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Net Metering Program
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Wisconsin Public Service net metering in Wisconsin

Northeastern Wisconsin, including Green Bay, Oshkosh and Wausau. A WEC Energy Group company alongside We Energies, but a separate utility filing its own tariff.

Type
Investor owned
Accounts
460K

What they credit you

Retail inside the month, 3.584 cents on the surplus

Published terms

Schedule PG-4 lets the meter run backward, so exports you use again in the same month are worth the full 14.802 cent retail rate. Whatever is left over at the end of the month is bought at the avoided energy cost of 3.584 cents, about a quarter of retail, and nothing banks into the following month.

Month to month
None in kilowatt hours. Settlement is monthly, and the resulting dollar credit sits on the bill until a balance above $100 triggers a payment.

Published terms · checked 2026-09-21 · source

Installers serving WPS 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 WPS 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.

What this looks like on a WPS bill

An average Wisconsin 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$126.16
$126.16
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 41746 kilowatt hours. A 645 kilowatt hour month against 825 kilowatt hours produced leaves 0 kilowatt hours billed and 180 banked for next month, so the energy charge falls from $126.16 to $0.00 at 19.56 cents per kilowatt hour.

Wisconsin average household use, 645 kWh a month, at the current published residential price of 19.56¢ 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.

WPS requirementRequired

Battery backup is mandatory
in WPS territory.

WPS 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 WPS 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. Wisconsin sets the eligible system size per utility, not by statute: 20 kW at Alliant, 100 kW at Xcel and 300 kW at We Energies. Check your own utility’s limit before anyone designs to a number they heard elsewhere. WPS sets its own limits. Ask WPS 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 WPS 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

Size this to your own monthly consumption rather than to the roof, because the surplus is worth a quarter of what self-consumption is worth and it does not carry forward. Budget for the $300,000 liability insurance the rules require of a residential exporter, and ask WPS in writing what its side of the interconnection will cost, since you pay it and the invoice can come up to two years later. The 3.584 cents is also re-set every January, so it is not a number to build a twenty-year model on.

What WPS 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
$17.92 a month
How it is set
Schedule Rg-1 prices the fixed charge by the day: "Customer Charge / Daily / $0.58915 for Single Phase Year-Round Customers", which is $17.92 across an average month, and $35.84 for a seasonal account at $1.17830 a day. The tariff makes it the floor in its own clause — "MINIMUM CHARGE — The monthly minimum charge is the customer charge" — and Schedule PG-4 does not create a separate solar floor, it inherits this one. Energy is a flat 14.802 cents a kilowatt hour. So the export credit of 3.584 cents is about a quarter of what the same kilowatt hour costs to buy back.

Schedule Rg-1 Residential Service, 43rd Rev. Sheet No. E5.00, effective 1 January 2026 · checked 2026-09-21 · source

Applying to WPS

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

Inside the month the meter runs backward; only the surplus is sold cheap
PG-4: "Flow of energy from the customer’s renewable generation facilities into the electrical system of the company shall be permitted, with the meter of the company running backward." So a kilowatt hour you export and use again the same month is worth the full 14.802 cents. It is only the net excess at month end that is bought, at 3.584 cents, and there is no bank rolling into next month.
The export rate is re-set every January and floats with the market
"The Avoided Energy Cost Rate shall be updated on January 1 of each year", calculated from the forecast day-ahead load-weighted average price for the WPS pricing zone in the company’s approved fuel plan. The two companion credits in the same tariff, for avoided capacity and avoided transmission, are both currently printed as $0.00000.
A residential exporter must carry $300,000 of liability insurance
PGX-2, rule 14: "Residential customers selling to the Company under the Pg-4 rate schedule shall have at least $300,000 of liability insurance." Ask your insurer what that endorsement costs before you sign anything, because it is a recurring cost nobody puts in a payback model.
You pay WPS’s own interconnection costs, and the bill can arrive up to two years later
PGX-2, rule 13: the owner "shall be required to pay all interconnection costs, including any metering transformers, incurred by the company", and those costs "shall be paid by the owner within two years of the installation date of the interconnection facilities."
Credits under $100 are not paid out, they just sit on the bill
"A payment will be made if in a given month the customer has a credit balance of more than $100." At 3.584 cents a kilowatt hour a household would have to export roughly 2,800 surplus kilowatt hours in a single month to trigger a check.
Oversize the array and WPS can move you off the tariff
Generation "must be sized to the customer’s expected load requirements", and "if a customer’s generation capacity exceeds expected load at customer location, then the customer will be evaluated for movement to one of the Pg-2 tariffs". The cap is 20 kW AC, summed across all generators, which is roughly 26 kW DC at the tariff’s own 0.77 conversion factor.
Full retail here ended in 2011 and the grandfathering ran out in 2021
Customers on PG-4 before 31 March 2011 kept full retail on their monthly excess "until December 31, 2021", and "if a grandfathered customer makes any changes to the size or type of their generation, they will be treated as a new customer." There is nobody left on the old arrangement.

From WPS’s published guidelines · checked 2026-09-21 · source

WPS net metering questions

Does WPS offer one for one net metering?
No. Schedule PG-4 lets the meter run backward, so exports you use again in the same month are worth the full 14.802 cent retail rate. Whatever is left over at the end of the month is bought at the avoided energy cost of 3.584 cents, about a quarter of retail, and nothing banks into the following month.
What does WPS pay for power sent back to the grid?
Retail inside the month, 3.584 cents on the surplus. None in kilowatt hours. Settlement is monthly, and the resulting dollar credit sits on the bill until a balance above $100 triggers a payment.
Do I need a battery with WPS?
Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because WPS 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 WPS territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.
How do I find my WPS bill?
Sign in at wisconsinpublicservice.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 WPS?
Size this to your own monthly consumption rather than to the roof, because the surplus is worth a quarter of what self-consumption is worth and it does not carry forward. Budget for the $300,000 liability insurance the rules require of a residential exporter, and ask WPS in writing what its side of the interconnection will cost, since you pay it and the invoice can come up to two years later. The 3.584 cents is also re-set every January, so it is not a number to build a twenty-year model on.