Your signature will help convince the New Orleans City Council to adopt CLEP, a.k.a., ProRate.

“IF GIVEN THE CHANCE, I WOULD DEFINITELY OPT IN AND CHOOSE ProRate TO BUY AND SELL ELECTICITY FROM / TO ENTERGY NEW ORLEANS AND USE ProRate TO LOWER MY ELECTRICITY BILL, THE BILLS OF MY NEIGHBORS, AND EVEN TRY TO INSTALL A SUSTAINABLE MICROGRID  BEFORE THE NEXT MAJOR HURRICANE.” and I urge the City Council of New Orleans to give me and my neighbors that chance.

Customer Lowered Electricity Price, (CLEP), an electricity rate design, can do all that is promised.  Three times since 2015, CLEP was introduced before the Council of the City of New Orleans in its role of regulator of Entergy New Orleans (ENO). On July 1, 2022, a local Louisiana non-profit, ProRate.Energy introduced ProRate, a.k.a. CLEP, to address the City's most pressing issue: finding the needed electricity self-reliance in the face of storms like Hurricane Ida. Your willingness and interest in urging the Council to try CLEP and your commitment to agree to  use CLEP to buy and sell electricity to and from ENO are the keys we need can help reach all three goals 1. Lower Electricity Prices and bills, 2. Slow Global Climate Change, and 3. Grow thousands of pockets of self reliance, and many more.

https://ProRate.Energy/donate.html

Understanding CLEP must begin with understanding how electricity is sold before CLEP is adopted.
1. The price a customer pays for a kWh = Cost of Energy PLUS Cost of Service ... where

  a. Cost of Energy is the average wholesale electricity price of the current month.
  b. Cost of Service depends upon customer class, e.g., residential Cost of Service is around 8¢/kWh while the cost of service for small commercial is around 6¢/kWh
 2. Except for residential, all customers also pay a demand charge often near $10/KW, for the largest demand in any 15 minutes of that month; this refers to the speed energy is consumed.

The simplest explanation of the CLEP rate design we’ve found is:
1. CLEP customers buy kWhs at the constant cost of service price described in the small commercial rate in ENO’s rate schedule except do not pay true demand charges.  

2. CLEP customers pay for energy at the highly, time-varying, current wholesale price; this is called CLEP5.

3. CLEP customers only pay for average demand during the five months of the year when current whole utility demand may be near the utility’s annual peak. This is how: CLEPm = 50¢/kWh during the 500 hours when the utility’s demand is nearest to the utility’s annual peak demand times, otherwise CLEPm is zero; in this way, CLEPm replaces the demand charge.

4. CLEP provides for these three payments to the utility when electricity is bought and the same payments from the utility when electricity is sold by the customer.  I.e., all three parts of CLEP, namely

 i) the fixed cost of service,

ii) time-varying price of energy, and

iii) the “Time of Use” step function, CLEPm, which turns a $/KW demand charge into a $/kWh allocation which is ZERO except during about 500 hours a year,

are applied in both directions and in the same amounts, i.e., both for buying and selling.

5. CLEP customers get net bills every month, i.e., if sales to the utility exceed purchases or CLEP5 & CLEPm is big enough, ENO pays the customer the net bill in that month; thus, unlike Net Energy Metering there is always $0 to carryover to future months.

 

NOTES:

(The “5” in CLEP5 recalls the fact the wholesale prices change every 5 minutes.)

(The “m” in CLEPm recalls the fact that CLEP customers effectively pay average demand during a month-at-a-time via this charge/payment which only happens or counts during those hours when the utility is “likely” to experience its annual peak demand.)

 

Notes

1. On average, new CLEP customers will not see significant changes in their bills if they do nothing to take advantage of the opportunity.

2. Modest efforts to reduce bills can change a $150/m bill to $50/m.

3.Aggressive use of CLEP can reduce bills by 200%.

4. CLEP increases the payments for rooftop and community solar by around 13%.

5. CLEP completely “finances” large battery purchases out of utility bill savings and does that within the expected lifetime of the battery.

6. A microgrid is an island of electricity supply that will not go down in a major grid failure.

7. A sustainable microgrid runs on renewable energy.

8. Therefore, CLEP makes putting a sustainable microgrid in your home cost-effective. And provides for thousands of pockets of resilience in New Orleans in the face of the next major storm, like Ida.

9. 1/3 of the cash flow to support these investments come simply from PAYING ratepayers to buy wholesale electricity when it is cheap and sell it back when it is expensive.

10. Cheaper whole-priced electricity most often has a lower carbon footprint.

11. There are numerous examples of rates that have been implemented in the US and abroad that have features similar to CLEP; however, we think CLEP is exceptionally good.  If it really proves itself in New Orleans, it can be exported to all utilities worldwide to take a big bite out of the largest cause of global warming, namely: powering buildings.
 

Go to this site to get a more complete explanation.
 Myron.Bernard.Katz@gmail.com