Two things changed inside fourteen months, and both of them made solar harder to sell honestly.
The 30% federal residential tax credit expired on 31 December 2025. And in March 2026, PG&E restructured residential billing: a roughly $24 monthly Base Services Charge appeared on every bill, paired with a cut of about 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour off the volumetric rate.
So the skeptical question is fair: if the credit is gone and PG&E just added a fee solar can’t touch, is anything left?
There is, for most Contra Costa households. It is smaller than it was in 2023, it takes longer to pay back, and it is no longer worth it for everybody. Below are the actual numbers we run, including the cases where we tell people not to buy.
Does solar still pay for itself in California now the 30% credit is gone?
Yes for most households on a PG&E bill above roughly $150 a month, and the reason is the rate, not the incentive.
PG&E’s average bundled residential rate as of 1 March 2026 is 40.6 cents per kWh (Advice Letter 7846-E). That figure includes the fixed charge spread across average usage. The volumetric portion on its own — the part solar actually displaces — is around 36 cents.
California solar has never depended much on subsidy; it depends on the price of the grid electricity it replaces. That price did not go away when the credit did.
We set out what is and isn’t left in solar tax credits in 2026. What did change is the size of the number. A 30% credit was real money that came back after the first tax year and now does not. It pushes payback out by years. It does not push it past the working life of the equipment.
The honest framing: solar in 2026 is a hedge against a utility bill, not an investment product. It is closer to prepaying twenty years of electricity at a fixed price than it is to buying an asset that generates income. Anyone selling it as the latter is selling you the pre-2023 rules.
If a lease or PPA is on the table, the provider claims any federal credit, not you. How much reaches you depends entirely on the contract.
What does a PG&E bill actually cost a Concord household in 2026?
Here is PG&E’s own published example: 500 kWh in a month costs $203.54.
Break that apart. About $24 is the Base Services Charge, which is the same whether you use 500 kWh or zero. The remaining $179 or so is the volumetric charge — roughly 36 cents for every kilowatt-hour.
A typical Concord single-family home with air conditioning runs somewhere between 500 and 900 kWh a month, higher in July and August, much lower in the shoulder months. An EV, a pool pump or a heat pump puts you above that band.
Two numbers matter for what follows: your average monthly bill across twelve months, not your July bill, and your annual kWh. You can pull twelve months of interval data from your PG&E account. We ask for it before quoting anything, because sizing a system off a summer bill produces an array that is too big for the other eleven months.
We go through the rate side in more detail in PG&E rates in 2026 and what solar owners actually pay.
How long is the payback period on a system you buy outright?
Take a household with a $220 average monthly bill in Contra Costa County. That is a common profile in Concord, Pleasant Hill and Martinez.
Our savings calculator runs that as:
- System size: about 4.5 kW
- Annual savings: roughly $1,105
- Share of the bill offset: about 42%
- Simple payback: about 11.4 years
- Net position over 25 years: roughly $19,760
Those come out of a model with its assumptions written down: $2,800 per kW installed, 1,500 kWh per kW per year for Contra Costa’s sun, 36 cents per kWh volumetric, the $24 base charge treated as un-offsettable, no federal credit, and a $3,000 inverter replacement partway through. It is deliberately not generous.
Two things people get wrong about that 42%.
First, it is a share of the dollar bill, not a share of your kilowatt-hours. Under NEM 3.0, the power you export midday is credited at a fraction of what you pay to import in the evening, so a system that generates 100% of your annual kWh does not remove 100% of your annual cost.
Second, 11.4 years is the break-even, not the end. The panels are warranted well beyond that. The value of years 12 through 25 is what makes the case, and it is also why the decision is a poor one if you plan to move in four.
Across the systems we design in Contra Costa, typical offset lands at 40 to 55% for solar alone, and 55 to 75% once a battery is in the design. A battery adds around $15,000 to the project, so it lengthens payback while raising the ceiling on savings. Whether that trade is worth making depends on when you use power.
Payback and ROI are not the same measure, and installers blur them. Payback is when you get your money back. ROI is what the whole 25 years returns. A quote that leads with a big ROI percentage and never states the payback year is hiding the year.
Does the new $24 Base Services Charge change the answer?
It changes the ceiling, and this is the part of a 2026 proposal that most needs saying out loud.
PG&E’s own wording is unambiguous: the Base Services Charge “is not eligible to be offset by monthly generation credits.” Your solar can zero out the volumetric part of your bill. It cannot touch the $24.
So the arithmetic maximum any solar system can remove from a PG&E bill is `(bill − 24) ÷ bill`:
- On a $220 bill, the ceiling is 89%
- On a $150 bill, the ceiling is 84%
- On a $100 bill, the ceiling is 76%
Nobody reaches the ceiling — it is the theoretical limit before NEM 3.0 export values, night-time usage and winter are accounted for. It is also why we will never write “$0 bill” or “110% offset” on a proposal. A customer told otherwise finds out on their first post-install statement.
There is more on how the charge works, and who pays a reduced one, in the $24 PG&E Base Services Charge and your solar savings.
The charge is reduced for CARE and FERA households and for deed-restricted affordable housing. If you might qualify, enroll before you do anything else.
The offsetting piece: the same March 2026 restructure took roughly 5 to 7 cents per kWh off the volumetric rate. For a heavy user that reduction is worth more than the $24 costs. For a light user it is not. Which side you land on depends on your annual kWh, and it is one of the first things we work out.
Who should not go solar right now?
These are the situations where we tell people to wait, or not to do it at all.
Your roof has less than seven or eight years left. Composition shingle is the common case. If the roof needs replacing in five years, you will pay a crew to remove the array and reinstall it, and that cost is not in anybody’s payback model. Reroof first, then call us. We would rather quote you in 2027 on a new roof than sell you a system you have to pay to lift.
You have a wood shake or wood shingle roof. Most licensed contractors in Contra Costa will not mount on it, and in the wildland-urban interface parts of the county the fire code makes it worse. This is a reroof-first conversation, not a solar conversation.
Heavy shading you are not willing to remove. Mature valley oaks, redwoods and liquidambars on the south and west sides of a house are the standard problem in Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, the Walnut Creek hills and older parts of Martinez. Microinverters and optimizers recover some of it, not all of it. If a shade study shows a meaningful share of the usable roof under about 75% annual solar access, the 1,500 kWh/kW assumption stops holding, production drops, and payback stretches past the point where we would recommend proceeding. Trimming helps; trees grow back.
Your average bill is under about $120 a month. At that level the un-offsettable $24 is a fifth of your bill, the system you need is small, and the fixed costs of a project — permit, interconnection, inspection, labor mobilisation — do not scale down with it. Payback runs long. If your bill is genuinely under $100, our answer is almost always no.
You use almost no power between 9am and 4pm and won’t add a battery. Households that leave at 7am and get home at 7pm export nearly everything they produce, and under NEM 3.0 exports are credited at roughly a quarter of what NEM 2.0 paid. Solar-only, that profile performs badly. A battery fixes it and costs about $15,000. If neither the battery budget nor a shift in usage is available, the numbers are weak and we will say so.
You are moving within three to five years. Break-even on a purchased system is around year eleven. Solar generally helps a home sell, but it is not a reliable dollar-for-dollar addition to sale price. Do not count on recovering the full cost at closing.
You rent, or you don’t control the roof.
You are about to change your electrical load significantly. An EV, a heat pump, a pool, an ADU, a panel upgrade. All of them move your annual kWh substantially. Sizing a system to your current usage and then adding a car six months later means paying twice. Wait, then size once.
Your main panel needs work you weren’t planning. A 100-amp service that needs upgrading to accept the system adds real cost that belongs in your payback calculation, not in a footnote.
None of these are permanent disqualifications except renting. Most of them are timing.
What would we tell you if the numbers didn’t work?
We would tell you they didn’t work, and then we would tell you what to do instead. Those alternatives are usually free, and none of them involve us.
Check your rate plan. Plenty of Contra Costa households are on a plan that no longer suits their usage. PG&E’s time-of-use plans price the same kilowatt-hours very differently depending on when you use them, switching costs nothing, and PG&E’s own rate comparison tool will tell you which fits.
Check whether you qualify for CARE or FERA. Both reduce your volumetric rate and your Base Services Charge. If you qualify and aren’t enrolled, that is the highest-return item on this page.
Deal with the load before the generation. If your bill is high because of a 20-year-old air conditioner, an electric resistance water heater or a single-speed pool pump, fixing those returns more per dollar than solar does. We have told people to buy a heat pump water heater and call us in two years.
If you’re income-qualified, ask about GRID Alternatives. Programs exist that we are not the delivery partner for. Sending you to the right one beats selling you the wrong thing.
If it’s the roof, get the roof done. Then come back. We will still be here.
We would rather lose the job and stay the people who told you the truth about it. In an industry where a bad install is invisible for two years and obvious forever, that is the only business model that lasts.
Navjot and Nam bring over a decade of California solar experience between them. We design the system and project-manage the build; licensed contractor partners do the physical installation. Every proposal comes with the CPUC’s California Solar Consumer Protection Guide and the CSLB Solar Energy System Disclosure Document, and you have three business days to cancel a residential contract — five if you are 65 or older.
One real deadline: California’s property tax exclusion for active solar energy systems sunsets on 1 January 2027. SB 710, signed 6 October 2025, protects systems that qualify before that date; systems qualifying after it do not get the exclusion. That is the only date on this page we would ask you to take seriously.
Talk to us before you decide
Run your own bill through the savings calculator first. It uses the same assumptions as this article, it will not promise you a $0 bill, and it takes about a minute.
If you want a second opinion on the number it gives you, book a free consultation. No pressure, no same-day discount, nobody at your kitchen table until 10pm. We will read twelve months of your actual PG&E data and tell you what we think — including, if that is the answer, that you should wait.
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Rates and rules verified 30 August 2026. Sources: PG&E Base Services Charge and Solar Bill pages, PG&E Advice Letter 7846-E, CPUC net billing tariff decision, California SB 710 (2025).