SMUD in 2026: 9.6 cent exports and a 5 to 8 p.m. clock

Sacramento County fits. Roseville, Davis, and West Sacramento do not.

SMUD generates, transmits, and distributes electricity across about 900 square miles: most of Sacramento County plus small adjoining slices of Placer and Yolo counties, divided into seven wards with an elected board member each. The service area holds a population of 1.5 million and 673,318 total customer accounts as of December 2024. SMUD's territory page does not print a city list, but because it serves most of Sacramento County, the county's cities, Sacramento, Elk Grove, Citrus Heights, Folsom, and Rancho Cordova, sit inside the described footprint.

The borders matter more than they look. Roseville, ten minutes up the road in Placer County, has its own city owned utility, Roseville Electric. Davis, Woodland, and Winters get generation from Valley Clean Energy delivered over PG&E wires, with PG&E handling billing and line maintenance. West Sacramento is PG&E territory: a CPUC resolution record shows a SMUD annexation proposal for Davis, West Sacramento, and Woodland that did not go forward, and the local chamber lists PG&E as the serving utility. Different utility, different solar rules, different guide.

Sources: SMUD territory map; SMUD company information; City of Roseville utilities; Valley Clean Energy; CPUC Resolution E-3952 record; and West Sacramento chamber PG&E listing.

The Solar and Storage Rate: retail for what you use, 9.6 cents for what you send

First, clear the vocabulary. SMUD is not on NEM 3. The CPUC's net energy metering rules apply to PG&E, Southern California Edison, and SDG&E territory; SMUD's elected board sets its own solar compensation. The current mechanism is Rate Schedule SSR, the Solar and Storage Rate, which covers everyone who established service at a solar premises or got interconnection approval on or after March 1, 2022. Buy a home with existing panels after that date and you are on SSR, full stop.

The mechanics are simple and worth stating exactly. Power you consume from your own panels never hits the meter, so it offsets retail. Power you import is billed at your R-TOD rates. Power you export is credited at the Export Compensation Rate: $0.0960 per kWh effective June 1, 2026, any hour, any season, up 2 cents from the 7.4 cents in effect since March 1, 2022. The export credit can only offset electricity usage charges, not the $27.00 monthly fixed charge, and any unused balance carries to later billing periods. SMUD installs the bi-directional meter at no cost.

The 9.6 cent figure is not arbitrary and not permanent. The tariff updates it every four years starting in 2026, from public local indices and SMUD's actual costs, with each change capped within plus or minus 30 percent and subject to board approval. Next update: 2030. The April 2026 board exhibit shows the build-up moving from 7.4 to 9.6 cents, with transmission and distribution at 3.70 to 3.77 cents and generation capacity rising from 2.30 to 3.50 cents as the largest pieces, and puts the fiscal impact at about $11 million over four years across roughly 27,300 plus solar and storage customers. The paperwork trail: original Resolution No. 21-09-07 adopted September 16, 2021, amended by Resolution No. 26-04-04 adopted April 16, 2026.

Sizing rules cap the design: the system should offset up to 110 percent of the customer's own requirements, with PV measured at CEC-AC rating and a 3,000 kW ceiling. Given the gap between 9.6 cent exports and 15.5 to 37.65 cent summer imports, chasing that 110 percent ceiling rarely makes sense without storage. Legacy NEM customers, approved before March 1, 2022, keep retail-valued monthly credits with a 12 month settlement through December 31, 2030, but three things end that status early: taking a SMUD battery incentive, expanding the system beyond the greater of 10 percent or 1 kW over approved capacity (or beyond 110 percent of it), or moving. SMUD also says it does not offer NEM aggregation; that was a pilot closed to new applications.

Sources: SMUD Rate Schedule SSR; SMUD Solar and Storage Rate page; SMUD announcement of the June 2026 increase; April 14, 2026 board exhibit; SMUD solar customers page; and CPUC net energy metering page.

Interconnection: a published fee table and real timelines

SMUD's Rule and Regulation 21 sets the interconnection conditions, and Rate Policy 11-01, the Interconnection Guidelines, governs the process and fees. Storage counts: the fee table applies to all distributed energy resources including batteries, and interconnected storage is treated as distributed generation under Rule 21.

Source: SMUD Interconnection Guidelines, Rate Policy 11-01, fee table effective March 1, 2022. SMUD labels the timelines estimated and subject to change.

The sequence: complete application plus fee, acknowledgment, then an Initial Review that routes the project to the Standard Process, a Supplemental Review under screens 13 to 15 covering penetration, power quality and voltage, and safety and reliability, or a full Interconnection Study. After approvals, testing, inspections, and documentation, nothing runs until SMUD issues express written Permission to Operate. Two clocks to respect on the back end: construction is expected to begin within six months of approval, and applications without progress within 12 months of the approval-to-build email are subject to cancellation.

The good news in the fine print: the fee is one time. Customers are not charged again to add storage or solar after the initial installation, NEM customers adding storage pay no interconnection fee (though the addition may move them to a different rate), and SMUD pays for and installs the single bi-directional meter itself.

Sources: SMUD Interconnection Guidelines; SMUD interconnection information; SMUD solar customers page; and Rate Schedule SSR.

What the board has already decided, and what is not pending

The big solar decision of this cycle is done, not pending. The four-year SSR export rate update went to the Board Finance and Audit Committee on April 14, 2026, was adopted as Resolution No. 26-04-04 on April 16, 2026, took effect June 1, 2026, and holds until the 2030 update. General rates are likewise set through January 1, 2027 under Resolution No. 25-06-15, and the rate archive page states no rate action after that date.

The research behind this page searched for any other pending proceeding that would change solar compensation or add solar-specific fees and found none. That is a real finding with a real shelf life: it describes the record as of August 26, 2026, not a guarantee about future board agendas. SMUD's board can act on its own schedule, which is exactly why the rate schedule PDFs, which print their adopting resolutions on their face, are the documents to re-check before signing.

Sources: April 14, 2026 board exhibit; Rate Schedule SSR; and SMUD rate archive.

What we could not verify

As of August 26, 2026, this research did not individually confirm the serving utility for El Dorado Hills, Rocklin, Auburn, or Lincoln; they sit outside SMUD's described territory of Sacramento County plus small Placer and Yolo slices, but each city's actual provider was not separately documented. West Sacramento's own city utilities page returned an error, so its PG&E status rests on the CPUC annexation record and a chamber listing rather than a city source. The enacted status of SB 710, the possible extension of the R&T 73 property tax exclusion, was not confirmed. And no current SMUD upfront rebate for solar panels was found; if one exists, it did not surface in the program pages reviewed. These are gaps, and they stay gaps until a primary source closes them.

Sources: SMUD territory map; CPUC Resolution E-3952 record; BOE analysis of SB 710; and SMUD battery storage for homeowners.