The export rates are published, so go and look
Net billing tariff customers are paid for the electricity they export to the grid based on its value to the electric grid, determined by the Avoided Cost Calculator. The Calculator quantifies the value of exported electricity at different times of day, based on the avoided cost to the utility of buying clean energy elsewhere.
Crucially, the utilities are required to publish uniform machine-readable spreadsheets containing the retail export compensation rates on their respective websites. That means the export values underneath any savings projection are not proprietary and not a matter of opinion.
So ask your installer which export values their projection uses and where those values came from. Then check them against the published spreadsheet. Any discrepancy is worth an explanation, and asking the question at all changes the tenor of the conversation.
Look at the shape of the values across the day, not just an average. Export compensation varies by time of day and season, and that variation is the whole reason the timing of your production matters under this tariff in a way it did not before.
Since April 2023, when you produce matters
Since April 15, 2023, customers applying for interconnection have taken service on the net billing tariff pursuant to CPUC decision D.22-12-056. Under it, exported electricity is valued at what it is worth to the grid at the moment it is exported.
Midday solar is abundant and therefore worth relatively little to the grid. Evening electricity, when household demand peaks and solar output has faded, is worth considerably more. That gap is the central fact of the tariff and it is why the advice about California solar changed so sharply in 2023.
The practical consequence is that electricity you consume yourself, or store and use later, is generally worth more than electricity exported at midday. Ask your installer to model the self-consumed share explicitly and to value the remainder at the published export rates rather than at your retail rate.
That also means a quote written before this change, or copied from an older template, will overstate your return substantially. Ask when the projection methodology was last updated, and ask to see the arithmetic rather than the summary.
Whether a battery earns its place
Under a tariff that values exports at what they are worth to the grid, storage becomes a financial question rather than only a resilience one. A battery holds midday production until the evening, converting a low-value export into an avoided purchase at a high-value hour.
Ask for that as arithmetic rather than as a recommendation. How many kilowatt hours per year would move through the battery, what is the difference in value between exporting them and using them later, what does the storage cost, and over what period does the difference repay it.
Ask separately what the system does during an outage, and be clear these are two different jobs. A grid-tied array without storage shuts down during an outage as a safety requirement, so if outage cover matters it must be designed in, and a battery sized for bill savings is often not the same as one sized for meaningful backup.
Check whether you qualify for help. California's Self-Generation Incentive Program offers $850 per kilowatt hour under its Equity category and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour under Equity Resiliency for qualifying customers, with criteria set out in the SGIP Handbook.
What changed federally, and what California still offers
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025. A cash or loan purchase made now receives no federal credit, and a quote that still applies it is overstating your return substantially. Check any projection line by line rather than trusting a summary figure.
Section 48E survives at 30 percent and is available to third-party owners of residential systems under leases and power purchase agreements. So the credit still exists, it simply no longer flows to a homeowner who buys the system, and you should expect lease providers to lead with that. Ask what they claim and what of that value actually reaches you in the rate offered, then confirm with a tax advisor rather than with the sales material.
California's Self-Generation Incentive Program continues to provide incentives for battery storage installed on the customer's side of the meter, including systems that can function during a power outage. Its Equity and Equity Resiliency categories are aimed at lower-income, medically vulnerable and at-risk for fire communities.
Depending on the category a customer qualifies for, the incentive is $850 per kilowatt hour under the Equity category or $1,000 per kilowatt-hour under Equity Resiliency. Eligibility criteria and performance requirements are set out in the SGIP Handbook, and applicants have one year after reserving funds to meet them, including enrollment in a qualified Demand Response program. Ask an installer whether you might qualify, and check with the programme rather than taking a sales answer as final.