Utilities · Northern California

PG&E in 2026: solar economics after the door closed

SLWritten by the Solar Learning Lab research desk·Updated August 18, 2026·8 min read

Two things happened to PG&E customers in the spring of 2026, and almost every solar quote in northern California still gets at least one of them wrong. In March, PG&E restructured the residential bill around a fixed monthly charge. In April, the last window into NEM 2.0 closed for good. Anyone shopping solar in PG&E territory today is shopping the Solar Billing Plan, where exports and imports are priced on entirely different scales, and where the fixed charge sits outside the reach of your panels.

What the Solar Billing Plan pays

The Solar Billing Plan is net billing, not net metering. Every hour, imports and exports are valued separately. Imports cost whatever your E-ELEC time-of-use price says. Exports earn an Energy Export Credit set by the CPUC that varies by hour, day, and season, and those credits cannot be applied against non-bypassable charges or the fixed monthly charge. The account settles annually at True-Up.

The two numbers that matter most in PG&E territory are the lock and the leftover. The lock: under the CPUC framework, residential customers who apply before the end of 2027 receive higher-than-normal export credits fixed for nine years, tied to their vintage year. The leftover: any credits still unused after the annual True-Up convert to Net Surplus Compensation at roughly two to four cents per kWh by PG&E's description, two to three cents by the CPUC's. Exports are a consolation prize. The real return comes from not buying 33 to 55 cent power in the first place, which is why batteries that shift solar into the 4 to 9 p.m. peak dominate the math here.

One CPUC-published cost worth knowing before the paperwork: PG&E charges a $145 interconnection fee for systems under 1 MW, against $94 at SCE and $132 at SDG&E.

Sources: PG&E Solar Billing Plan, PG&E getting started with solar, and the CPUC net energy metering and net billing page.

What this means for a solar roof

PG&E households are small consumers by national standards. The company's own regulatory benchmark is 500 kWh a month, less than half of what a Florida or Texas home burns. What makes solar work here is not volume, it is price: at 33 to 55 cents per imported kilowatt-hour, a modest system offsetting most daytime load clears more dollars per panel than a bigger system does in a cheap power state.

Under net billing the sizing logic inverts from the old NEM days. Size to your daytime self-consumption plus whatever a battery can shift into the evening peak, not to your annual kWh total. Interconnection is one of the smoother parts: PG&E states most residential projects do not need an on-site inspection before Permission to Operate, though some are randomly selected, and running the system before PTO violates Electric Rule 21. Our California page covers the statewide picture, including what the 2026 fixed charge rollout does to payback across all three investor-owned utilities, and the LADWP guide shows how different the math looks one municipal border away.

Sources: CPUC fact sheet (500 kWh benchmark) and PG&E contractor resources (PTO and inspection rules).

What we could not verify

As of August 18, 2026: the exact 2026 Energy Export Credit values by hour and season, because PG&E's Solar Billing Plan guide PDF blocked our retrieval; a published business-day service level for residential solar application review; E-1 baseline allocation quantities by climate zone; and any PG&E cash rebate for residential solar or batteries, which we searched for and did not find. Where we could not read the source, we did not print a number. Our editorial policy explains how corrections work if you hold a document that settles any of these.