What the storage incentive pays
For Portland General Electric customers, Energy Trust pays $400 per kWh of battery capacity, up to a maximum of $5,000 per home. Gresham is PGE territory, so that is the applicable figure.
There is a minimum capacity of 3 kWh, and the battery must connect to a qualifying solar system. Storage installed on its own, without solar, does not qualify.
At $400 per kWh the cap is reached at 12.5 kWh of capacity, so a larger battery earns nothing extra from the programme. That is worth knowing when comparing a system at the cap against one above it.
Pacific Power customers elsewhere in Oregon receive $288 per kWh up to $3,600, so this is another figure that changes with the utility rather than with the state. Offers are subject to funding availability and may change at any time.
The honest case for storage in Oregon
Oregon credits exported solar at the full retail rate under ORS 757.300 and carries the credit forward. So unlike states with poor export compensation, a battery here is not rescuing value that would otherwise be lost on export.
What a battery does do is give you power during an outage, which grid-tied solar alone does not. A standard grid-tied inverter shuts down when the grid goes down, for line worker safety, and that surprises more homeowners than any other fact about solar.
It also helps against the March true-up, though indirectly. Storage shifts generation into your own evening consumption rather than into export credit, and credit that never accumulates cannot be donated in March.
So the resilience case is the honest headline and the true-up case is a real but secondary benefit. Be sceptical of a quote that justifies a battery mainly through export arbitrage, because Oregon retail-rate crediting already covers that ground.
Specifying backup properly
If resilience is the reason, then the specification has to say so. Backup during an outage requires the battery plus the right inverter and switching arrangement, and it should appear in the quote as equipment rather than as a general assurance.
Ask precisely which circuits would be backed up and for how long. Whole-home backup and essential-circuits backup are different systems at different prices, and the answer should be a list of circuits rather than a reassurance.
Ask what the battery does when it is not backing anything up, since that determines the everyday value. A battery sitting at full charge waiting for an outage is delivering resilience and nothing else.
Ask how the sizing was chosen. A battery sized for a fridge, a furnace fan and some lighting through a winter evening is a very different specification from one sized to run a house, and both are legitimate depending on what you actually want.
What is left, and when it is funded
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase in Gresham receives no federal tax credit on either the panels or the battery. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements.
Treat the state ODOE Solar + Storage rebate as unavailable unless confirmed with ODOE, since its June 15, 2026 reopening with $1.1 million was fully reserved.
What exists is the Energy Trust solar incentive of $3,500 for PGE customers through an approved trade ally, plus $400 per kWh up to $5,000 for a battery of at least 3 kWh connected to qualifying solar.
Add retail-rate net metering with the March reconciliation, and the electricity you stop buying at about 12.2 cents per kWh on the April 2026 Oregon residential average. Ask for the battery value and the resilience benefit stated separately rather than as one number.