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Net Metering Program
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Georgia Power net metering in Georgia

Most of Georgia, including Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon and Savannah. The only investor owned electric utility in Georgia, and the only one whose rates the Public Service Commission approves. Savannah Electric was folded into it in 2006.

Type
Investor owned
Accounts
2.7M

What they credit you

About 7.2 cents, against a retail rate of 8 to 15

Published terms

New customers go on RNR-Instantaneous Netting: the 2026 Solar Avoided Energy Cost of 3.2188 cents plus a 4 cent adder. Georgia Power charges 8.21 cents in winter and up to 15.08 cents in summer, so exported power is worth roughly half to a quarter of what you pay for it.

Month to month
None in the useful sense. Netting is instantaneous, so exports are credited as they happen rather than banked against later use.

Published terms · checked 2026-09-05 · source

Installers serving Georgia Power customers

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

Not sure which to choose?

These are real companies operating in Georgia Power 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 Georgia Power bill

An average Georgia 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$175.71
$175.71
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…

Meter reading falling from 41926 to 41626 kilowatt hours. A 1,074 kilowatt hour month against 1,374 kilowatt hours produced leaves 0 kilowatt hours billed and 300 banked for next month, so the energy charge falls from $175.71 to $0.00 at 16.36 cents per kilowatt hour.

Georgia average household use, 1,074 kWh a month, at the current published residential price of 16.36¢ 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.

Georgia Power requirementRequired

Battery backup is mandatory
in Georgia Power territory.

Georgia Power 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 Georgia Power 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. Georgia’s Distributed Generation Act defines an eligible residential system as 10 kW or less, and Georgia Power applies that limit to the inverter nameplate at the service point. Some cooperatives allow more: Walton EMC sets its residential limit at 50 kW. Georgia Power sets its own limits. Ask Georgia Power 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 Georgia Power 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

The 3.2188 cent avoided cost is reset annually and the 4 cent adder exists because the Commission approved it in the 2022 rate case. Neither is fixed by statute. Confirm the current year’s figure before you sign.

What Georgia Power 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 $16.18 a month, or $16.48 inside a city
How it is set
Georgia Power does not print this as one number, so here is the arithmetic with every component read from its own tariff. Schedule R-31 sets a Basic Service Charge of $0.4603 per day, which is $14.00 across an average month, and defines the minimum monthly bill as that charge plus Environmental Compliance Cost Recovery, plus the Demand Side Management Residential Schedule, plus the Municipal Franchise Fee. ECCR-15 and DSM-R-16 are each a percentage “of their base bill calculations” — 13.0205 and 1.1969 percent — so both are taken on the $14.00, not on each other. MFF-11 is the one that sits on top of the rest: it is collected “by applying the following rates to the total revenues of each bill”, 1.1995 percent outside city limits or 3.0843 percent inside one, so it is charged on the $15.99 subtotal rather than on the base. A customer inside the limits of a city Georgia Power has no franchise agreement with pays the outside rate. That comes to $16.18 outside a city and $16.48 inside. One thing to keep in mind about Georgia Power in particular: because its netting is instantaneous rather than monthly, a solar household almost never gets near this floor anyway. You buy power every night whatever the roof did at noon, so the floor is what you would pay if you somehow bought nothing at all.

Schedule R-31 effective June 2026, with ECCR-15, DSM-R-16 and MFF-11 · checked 2026-09-21 · source

Applying to Georgia Power

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

The program has a name, and there are two of them
RNR-Monthly Netting and RNR-Instantaneous Netting, both under tariff RNR-11. They are not variations on a theme. One is worth roughly twice the other, and only one is open.
Monthly netting is closed, in the tariff’s own words
RNR-11 reads: "RNR-Monthly Netting is available to qualified customers already participating in the existing 5,000-customer pilot and is not available for additional customer participation." The pilot filled in 2021. If an installer offers you Georgia net metering, ask which of the two they mean.
Even the closed program has an end date
RNR-11 gives monthly netting "a term limit of 15 years, which will expire no later than December 31, 2038", after which those customers "will be automatically enrolled in RNR-Instantaneous Netting". Nobody in Georgia holds full value forever.
What you can actually join, and what it pays
RNR-Instantaneous Netting. Exports earn two credits: the Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate, which Georgia Power puts at 3.2188 cents per kWh for 2026, plus a Renewable Generation Adder of "four cents (4¢) per kWh". About 7.22 cents together.
Instantaneous is the word that costs you money
Credit is calculated on energy leaving the meter at the moment it leaves. Sun at noon does not offset the air conditioning at eight in the evening. This is the single reason a battery changes the arithmetic in Georgia and does not in most of Florida.
There is a queue, and it has a ceiling
RNR-11 puts instantaneous netting on "a first come, first served basis until the cumulative generating capacity of all renewable sources equals to 0.2 percent (0.2%) of the Company’s annual peak demand in the previous year." The program that closed in 2021 also had a cap.
Ask which meter they are installing
RNR-11 charges $5.97 a month for single-phase single-directional metering and nothing at all for bi-directional metering. Which one you get depends on how the system is wired. It is worth $71 a year and almost nobody asks.
Residential systems are capped at 10 kW AC
Measured as "the aggregate nameplate capacity of the inverter(s) at the service point". A quote for a larger array is a quote for something this tariff does not cover.

From Georgia Power’s published guidelines · checked 2026-09-05 · source

Georgia Power net metering questions

Does Georgia Power offer one for one net metering?
No. New customers go on RNR-Instantaneous Netting: the 2026 Solar Avoided Energy Cost of 3.2188 cents plus a 4 cent adder. Georgia Power charges 8.21 cents in winter and up to 15.08 cents in summer, so exported power is worth roughly half to a quarter of what you pay for it.
What does Georgia Power pay for power sent back to the grid?
About 7.2 cents, against a retail rate of 8 to 15. None in the useful sense. Netting is instantaneous, so exports are credited as they happen rather than banked against later use.
Do I need a battery with Georgia Power?
Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because Georgia Power 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 Georgia Power territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.
How do I find my Georgia Power bill?
Sign in at georgiapower.com. Open My Account, then Billing & Payment. Open View 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 Georgia Power?
The 3.2188 cent avoided cost is reset annually and the 4 cent adder exists because the Commission approved it in the 2022 rate case. Neither is fixed by statute. Confirm the current year’s figure before you sign.