What does PG&E pay for power sent back to the grid?

Hourly avoided-cost credit on exports, no retail netting. Annual, at the end of each 12-billing-cycle Relevant Period counted from permission to operate (you may ask once to move the date), but you still pay net charges every month. If you exported more kWh than you imported over the period, the surplus kWh are debited at “the utility’s average real-world retail export compensation rates for all NBT customers” over the past 12 months. The same kWh are then credited at the Net Surplus Compensation rate, a 12-month rolling average of PG&E's DLAP price from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus a Renewable Attribute Adder if you file PG&E's REC form (Form 79-1155-02), get the system certified by the CEC and transfer the WREGIS certificates to PG&E. NSC first pays anything you owe PG&E; the rest rolls forward, or PG&E sends a check on request if it is greater than $1. CCA and Direct Access customers get no NSC from PG&E.

Do I need a battery with PG&E?

Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because PG&E does not credit exports one for one, the return has to come from using your own production rather than selling it, which after dark means storage and usually a larger array than a one for one utility would need. The other half is backup: panels alone shut off in an outage, so a battery is what keeps the house running in a storm. We do not refer panels-only systems in PG&E territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.

How do I find my PG&E bill?

Sign in at pge.com. Open My Account, then Billing. Open the latest bill and save the PDF. Or screenshot the summary page. If you cannot get to it, a rough guess at your average monthly amount is enough to start.

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Pacific Gas and Electric net metering in California

Northern and central California, from Eureka to Bakersfield including San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Fresno. Residential solar customers on PG&E’s Solar Billing Plan are billed on Schedule E-ELEC, and PG&E publishes its own hourly export values for each application year.

Type: Investor owned
Accounts: 5.5M

What they credit you

Hourly avoided-cost credit on exports, no retail netting

Published terms

PG&E credits every kilowatt hour you export at an hourly Export Compensation Rate from the CPUC Avoided Cost Calculator, and bills what you import separately at your retail rate (Schedule E-ELEC for residential customers), with no netting between the two. On PG&E's 2026 price sheet for 2026 applications, the generation and delivery parts together run from $0.00001 a kWh ($0.00000 + $0.00001, May weekends and holidays, hour from 3 p.m.) to $1.19289 ($0.96585 + $0.22704, August weekends and holidays, hour from 7 p.m.), and the generation part is credited only to customers who buy their generation from PG&E. Most residential customers also get an ACC Plus bonus credit per exported kWh, fixed for nine years from permission to operate: $0.00880 for an application completed in 2026 and $0.00440 for one completed in 2027, or $0.03600 and $0.01800 for low-income households. Applications completed by 31 December 2027 also lock in a nine-year schedule of hourly export values from permission to operate, but the values in that schedule change every calendar year.

Month to month: Export credits are kept as separate generation and delivery balances, and each pays only the matching per-kWh charges. Unused amounts carry from month to month within your 12-billing-cycle Relevant Period, then into the next Relevant Period for as long as you stay on NBT. If you leave NBT, the leftover is forfeited at your last true up. ACC Plus credits can pay any charge, including the non-bypassable charges, and do not expire; if you terminate service with PG&E, PG&E pays you for any ACC Plus credit left.
Once a year: Annual, at the end of each 12-billing-cycle Relevant Period counted from permission to operate (you may ask once to move the date), but you still pay net charges every month. If you exported more kWh than you imported over the period, the surplus kWh are debited at “the utility’s average real-world retail export compensation rates for all NBT customers” over the past 12 months. The same kWh are then credited at the Net Surplus Compensation rate, a 12-month rolling average of PG&E's DLAP price from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus a Renewable Attribute Adder if you file PG&E's REC form (Form 79-1155-02), get the system certified by the CEC and transfer the WREGIS certificates to PG&E. NSC first pays anything you owe PG&E; the rest rolls forward, or PG&E sends a check on request if it is greater than $1. CCA and Direct Access customers get no NSC from PG&E.

Published terms · checked 2026-10-13 · source

Installers serving PG&E customers

Pick one. Only the company you choose receives your details, and only that company calls you.

CompanyReviews, years trading, BBB grade

Not sure which to choose?

Let us choose the installer for youIf you are not sure which company to pick, we will recommend a trusted partner installer that serves your address, from the installers available in your area.Choose for me

These are real companies operating in PG&E territory. Bold Energy is listed first because it is the company we introduce first. That order is our choice, not a score. The other companies are ordered by reviews, years trading and BBB grade. None of them pays us for placement. Pick the one you want and we will call you to arrange it.

Ordering combines three things we read from primary sources: Google review count and rating, years trading taken from the company’s Better Business Bureau profile rather than its own marketing, and its BBB letter grade. BBB accreditation is shown but never scored, because it is a paid membership rather than a mark of quality.

Check any contractor license yourself at the state register. Do that before you sign anything, with any company, including ours.

What this looks like on a PG&E bill

An average California household, against a system sized to cover its year. The energy charge is the part that goes to zero. The fixed monthly charge underneath it is the part that never does, and it is the number that decides whether a system pays for itself.

Meter readingkWh

Energy charge$174.74

$174.74

We have read this provider’s own tariff. What it still bills you at zero is set out below, with the sheet it came from. The energy line above uses the statewide average. See what they still bill

DirectionReading…

California average household use, 503 kWh a month, at the current published residential price of 34.74¢ per kWh. Your utility still bills a fixed monthly customer charge that no system offsets, so this is the energy part of the bill, which is the part that goes away.

PG&E requirementRequired

Battery backup is mandatory
in PG&E territory.

PG&E does not credit the power you send back at the rate it charges you to take it.

That does not make solar a bad idea in PG&E territory. It changes what you should build. When exports are worth a fraction of retail the credit stops being the return, and the job becomes using more of your own production inside the house, which usually means a larger array than a one for one utility would need.

Sizing is where that gets decided, so ask about it directly. California pays least for exports in the middle of the day and most in the summer evening, so under net billing a system is sized against what you can use or store rather than against what you can generate. PG&E sets its own limits. Ask PG&E what it allows before you accept that a bigger system is off the table.

A battery then does two separate jobs. It moves daytime production into the evening so you use it instead of selling it, and it keeps the house running when the grid goes down. That second job is not a bonus. Panels on their own shut off in an outage, by design, so a roof full of them powers nothing during a storm. That is the part we will not refer around.

So we treat it as a requirement, not an upgrade. We will not refer you for a panels-only system in PG&E territory, and you should be skeptical of anyone who quotes you one without raising storage first.

Our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement

What your installer should be telling you

Get the completion date of your interconnection application in writing. Its calendar year fixes both your nine-year export rate schedule and your ACC Plus rate, and an application completed after 31 December 2027 gets neither. Ask for savings modeled on every year of your vintage in PG&E's export rate file (pge.com/eecvalues), not just the 2026 sheet: in the 2026 Vintage file the generation value for an August weekday hour from 8 p.m. is $0.99821 in 2026 but $0.30921 in 2029. If you are buying a home that already has panels, or adding solar because the building code requires it, you get no ACC Plus at all, and PG&E may treat the buyer of a new home sold by the builder before permission to operate the same way. Ask whether you count as low-income under the tariff (CARE or FERA, a resident-owner of a single-family home in a disadvantaged community, or a resident of California Indian Country); for a 2026 application that raises the ACC Plus from $0.00880 to $0.03600. Ordinary export credits cannot pay the Base Services Charge ($0.79343 a day on Income Tier 3), other fixed charges or the non-bypassable charges; only ACC Plus credits can. On a CCA, PG&E credits only the delivery component (for example $0.00075, against $0.05354 for generation, at 1 p.m. on a July weekday on the 2026 sheet), so ask the CCA in writing what it pays for the generation component. If you might sell within nine years, the tariff ties the nine-year legacy period to you, not the system, so a buyer does not inherit it apart from narrow exceptions.

What PG&E bills you anyway

In a month when your production covers everything you use, the energy charge can reach zero. This does not. It is the floor under every bill, and it is the number that decides whether a system pays for itself.

The charge: About $24.15 a month for most households, $6.00 or $12.08 if you qualify
How it is set: PG&E states this as a Base Services Charge per customer per DAY, not per month, so it is easy to read as small: $0.79343 a day for Income Tier 3, which is most households, giving about $24.15 over an average month. Income Tier 1, broadly CARE households, pays $0.19713 a day or about $6.00; Income Tier 2, broadly FERA households and some deed-restricted affordable housing, pays $0.39688 a day or about $12.08. The tariff is explicit that this revenue is "used to reduce their $ per kWh energy rates", and that is the part a solar household should notice: it moves money out of the per kilowatt hour rate, which your panels offset, and into a fixed charge, which ordinary export credits cannot touch. On the Solar Billing Plan only the ACC Plus bonus credit can pay it. Solar customers are billed on Schedule E-ELEC, which prints the same three daily charges.

Schedule E-ELEC, Sheet 2 (Cal. P.U.C. 61363-E, Advice 7921-E, D.26-04-036, effective 1 June 2026), the schedule residential Solar Billing Plan customers must take; the "used to reduce" wording is from Schedule E-TOU-C, Base Services Charge Rates, effective 1 June 2026 · checked 2026-10-13 · source

Applying to PG&E

What PG&E itself requires, as distinct from what the state rule requires. Read from its own published guidelines on the date shown.

It is called net billing, and the name is the warning: Under the Net Billing Tariff, exports are sold and consumption is bought as two separate transactions. They are not netted. Any quote that says California net metering is describing a tariff closed to new customers since April 2023.
The export price changes every hour of every day: Compensation comes from the Commission’s Avoided Cost Calculator, with a separate value for each combination of month, hour, and weekday or weekend, and each utility publishes its own set of values. There is no single cents figure to quote.
Exports were repriced, self consumption was not: Against the previous tariff, an exported kilowatt hour is now credited at an hourly avoided cost value rather than close to the retail rate. The part that did not change is the important part: a kilowatt hour you use inside the house still avoids the full retail rate. Only what leaves the meter was repriced.
The worst hour to export is the hour you produce most: Value is lowest in the middle of the day, when the grid already has abundant solar, and highest during summer evening peaks. Panels alone are therefore selling into the cheapest hours of the day.
This is the state where a battery does the most work: Storage moves production out of the cheap midday hours and into the evening ones, where nearly all of the export value sits on the utilities’ own price sheets.
There is a bonus credit on exports, it shrinks every year, and it locks for nine: PG&E’s Schedule NBT carries an Avoided Cost Calculator Plus adder, which PG&E calls the Energy Export Bonus Credit. It is credited on top of the hourly export value, and the rate for the calendar year of your completed interconnection application is fixed for nine years from your permission to operate. The adopted table, in dollars per kWh exported: 0.02200 in 2023, 0.01760 in 2024, 0.01320 in 2025, 0.00880 in 2026 and 0.00440 in 2027, falling each year by 20 percent of the first-year rate until it reaches zero. Low-income households get a higher adder: 0.09000, 0.07200, 0.05400, 0.03600 and 0.01800 across the same years.
Four kinds of customer get no bonus credit at all: The tariff excludes them by name. You get nothing if you are moving from the old NEM or NEM2 tariff at the end of your legacy period; if you are a Change of Party Customer, meaning you bought a building that already had the system on it; if you are non-residential; or if you were required to add solar, for instance by California’s building code on a new home. PG&E may also treat the buyer of a new home sold by the builder before permission to operate as a Change of Party Customer.
On a community choice aggregator the utility pays only the delivery part: Export compensation is built from a generation component and a delivery component. A bundled utility customer receives both. If your supply comes from a community choice aggregator or through direct access, the utility pays you only the delivery component, which is usually a small fraction of the total, and no Net Surplus Compensation at the true up. What the aggregator pays for the generation part is a separate arrangement with them, so ask for it in writing.
The old tariff is closed to new customers: The previous net metering tariff closed to new applications in April 2023. Systems applied for under it had until April 2026 to finish interconnection, final building permit sign-off and electrical clearing, with a later window for some aggregated applications. No new application can join it.
A daily fixed charge sits under the bill: California now bills a Base Services Charge, set by the Commission rather than by the utility and charged by the day: about $24.15 a month for most households, with CARE households near $6.00 and FERA or deed-restricted affordable housing near $12.08. Ordinary export credits cannot pay it. SDG&E calls it "a non-nettable charge that is not eligible to be offset by export credits" on the Solar Billing Plan. At PG&E and SCE the ACC Plus bonus credit is the one exception: their tariffs let it pay any charge, the fixed charge included.

From PG&E’s published guidelines · checked 2026-10-13 · source

PG&E net metering questions

Does PG&E offer one for one net metering?: No. PG&E credits every kilowatt hour you export at an hourly Export Compensation Rate from the CPUC Avoided Cost Calculator, and bills what you import separately at your retail rate (Schedule E-ELEC for residential customers), with no netting between the two. On PG&E's 2026 price sheet for 2026 applications, the generation and delivery parts together run from $0.00001 a kWh ($0.00000 + $0.00001, May weekends and holidays, hour from 3 p.m.) to $1.19289 ($0.96585 + $0.22704, August weekends and holidays, hour from 7 p.m.), and the generation part is credited only to customers who buy their generation from PG&E. Most residential customers also get an ACC Plus bonus credit per exported kWh, fixed for nine years from permission to operate: $0.00880 for an application completed in 2026 and $0.00440 for one completed in 2027, or $0.03600 and $0.01800 for low-income households. Applications completed by 31 December 2027 also lock in a nine-year schedule of hourly export values from permission to operate, but the values in that schedule change every calendar year.
What does PG&E pay for power sent back to the grid?: Hourly avoided-cost credit on exports, no retail netting. Annual, at the end of each 12-billing-cycle Relevant Period counted from permission to operate (you may ask once to move the date), but you still pay net charges every month. If you exported more kWh than you imported over the period, the surplus kWh are debited at “the utility’s average real-world retail export compensation rates for all NBT customers” over the past 12 months. The same kWh are then credited at the Net Surplus Compensation rate, a 12-month rolling average of PG&E's DLAP price from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus a Renewable Attribute Adder if you file PG&E's REC form (Form 79-1155-02), get the system certified by the CEC and transfer the WREGIS certificates to PG&E. NSC first pays anything you owe PG&E; the rest rolls forward, or PG&E sends a check on request if it is greater than $1. CCA and Direct Access customers get no NSC from PG&E.
Do I need a battery with PG&E?: Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because PG&E does not credit exports one for one, the return has to come from using your own production rather than selling it, which after dark means storage and usually a larger array than a one for one utility would need. The other half is backup: panels alone shut off in an outage, so a battery is what keeps the house running in a storm. We do not refer panels-only systems in PG&E territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.
How do I find my PG&E bill?: Sign in at pge.com. Open My Account, then Billing. Open the latest bill and save the PDF. Or screenshot the summary page. If you cannot get to it, a rough guess at your average monthly amount is enough to start.
What is the catch with PG&E?: Get the completion date of your interconnection application in writing. Its calendar year fixes both your nine-year export rate schedule and your ACC Plus rate, and an application completed after 31 December 2027 gets neither. Ask for savings modeled on every year of your vintage in PG&E's export rate file (pge.com/eecvalues), not just the 2026 sheet: in the 2026 Vintage file the generation value for an August weekday hour from 8 p.m. is $0.99821 in 2026 but $0.30921 in 2029. If you are buying a home that already has panels, or adding solar because the building code requires it, you get no ACC Plus at all, and PG&E may treat the buyer of a new home sold by the builder before permission to operate the same way. Ask whether you count as low-income under the tariff (CARE or FERA, a resident-owner of a single-family home in a disadvantaged community, or a resident of California Indian Country); for a 2026 application that raises the ACC Plus from $0.00880 to $0.03600. Ordinary export credits cannot pay the Base Services Charge ($0.79343 a day on Income Tier 3), other fixed charges or the non-bypassable charges; only ACC Plus credits can. On a CCA, PG&E credits only the delivery component (for example $0.00075, against $0.05354 for generation, at 1 p.m. on a July weekday on the 2026 sheet), so ask the CCA in writing what it pays for the generation component. If you might sell within nine years, the tariff ties the nine-year legacy period to you, not the system, so a buyer does not inherit it apart from narrow exceptions.