Guide · SCE rates
Under SCE's Net Billing Tariff, the everyday name for NEM 3.0, the power your panels export is credited at hourly avoided-cost values that are mostly far below the retail rate you pay to buy power back. You are placed on the TOU-D-PRIME rate with a 4 to 9 p.m. peak, your credits are settled once a year, and your export prices are locked for nine years if you enroll before 2028. The result is that a solar system pays off by covering your own usage, not by selling surplus, which is why modern systems are sized to consumption and usually paired with a battery.
Facts checked September 21, 2026
Net energy metering is the rulebook that decides what your utility does with the solar power you send to the grid. For years, SCE customers on NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0 got close to full retail credit for every kilowatt-hour they exported. That made a simple strategy work: cover the roof, export the surplus at midday, and buy it back at night for roughly the same price.
On April 15, 2023, that strategy ended for new customers. SCE moved new solar interconnections to the Net Billing Tariff, which most people call NEM 3.0 and which SCE labels the Solar Billing Plan on its own pages. Homes connected before that date keep their old rules for the length of their grandfathering period. Homes connecting now, and every home VertX installs, live under the new rules.
The credit for each exported kilowatt-hour comes from the CPUC's Avoided Cost Calculator, a state model of what it would cost SCE to buy or generate that power at that moment. The values change by hour, by weekday versus weekend, and by month. They are highest on summer evenings, roughly June through September from 4 to 9 p.m., when the grid is strained. They are lowest on mild, sunny afternoons in spring, when the grid is already swimming in solar.
Notice the problem. A rooftop system exports the most on exactly those sunny midday hours when the credit is worth the least. It exports almost nothing during the summer evening hours when the credit is worth the most. We will not put a single "average export rate" on this page because there is no honest single number. What is honest is this: for the hours that matter to a typical home, the export credit sits well below retail.
If you enroll before January 1, 2028, your export prices are locked for nine years, based on the avoided-cost values for the year you began service. That lock protects you from the state lowering the values later. It does not protect you from retail rates rising, and those have gone up year after year.
SCE requires Net Billing Tariff customers to take service on TOU-D-PRIME. Three things about that plan matter for a solar home:
Your bill under the tariff is monthly, with an annual true-up. Each month you are billed for what you imported and credited for what you exported. Any credit left over at the end of the twelve-month cycle is settled as net surplus compensation at a much lower rate than the monthly export credits, so a system that overproduces all year is giving power away.
Since November 2025, SCE bills carry a Base Services Charge required by state law AB 205. For most households it is about $24 a month, with reduced amounts of roughly $6 for CARE customers and $12 for FERA customers. It applies to solar homes too. In exchange, the per-kilowatt-hour rates were lowered.
For a solar homeowner this means the bill never goes to zero, no matter how big the system. It also means the value of solar shows up in the energy portion of the bill, which is why the design has to focus on the kilowatt-hours you actually consume, not on a theoretical zero bill.
Picture two houses on the same street with the same 6 p.m. dinner-time load. Under NEM 2.0, both could install a large array, export the entire afternoon, and buy the evening back at nearly the same credit. Under NEM 3.0, that afternoon export is credited at a low value and the 6 p.m. purchase is billed at the peak retail rate. The bigger the array, the more low-value power is exported, and the payback gets worse, not better.
Now give the second house a battery. The midday surplus goes into the battery instead of the grid. From 4 to 9 p.m. the house runs on stored solar instead of buying at peak. The array can be sized to the home's real annual consumption, the battery covers the evening, and the grid is only used to fill the gaps. That house exports little, imports little at peak, and gets most of its solar value at full retail price by never buying that power in the first place.
That is how VertX designs every SCE system. We start from your last twelve months of SCE usage, model your rate plan, size the array to what you use, and quote it with and without a battery so you can see the difference on paper. A battery also keeps the house running in an outage, which a grid-tied solar system alone cannot do; that part is covered in the battery storage page.
Solar on SCE still makes sense for most homes. It just makes sense for a different reason than it did in 2020: you are no longer a small power plant selling to the grid, you are a household producing and storing most of its own energy. Design for that and the numbers hold up.
Common questions
Yes. NEM 3.0 is the everyday name for what SCE calls the Net Billing Tariff, or Solar Billing Plan. It took effect for new solar interconnections on April 15, 2023. Under it, the power you export to the grid is credited at hourly avoided-cost values set by the state, not at the retail rate you pay for power. Anyone who connected before that date stays on the older NEM 2.0 rules for the length of their grandfathering period.
It depends on the hour, the day, and the month. Export credits come from the CPUC Avoided Cost Calculator and change every hour of the year. They are highest on summer evenings from 4 to 9 p.m. and lowest on sunny spring afternoons, which is exactly when a solar roof exports the most. For most hours the credit is a fraction of what you pay to buy power. That is the whole reason system design changed.
Yes. SCE requires Net Billing Tariff customers to be on TOU-D-PRIME. Its peak window is 4 to 9 p.m. every day, and it has no baseline credit. The rate is built for homes with a battery, an electric vehicle, or an electric heat pump, because those loads can be shifted away from the peak hours.
Customers who enroll before January 1, 2028 have their export prices locked for nine years, based on the avoided-cost values for the year they began service. After the lock, the tariff in effect at the time applies. Retail rates for the power you buy are not locked and have risen year after year.
For most SCE homes, yes. Without a battery, midday solar is exported at low credit values and evening use is bought back at peak retail rates. A battery stores the midday surplus and runs the house through the 4 to 9 p.m. window on your own power. It also keeps the lights on during an outage, which a grid-tied solar system alone cannot do. We quote both ways and show you the difference.
