Solar Billing

When you have solar, your home consumes the electricity your system produces in real-time, with shortfalls in production being purchased from the grid, and surpluses in production being either stored with solar batteries or sold to the grid for credit on your bill.

With previous Net Metering agreements, you received nearly retail value for the energy you send to the grid. This allowed solar systems to be simpler, and save maximum dollars without a battery. Since homeowners were credited retail rates, the grid essentially stored power at retail rates, and distributed that power to the homeowner. Homeowners who went solar prior to April of 2023, are grandfathered into that agreement for 20 years, and only would need a battery for backup in case of a power outage.

The "Big 3" now do not give retail credit for overproduction anymore. The law change for Most Californians limiting the value for exported power happened on April 15th 2023, and is commonly referred to as Net Metering 3. Under Net Metering 3, customers looking to maximize savings need to have a battery installed to capture overproduction during the sun hours. Without a battery a customer could offset some charges during the day if power was instantly consumed, but would still be buying lots of power from the utility in the evenings, or when the sun was not shining (rain, clouds, etc.).

In the following utilities, we would almost always recommend battery storage, as they are all on Net Metering 3.