Daly City solar: the city publishes two different rules

38.4 kW on one page, under 10 kW on the other

Here is the likely origin of the conflict. Back on August 10, 2015, the council adopted Ordinance No. 1393, adding Chapter 15.26 to the municipal code. It defines the small residential rooftop system eligible for streamlining as 10 kW AC or less on a single family or duplex dwelling, implementing AB 2188. The narrower web page tracks that 2015 definition. The broader page tracks the newer state statute, Government Code 65850.52, which requires an automated platform for systems up to 38.4 kW AC with paired storage of the same size, and which lets a jurisdiction decline automated permitting only when the configuration is not eligible for SolarAPP+ at submission time.

The state's scorecard adds a wrinkle. The CEC tracking dataset, last updated August 3, 2026, lists Daly City on the SolarAPP+ platform with an $80,000 CalAPP grant awarded March 22, 2023, and shows "None" in the annual report column, where neighboring jurisdictions show submitted data. To be fair to the city, that is a reporting record from a self-reported dataset, and the CEC itself says it does not certify whether any platform complies with SB 379. Still, when a city's two pages disagree, call the Building Division at 650-991-8061 and get the answer for your specific project in writing before paying for design work.

For projects that do use the streamlined lane, the published eligibility checklist is concrete: 10 kW AC or less on a one or two family dwelling or accessory structure, roof mounted, within legal building height, utility interactive with no battery, clear of plumbing and mechanical vents, a service panel with a bus bar rated 225 A or less, a load side connection, and a roof layout diagram showing rapid shutdown. If your house still has an old 100 A panel or a crowded roof, the checklist is where that surfaces.

The permit is $450 flat. Ignore the $500 document.

Line item 3.51 of the Approved Master Fee Schedule FY 2026 prices a single family photovoltaic permit at $450.00 flat, citing Government Code 66015, the statute that caps residential PV permit fees at $450 up to 15 kW. Larger residential runs $450 plus $15 per additional kW above 15, and commercial tiers start at $1,000 up to 50 kW. The schedule notes its fees flow from Resolution 25-66, adopted April 28, 2025.

The trap is a 2013 fee document that still surfaces online, showing a $500.00 residential PV total built from eight itemized lines, plan review, archive fee, technology fee, and so on. That document is superseded. If a quote carries a $500 Daly City permit line, the installer is working from a stale bookmark, which is a small error that tells you something about their process hygiene.

Also, count the fee events. The city's published sequence has the contractor pay a SolarAPP+ processing fee to the platform, separate from city fees, then pay the city's own invoice on the permitting portal, per the SolarApp instructions. One all-in "permit cost" number is only honest if it names both.

One bill, two suppliers, one recent name change

Daly City electricity arrives on PG&E wires with generation supplied by the county's community choice aggregator, which was named Peninsula Clean Energy until July 1, 2026 and now operates as WestLight Energy, with the new name on bills since July 17, per the rebrand announcement. The agency has served San Mateo County, Daly City included, since 2016, per its background page. Neither entity replaced the other: PG&E delivers and bills, WestLight Energy supplies generation, and solar economics touch both.

Defaults matter here. Customers sit on ECOplus unless they choose ECO100, the fully renewable product that costs $0.015 per kWh more, about $6.38 monthly for a 425 kWh household, per the rate choices page. And Daly City households tend to be larger than the Peninsula norm, 3.0996 persons per household in the state's 2026 estimates, which usually means more laundry, more cooking, more kWh, and a bigger surface for solar to work on.

This roof peaks in April, and that is not a typo

In most California cities the production curve crests in July. Our Daly City model crests in April, at 156.3 kWh per kW, then slides through the summer as the marine layer arrives: July models at 127.6 and August at 122.1. The climate record explains why. Fog is common here in spring and from early to late summer, and July and August rarely peak over 75 degrees, per the climate background. Annual output lands at 1,477.6 kWh per installed kW.

PVGIS v5.2 model run by Solar Learning Lab on August 26, 2026, NSRDB radiation database. Fixed south facing mount, 30 degree tilt, 14 percent losses, downtown Daly City coordinates. Your roof will differ. The run comes from the PVGIS tool. Two honest takeaways. First, Daly City produces less per panel than inland cities, so a lowball system size that would work in the Central Valley may disappoint here. Second, the number is satellite data, not folklore, and it is far from zero. A correctly sized system against a real usage history still does its job. What fails in fog country is a system sized from someone else's sunshine.

Sizing input worth knowing: 15,979 of the city's 34,366 housing units, about 46.5 percent, are single detached homes, with another 5,214 single attached, per the state housing estimates. Those attached rowhouse roofs are often small, which pushes toward higher efficiency panels rather than more of them.

A shallow local field, so interview harder

Our Google Maps snapshot for Daly City is thin: one company above 80 reviews, All Bay Solar Construction at 84, then Trulysun Energy at 19, then a drop to single digit review counts, including the only firm actually based in Daly City at a 3.4 rating across 5 reviews. Read that as a market served mostly from San Francisco and the wider Peninsula, not as a verdict on any single company. It also raises the value of one specific question: do you hold an active Daly City business license today, and when did you last pull a permit here.

Follow with the scope question this page opened with: does my project qualify for the automated lane under the city's current practice, and if not, what is your realistic manual review timeline. A bidder who cannot answer for Daly City specifically is guessing on your schedule.

Daly City answers, sourced