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Net Metering Program
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Sawnee EMC net metering in Georgia

North Georgia, including Forsyth, Cherokee, Dawson, Lumpkin and parts of Fulton and Gwinnett.

Type
Cooperative
Accounts
195K

What they credit you

About 3.8 cents, at the co-op’s discretion

Published terms

Sawnee’s Net Energy Metering Rider NEM-18 credits excess energy from solar at $0.0379 per kWh in every season. The rider says the rates may be adjusted at any time at the co-op’s sole discretion.

Published terms · checked 2026-09-05 · source

Installers serving Sawnee EMC 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 Sawnee EMC 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 Sawnee EMC 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.

Sawnee EMC requirementRequired

Battery backup is mandatory
in Sawnee EMC territory.

Sawnee EMC 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 Sawnee EMC 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. Sawnee EMC sets its own limits. Ask Sawnee EMC 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 Sawnee EMC 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

Ask Sawnee for the current seasonal credit rates in writing before you sign anything. Their own document reserves the right to change them at any time.

What Sawnee EMC 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
$28.85 a month
How it is set
Schedule H-26 sets a single-phase Base Charge of $28.85 a month and then makes the floor conditional rather than flat: "The minimum monthly charge shall be the base charge plus $1.00 per kVA of installed transformer capacity in excess of 25 kVA." For an ordinary house on an ordinary transformer that is simply the $28.85. It is worth knowing where the condition bites, though, because solar is one of the things that can move it: the charge is set by the capacity of the transformer serving you, not by your own system, so a larger transformer means a larger floor whoever asked for it. Ask Sawnee what capacity serves your service before you size an array. Two further items sit on top of the base charge and neither is a fixed figure — the Wholesale Power Cost Adjustment under Schedule "R" moves the rates up or down, and Section VIII adds "any tax or franchise fee, gross receipt or occupation tax imposed by any governmental authority" to the calculated bill, so what you pay depends partly on which authority you are inside. Energy above the floor runs 7.67 cents for the first 500 kWh, 7.36 cents for the next 500, then 5.40 cents from October to May and 8.60 cents from June to September.

Residential Service, Schedule H-26, Sawnee EMC, revision adopted 15 May 2025 and effective 2 January 2026; minimum charge at Section V.A, single-phase service · checked 2026-09-30 · source

Applying to Sawnee EMC

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

The rate can change at any time, and the rider says so
NEM-18 states: "The rates, as quoted herein, may be adjusted at any time, at the sole discretion of the Cooperative, to reflect the prevailing conditions." Whatever you are quoted is not a commitment for the life of the system.
The floor is the base charge, $28.85 a month
Schedule H-26 sets a single phase Base Charge of $28.85 a month, and defines the minimum monthly charge as that base charge plus $1.00 per kVA of installed transformer capacity above 25 kVA. An ordinary house is under 25 kVA, so the floor is $28.85.
Retail energy is cheap here, which cuts both ways
H-26 charges 7.67 cents for the first 500 kWh and 7.36 cents for the next 500. Low retail rates mean the amount solar can save you is smaller to begin with.
There is a 0.2 percent ceiling on the whole program
NEM-18 caps total interconnected capacity at "0.2 percent (0.2%) of the Cooperative’s most recent annual peak demand in the previous year, except at the sole discretion of the Cooperative."
Residential systems are capped at 10 kW AC
Or more "as may be allowed under the Distributed Generation Interconnection Procedure", which is a case by case decision rather than a right.

From Sawnee EMC’s published guidelines · checked 2026-09-05 · source

Sawnee EMC net metering questions

Does Sawnee EMC offer one for one net metering?
No. Sawnee’s Net Energy Metering Rider NEM-18 credits excess energy from solar at $0.0379 per kWh in every season. The rider says the rates may be adjusted at any time at the co-op’s sole discretion.
What does Sawnee EMC pay for power sent back to the grid?
About 3.8 cents, at the co-op’s discretion.
Do I need a battery with Sawnee EMC?
Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because Sawnee EMC 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 Sawnee EMC territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.
How do I find my Sawnee EMC bill?
Sign in at sawnee.coop. Open 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 Sawnee EMC?
Ask Sawnee for the current seasonal credit rates in writing before you sign anything. Their own document reserves the right to change them at any time.