California · California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)

Auditing PG&E commercial bills

Northern and Central California, from Humboldt County to Kern County, including the San Francisco Bay Area and most of the Central Valley.

PG&E delivers electricity and natural gas across Northern and Central California and bills a large share of the state's commercial accounts. Since PG&E moved business customers from the legacy A and E schedules to the B schedules, nearly every commercial rate is time-of-use, with a 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. peak period and interval metering required. Many sites now buy generation from a community choice aggregator such as Peninsula Clean Energy or Marin Clean Energy, while PG&E still bills delivery charges and usually consolidates the CCA's charges on the same statement. That split creates two sets of rates to check on one bill. For multi-site operators, the most frequent PG&E issues are sites left on a schedule their demand no longer qualifies for, time-of-use periods applied to the wrong hours or season, and estimated reads that persist after a meter communication failure. PG&E's annual demand review moves accounts between schedules automatically, which helps, but it does not catch every case.

Practice notes

Request interval data for every account before testing schedules. PG&E's B schedules all require interval meters, so 15-minute data exists for nearly every business account. Green Button Connect My Data is the fastest way to get it at scale, and it lets us rebuild billed demand and time-of-use energy for each period instead of relying on the totals printed on the bill.

Check the CCA and PG&E portions of a consolidated bill separately. The CCA sets generation rates and PG&E applies delivery rates, a Power Charge Indifference Adjustment and other non-bypassable charges. An error in either portion can be recovered, but the claim goes to whichever party issued the charge, and the CCA has its own customer service process.

When an account changes schedule, confirm the effective date on the first bill under the new rate. Partial-period proration around a rate change is a frequent source of small but repeated overcharges, and PG&E will correct them under Rule 17.1 once the period and the correct rate are documented with the tariff sheets in effect at the time.

Back-billing and refunds

PG&E's Electric Rule 17.1 governs adjustments for billing errors, which the rule defines to include incorrect meter reads, crossed meters, wrong meter multipliers and an inapplicable rate. When a customer has been overcharged, PG&E calculates the refund for up to three years, or for the shorter period the error actually lasted. The rule is asymmetric for undercharges: PG&E can back-bill most nonresidential customers for up to three years, but residential and small business customers for a much shorter period. Claims should start as soon as an error is found, since every month of delay drops a month off the refund window.

Findings we see most often

Wrong rate schedule
Accounts left on B-10 or B-19 after load changes, or small sites on B-6 whose evening load makes B-1 cheaper.
TOU period misapplication
Peak-period energy and demand applied to the wrong hours after daylight saving changes or season boundaries.
Estimated reads never trued up
SmartMeter communication failures producing several months of estimated reads before an actual-read true-up.
Meter multiplier errors
CT-metered services billed with a multiplier that does not match the installed transformer ratio after a meter exchange.

Commercial schedules we check

Schedule	Applies to	What we check
B-1Small General Service	Non-residential accounts whose maximum demand has not reached 75 kW for three consecutive months in the last twelve.	Confirm the account still qualifies after any load growth, and check that summer and winter time-of-use energy periods match PG&E's current definitions for each service day.
B-6Small General Time-of-Use Service	Small business accounts under the same 75 kW limit that choose a time-of-use structure with higher peak-period energy prices and no demand charge.	Model the account on B-1 and B-6 with twelve months of interval data. Sites with evening load, such as restaurants, often pay more on B-6.
B-10Medium General Demand-Metered Service	Demand-metered accounts that have exceeded the B-1 and B-6 limit but have not reached the demand level that moves an account to B-19.	Rebuild the maximum demand from 15-minute interval data and compare it with the billed kW. Check the multiplier on any CT-metered service.
B-19Medium General Demand-Metered Time-of-Use Service	Larger commercial and industrial accounts with demand above the B-10 range and below 1,000 kW.	Verify the separate maximum and peak-period demand charges against interval data, and check that the voltage level billed (secondary, primary or transmission) matches the service.
B-20Service to Maximum Demands of 1,000 kW or More	Accounts whose maximum demand has exceeded 999 kW for at least three consecutive months in the most recent twelve.	Confirm the account was moved off B-20 if demand has fallen, and test peak-period demand charges against interval data for each billing period.

Schedule names and eligibility summarized from the utility's published tariff. The utility's current tariff book governs.

PG&E questions

Under Electric Rule 17.1, PG&E calculates overcharge refunds for up to three years, or for the shorter period the error lasted.

Yes. We test the CCA's generation charges against the CCA's published rates and PG&E's delivery charges against PG&E's tariff, and file each claim with the right party.

Eligibility depends on the account's recent demand history under the tariff. We model both schedules with interval data and file the rate change request where the account qualifies.

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from bill access to first findings report: 21 daysfrom bill access to first findings report
of filed claims accepted by the utility in full or in part: 94%of filed claims accepted by the utility in full or in part