I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster

Re:I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster by mercutio2 on Saturday September 20, 2025 @06:06AM (#45311965)

There are 3 different components of PG&E electricity bills, which makes the bill difficult to read. I am also in PG&E East Bay community generation, and when I look at all components, it’s:

Minimum Delivery Charge (what’s paid monthly, which is largely irrelevant, before annual true-up of NEM charges): $11.69/month

Actual charges, billed annually, per kWh:

  Peak NEM charge: $.62277
  Off-Peak NEM charges: $.31026

Plus 3-20% extra (depending on the month) in “non-bypassable charges” (I haven’t figured out where these numbers come from), then a 7.5% local utility tax.

Those rates do get a little lower in the winter (.30 to .48), and of course the very high rates benefit me when I generate more energy than I consume (which only happens when I’m on vacation). But the marginal all-in costs are just very high.

That’s NEM2 + TOU-EV2A, specifically.

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Re:I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster by nullc on Saturday September 20, 2025 @01:46PM (#45315507)

Are you actually able to compute that? With PG&E + MCE because of the way they back off the PG&E generation charges, the actual per-time period rates are not disclosed.

I can solve for them with three equations for three unknowns... but since they change the rates quarterly by the time I know what my exact rates were they have changed.

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