New York State Electric and Gas
A broad band across the Southern Tier, Finger Lakes and eastern New York. An Avangrid utility, sister company to RG&E, with its own separately published CBC rate.
- Type
- Investor owned
- Accounts
- 900K
What they credit you
Full retail, locked twenty years, minus a monthly fee
Published termsResidential Phase One net metering credits exports at the full retail rate and holds for twenty years from interconnection. A Customer Benefit Contribution is charged monthly per kilowatt of installed capacity on top.
- Month to month
- Credits carry forward as bill credits.
Published terms · checked 2026-09-05 · source
What your installer should be telling you
Ask this utility for its current Customer Benefit Contribution in dollars per kW per month, and multiply it by your system size before you compare quotes. It is reset annually and is not locked at interconnection.
Applying to NYSEG
What NYSEG itself requires, as distinct from what the state rule requires. Read from its own published guidelines on the date shown.
- Houses can still get the full retail rate, and it holds for twenty years
- Phase One net metering remains available to residential customers, crediting exports at the full retail rate, and a system interconnected today locks that arrangement for twenty years.
- There is a monthly charge based on the size of your array
- The Customer Benefit Contribution has applied since 2022. It is charged per kilowatt of installed capacity per month, so it scales with the panels on the roof rather than with anything you use or export.
- It varies by utility, by a factor of four
- Published CBC rates run from roughly $0.30 to $1.33 per kW per month depending on the utility, which for a typical house is somewhere between about $25 and $120 a year.
- The CBC is not locked in the way the rate is
- CBC rates are reset annually and a customer does not fix theirs at interconnection. The net metering rate is locked for twenty years; the fee attached to it is not.
- The Value Stack is the other option, and it is not better for most houses
- VDER compensates by when and where you export rather than at retail. Its CBC is lower than net metering’s, but for an ordinary rooftop the retail rate usually more than makes up the difference. Ask for both sets of numbers.
- New York does not license contractors at state level
- Licensing is done by cities and counties, so there is no single state register to check a solar contractor against. NYSERDA’s participating contractor list is the state-run check that does exist, and local consumer affairs offices handle the rest.
From NYSEG’s published guidelines · checked 2026-09-05 · source
NYSEG net metering questions
- Does NYSEG offer one for one net metering?
- Yes. Residential Phase One net metering credits exports at the full retail rate and holds for twenty years from interconnection. A Customer Benefit Contribution is charged monthly per kilowatt of installed capacity on top. Credits carry forward as bill credits.
- What does NYSEG pay for power sent back to the grid?
- Full retail, locked twenty years, minus a monthly fee.
- Do I need a battery with NYSEG?
- Not for the economics. NYSEG credits exports at the retail rate, so power you send out during the day comes back at the same value after dark without storage. A battery is still worth considering for outages during hurricane season, but it is an upgrade here rather than a requirement.
- How do I find my NYSEG bill?
- Sign in at nyseg.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 NYSEG?
- Ask this utility for its current Customer Benefit Contribution in dollars per kW per month, and multiply it by your system size before you compare quotes. It is reset annually and is not locked at interconnection.
Installers serving NYSEG customers
Pick one. Only the company you choose receives your details, and only that company calls you.
These are real companies operating in NYSEG territory, 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.