Is a Home Battery Worth It on PG&E? Time-of-Use Math With and Without Solar (2026)

A home battery pays best on PG&E when it stores solar you would otherwise export and uses it during the 4-9 p.m. peak. For a solar home on the Net Billing Tariff (NEM 3.0), each kWh moved that way is worth about 24 to 51 cents, depending on the month. That's because PG&E's 2026 export credit at midday is usually only 1 to 7 cents per kWh, while E-ELEC charges 32 to 55 cents at peak. A battery charged from the grid gets only the gap between off-peak and peak prices, minus about 11% lost in the round trip. On EV2-A that gap is still worth 16 to 28 cents per kWh. On E-TOU-C it's worth about 7 cents in summer and nothing in winter. Portable power stations are useful for outages but almost never pay for themselves through time-of-use savings.

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Key facts

• PG&E's 4-9 p.m. peak runs every day on E-ELEC, EV2-A and E-TOU-C, including weekends and holidays. Summer is June 1 to September 30. Winter is October 1 to May 31 (Schedule E-ELEC, Schedule EV2, Schedule E-TOU-C).
• Bundled energy rates in effect tonight (effective June 1, 2026; re-checked against the PG&E tariff PDFs on November 4, 2026):
  • E-ELEC: $0.55214 peak and $0.33358 off-peak in summer; $0.32063 peak and $0.28468 off-peak in winter.
  • EV2-A: $0.53809 peak in summer and $0.41099 in winter; $0.22558 off-peak (midnight-3 p.m.) all year.
  • E-TOU-C: $0.52240 peak and $0.39940 off-peak in summer; $0.39757 peak and $0.36757 off-peak in winter.
• A battery makes you eligible for E-ELEC and EV2-A. Both plans accept customers with energy storage that has PG&E interconnection approval and permission to operate (PTO). The battery must be at least 2 kWh, or 0.05% of your annual use if you use more than 6,000 kWh a year. On EV2-A, storage-only eligibility is a pilot capped at 30,000 customers (E-ELEC applicability; EV2 Special Condition 8).
• Solar customers on the Net Billing Tariff (NBT) must take service on E-ELEC. Exports earn hourly Energy Export Credit (EEC) values from the CPUC's Avoided Cost Calculator. If your completed interconnection application is dated 2026, you get the 2026 values for nine years. Residential applicants in 2026 also get a $0.00880 per kWh "ACC Plus" adder, also for nine years (Schedule NBT, PG&E export credit price sheets).
• Battery round-trip losses: Tesla rates Powerwall 3 at 89% solar-to-battery-to-home efficiency, measured at beginning of life in a typical solar-shifting use. Its 10-year warranty covers 70% capacity retention, with unlimited cycles for solar self-consumption, time-of-use shifting and backup (Powerwall 3 datasheet, Powerwall warranty). The math below uses 89% for every installed battery.
• What batteries cost: EnergySage's California marketplace average is $1,037 per kWh installed before incentives, or about $13,482 for a 13 kWh system (typical range $11,460 to $15,504; updated November 1, 2026) (EnergySage). The federal 25D residential clean energy credit ended for expenditures after December 31, 2025 (IRS).

Why the battery's charging source matters so much

A battery earns money one way: it buys or stores a kWh when it's cheap and uses it when power is expensive. The value of each kWh depends on what the stored energy would otherwise have been worth.

• Solar you would have exported. On NBT, a kWh sent to the grid at noon earns that hour's export credit. On the 2026 price sheet, the midday credit (10 a.m.-3 p.m., generation plus delivery) averages about 5.5 cents on November weekdays, 0.6 cents in April and 6.8 cents on August weekdays. Weekends are lower. A kWh stored in a battery and used at 6 p.m. instead avoids buying power at the E-ELEC peak price of $0.32063 in winter or $0.55214 in summer.
• Grid power bought off-peak. The battery is worth the peak price minus the off-peak price, after the 11% loss. If the off-peak price divided by the peak price is higher than the battery's efficiency, cycling the battery costs you money.

That second rule gives a quick break-even test for any plan.

Grid-charged battery: what each kWh is worth by plan

The table shows the efficiency a battery needs just to break even, and what each kWh delivered at peak saves with an 89% efficient battery charged at the cheapest hour.

Saved per kWh = peak price - (cheapest price / 0.89). Rates are PG&E bundled rates effective June 1, 2026. CCA customers have different generation rates, so their spreads will differ. See community choice aggregation explained.

On E-TOU-C, a well-programmed battery should sit idle in winter, apart from backup duty. E-ELEC's winter spread is almost as thin. EV2-A is the only PG&E plan where grid-to-battery shifting pays all year, because its off-peak price is less than 23 cents.

Solar plus battery on NBT: the case where it pays

For an NBT home, the comparison is between exporting midday solar for the export credit and storing it to cover a 4-9 p.m. import. The table uses the 2026 export credit values averaged over 10 a.m.-3 p.m. (weekdays and weekends weighted 5:2), plus the $0.00880 ACC Plus adder for a 2026 residential applicant.

Net gain = peak price - (export credit / 0.89). Source: PG&E Solar Billing Plan 2026 EEC price sheet and Schedule E-ELEC.

Two things on the price sheet are easy to miss:

• Spring middays are worth almost nothing to export. Weekday April credits run from about 0.7 to 0.9 cents per kWh at 9 a.m.-noon and fall to about 0.02 cents at 3 p.m. That is why NBT systems are designed around self-consumption.
• Late-summer evenings can be worth more to export than to use. For a 2026 applicant, the August weekday export credit is about $1.01 to $1.15 per kWh from 5 to 9 p.m., about twice the E-ELEC summer peak price. On September weekdays it's about $0.46 to $0.60 from 6 to 8 p.m. A battery that sends stored solar to the grid on those evenings can earn more than one that only covers the house. NBT gives export credit only for renewable energy, so a battery that exports must be set up so it can't charge from the grid ("No Grid Charging"). A battery that grid-charges must be set to "No Storage Export" (NBT Special Condition 8). Ask your installer which mode your system uses and whether it can export on a schedule.

CCA customers receive PG&E's delivery credit but get the generation part of the export value ("Energy Produced") from their CCA, so check your CCA's NEM page.

A hypothetical year: 10 kWh a night from a 13.5 kWh battery

This is a hypothetical example, not a quote or a promise of savings. Assume a home uses at least 10 kWh between 4 and 9 p.m. every day, and its battery delivers exactly 10 kWh into that window at 89% efficiency. It's on PG&E bundled service and the rates above hold all year. There's no degradation, no backup reserve and no rate change.

How it's figured: the solar case uses each month's midday export value. It assumes the array has at least 11.2 kWh of surplus every day, which many systems won't manage on short, cloudy winter days, so treat it as a best case. The E-TOU-C row cycles only June through September, because winter cycling loses money.

Real-world adjustments, all of which cut these numbers:

• Capacity fades. Powerwall 3's warranty guarantees 70% of capacity at 10 years, not 100%.
• Backup reserve. Keeping 20-30% in reserve for outages means less energy for shifting.
• Your evening load. If you use 6 kWh from 4 to 9 p.m., the battery can't save on 10.
• Fixed charges don't change. The daily base services charge ($0.19713, $0.39688 or $0.79343 depending on income tier) applies whether you have a battery or not, and NBT export credits (other than the ACC Plus adder) can't pay it.

What could raise them: an EV or heat pump that makes your evening load bigger, exporting on high-value late-summer evenings, or an SGIP rebate.

Incentives in late 2026

• SGIP: As of November 4, 2026, the Self-Generation Incentive Program's budget page showed about $1.2 million still available in PG&E's general Small Residential Storage budget. The AB 209 equity budgets showed waitlists (SGIP PG&E budget summary, PG&E SGIP page). Budgets change weekly. Ask your installer to confirm a reservation before you sign.
• Federal credit: the 25D credit for a battery you own ended after 2025 (IRS link above). Any payback quote that still subtracts 30% is out of date.

What about a portable power station?

A plug-in power station, like the 1 kWh units from EcoFlow, Anker or Jackery, isn't interconnected storage. It doesn't qualify you for E-ELEC or EV2-A, and it can only power what you plug into it. Its value for time-of-use depends on your current plan.

• On E-TOU-C in winter it loses money. It would need better than 92.5% round-trip efficiency, counting both the charger and the inverter. Anker's own runtime formula for the SOLIX C1000 assumes 90% conversion efficiency on the AC output alone, so the full round trip is lower than that.
• On E-TOU-C in summer it barely breaks even. Hypothetically, a station that delivers 1 kWh a day at 80-90% round-trip efficiency saves about $0.02-$0.08 per kWh, or roughly $3-$10 for the whole summer.
• On EV2-A (households with an EV) it's real but small. At 80-90% efficiency, 1 kWh a day saves about $63-$74 a year if you remember to move loads onto it every evening.

Buy a power station for outages, not for bill savings. During an outage, plug appliances directly into the station. Never connect it to house wiring without a permanently installed transfer switch. PG&E warns never to connect backup power to another power source, including PG&E lines, and to make sure power can't backfeed into the grid (PG&E backup power safety).

How to size it before you get quotes

1. Measure your 4-9 p.m. usage. Download your hourly data (Green Button) from PG&E and run it through our usage analyzer. Add up the kWh in the peak window on typical summer and winter days. Size the battery to that number, not to your roof.
2. Check your rate plan. If you add a battery without solar, compare EV2-A and E-ELEC using your own usage in the rate plan calculator. For the trade-offs, see PG&E E-ELEC explained and EV2-A vs E-TOU-C.
3. Ask installers for three numbers: price per usable kWh, the battery's round-trip efficiency, and the operating mode (self-powered, time-based, export allowed or not). Compare the price to EnergySage's California average of about $1,037 per kWh.
4. Run your own payback with the "saved per kWh" figures above for your plan, times the kWh you'd really shift each day.

Gear that helps

• See your real 4-9 p.m. load first: the Emporia Vue 3 home energy monitor ($199.99, 4.6 stars from about 887 ratings) clamps onto your panel's mains and up to 16 circuits. It shows solar export versus import, so you can see how much evening load a battery would actually cover. See our home energy monitor guide.
• Outage backup for a fridge, router or CPAP: the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Classic (1,024 Wh LiFePO4, 1,800 W AC; $559 list, 4.7 stars from about 1,394 ratings) has an app with charging schedules and a sub-10 ms UPS switchover.
• A similar-size alternative: the Anker SOLIX C1000 (1,056 Wh LiFePO4, 1,800 W AC; $499.99, 4.7 stars from about 2,179 ratings) is rated for 3,000 cycles and can recharge from AC in under an hour in its UltraFast mode.

Prices and ratings were checked on Amazon on November 4, 2026 and change often.

The bottom line

• Solar on NBT: a battery is the main way to get value from your panels, and the 2026 export credits make the case stronger in spring and fall. Get quotes, and check whether your system can export on high-value summer evenings.
• No solar, on EV2-A: a battery can pay back, but slowly. In the example above it takes nearly two decades at today's prices, without incentives.
• No solar, on E-TOU-C or E-ELEC: a battery is mainly outage insurance. The time-of-use savings won't cover its cost.

Under NEM 2.0, exports earn close to retail, so a battery adds far less value. Compare the two in NEM 2.0 vs NEM 3.0, and see how PG&E solar billing works.

Frequently asked questions

Is a home battery worth it on PG&E without solar?

Usually only on EV2-A. A grid-charged battery saves the gap between off-peak and peak prices minus round-trip losses. At 89% efficiency, that's about 16 cents per kWh in winter and 28 cents in summer on EV2-A, about 18 cents in summer and close to zero in winter on E-ELEC, and nothing in winter on E-TOU-C. At California's average installed price of about $13,482 for 13 kWh, payback on bill savings alone is long.

How much does a battery save with solar on NEM 3.0 (NBT)?

Each kWh of surplus solar stored and used from 4 to 9 p.m. instead of exported is worth about 24 to 51 cents on E-ELEC, based on PG&E's 2026 export credit values and the ACC Plus adder. In a hypothetical home shifting 10 kWh every day, that comes to about $1,254 a year, before degradation and winter solar shortfalls.

Can a battery get me onto PG&E's EV2-A or E-ELEC plan?

Yes, if it has PG&E interconnection approval and permission to operate, and it's at least 2 kWh (or 0.05% of annual use above 6,000 kWh). EV2-A's storage-only option is a pilot limited to 30,000 customers. A plug-in portable power station doesn't qualify.

Does a portable power station lower my PG&E bill?

Barely. On E-TOU-C, it loses money in winter because the 3-cent peak/off-peak gap is smaller than its charging and inverter losses. In summer it saves only a few dollars for the season. On EV2-A, cycling 1 kWh a day might save about $63-$74 a year. Its real value is outage backup.

What are PG&E's 2026 export credit values?

They vary by hour, month and weekday or weekend. For 2026 interconnection applicants, midday credits are typically under 7 cents per kWh and fall below 1 cent on spring days. Summer evening credits can exceed $1 per kWh on August weekdays. PG&E publishes the full sheets at pge.com/energyexportcredit. Values are locked for nine years for applications through 2027.

Is the federal tax credit still available for home batteries?

No, not for a battery you buy and own. The IRS says the 25D residential clean energy credit doesn't apply to expenditures made after December 31, 2025. Check SGIP availability instead; PG&E's general residential storage budget still had funds as of November 4, 2026.

Check your bill before you buy

Upload your PG&E bill to My Big Bill for a free audit. It reads your rate plan, shows how much of your usage falls in the 4-9 p.m. peak, and won't claim savings your bill doesn't support. Then try the Green Button usage analyzer to see your hourly peak load. For simpler ways to move load out of the peak, see smart plugs on PG&E time-of-use and the best time to charge an EV on PG&E.