Can't Download Utility Rates

For some reason every single current rate plan for my utility (Southern California Edison) is NOT marked as "approved" in the OpenEI database, which makes those plans inaccessible for downloading to SAM. Is there a way to force SAM to search ALL plans in the OpenEI database?

Hi Joseph,

You should be able to show all of the rates available for SCE (or any other utility company) by clearing the Show Active Only check box, and choosing All Schedules at the top right corner of the OpenEI Utility Rate Database window. SAM should list all of the rates, regardless of whether they are approved.

I think the issue may be that SAM is accessing an older version of the OpenEI database than the one available online.

If there is a rate online that you would like to use in SAM, you could enter it manually -- the structure of the online database is similar to SAM's so it should be straightforward, if a bit tedious to enter the data. For example, the energy rate data for the SCE TOU-D-4-9PM residential rate looks like this on the website:



And you would enter it like this in SAM:



Once you have entered the rate data in SAM, you can use the Save rate data and Load rate data buttons near the top of the Electricity Rates page to use the data to use in different SAM files without having to enter it each time.

I have created an Issue in the SAM code repository, so hopefully we can update this for the next version, which we plan to release at the end of this calendar year (2020): github.com/NREL/SAM/issues/361 .

Best regards,
Paul.

Thank you. I have the rates edited, but I can't figure out how to edit the schedule to specify when each rate applies.

Hi Joseph,

That process is described in Help: Use your mouse to select a rectangle in the weekday or weekend schedule matrix and type a number to assign a period number to that section of the matrix. Use the letters a, b, or c if you need to assign numbers 10, 11 or 12 respectively.

Best regards,
Paul.