitably means that a community solar subscriber or tenant signs up for too little or too much solar, overpaying for their energy consumption.

The Solution: Consumption-Based DER Billing

The solution is consumption-based DER billing. That requires a lot of data from the owner of the meter, most often the local utility, thanks to laws prohibiting submetering by landlords that have outlived their usefulness. More on those laws later. Consumption-based billing ensures that a solar subscriber or tenant never pays for more solar energy than they actually consume and never pays more than they would have paid for utility-supplied power.

This requires a substantial amount of consumption data for each participating tenant/subscriber and the utilities do not make it easy to obtain such data for tenants. Utilities have generally not kept pace with advances in the energy or data industry. Consequently, attempting to get timely, accurate, and reliable data on hundreds of individual tenants and/or subscribers is akin to chasing shadows - just when you think you have it, it slips away.

Submetering Laws: A Barrier to Consumption-Based Billing

The original intention of laws prohibiting master metering (a single meter for an entire building) was to encourage conservation of energy by providing specific consumption information through unit meters to tenants, as well as to protect tenants from potential exploitation. Such laws either prohibit or have been interpreted to prohibit submetering, a technology that was not widely used or readily available at the time. Requiring the utility to directly meter each unit prevents landlords from installing their own meters and potentially overcharging for utilities. However, these regulations haven't evolved to match today's energy technology and data management advancements. Laws prohibiting master metering now stand as barriers to more efficient use of onsite DER and more transparent energy billing.

The direct metering by the utility requirement forces onsite DER prover-landlords to rely on utilities for consumption data. However, the delays and/or unreliable data cause a disconnect between solar production and energy consumption. When renewable energy and smart grid technologies are rapidly advancing, this is an unnecessary obstacle. The submetering laws created to protect tenants are now hindering their access to clean energy, savings on their energy bills, and fair, accurate billing practices.

The Benefits of Consolidated Billing

Currently, the most effective and cost-efficient way to get that data - at least for tenants -  is to have the property owner/manager, which provides the solar energy, manage the tenant utility accounts on behalf of the tenants. This allows one entity to provide one authorization on behalf of each tenant to access their utility data, rather than hundreds.

In the absence of this one entity providing such authorization, the property owner must obtain separate authorizations from each tenant to access their utility account data, which is not nearly as reliable. If the tenant changes the password on their account, the property owner loses access to the consumption data and cannot produce a bill based on what the tenant actually used. And even with access, the data reliability is poor, requiring many hours of work to get the utility to address missing data points critical for billing.

When tenants manage their own accounts, they must deal with these issues individually. With consolidated billing, the property owner/manager or billing company can address these issues on their behalf and provide them with a bill that is easy to understand and shows them how to maximize their use of the solar resource.

IvyDual Billing: Our Solution to Navigating Regulatory Challenges

Given that the California Public Utilities Commission does not seem amenable to implementing a fix for the data challenges or to allowing consolidated billing, Ivy is exploring more robust data connections to continue billing tenants based upon their actual consumption of solar energy. Although this works in California, such data is not available everywhere. It’s unfortunate that such a simple solution is so difficult to implement. However, Ivy’s dual billing system ensures compliance with the Commission’s rules and offers billing solutions no matter the data landscape.

Don’t let outdated systems hold you back. Explore how Ivy’s innovative billing solutions can streamline your energy management and maximize your solar investment. Contact us today to learn more and take control of your energy future.

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