How Solar Panels Affect Your Electric Bill — July 2026

What net metering actually does

A grid-tied solar system feeds your house first; whatever it produces beyond what you are using at that moment flows out onto the grid, and your meter runs in reverse to credit it. Net metering is the policy that decides what that exported kilowatt-hour is worth — many states credit it at or near the retail rate you would otherwise pay, but the exact credit, the true-up period (monthly vs. annual), and whether unused credits roll over or expire all vary significantly by state and utility. There is no single national rule, so the number that matters is the one in your own utility's net-metering tariff, not a rule of thumb.

Either way, the mechanism only ever touches the supply half of the bill — the commodity itself. It has nothing to say about delivery, which is why a well-sized system can offset 100% of a household's annual kilowatt-hours and the bill still does not go to zero.

What still shows up regardless

• Delivery charges. The wires, poles, transformers and the meter itself stay with your utility no matter how much of your own supply you generate — delivery is not something net metering reaches.
• The fixed customer charge. Billed for being connected at all, this does not scale with usage and does not scale down with solar production either.
• Some form of grid-access or minimum bill. A growing number of utilities bill solar customers a separate grid-access fee or enforce a minimum monthly bill, on the reasoning that a net-metered home still relies on the grid at night and on cloudy days — whether yours does, and how much, is specific to your utility's tariff.
• A capacity-related cost, in some form. The capacity charge pays for the grid being ready at peak demand, not for the specific electrons you draw — a home that still pulls from the grid at all during system peak hours is still part of what that charge funds. How a utility bills that to a net-metered customer specifically varies; check your own interconnection agreement rather than assuming it nets to zero along with your kWh.

Why the capacity price trend matters for the storage decision

PJM's own capacity auction prices — already documented and sourced elsewhere on this site — moved by a factor of 1.20× from the 2025/2026 (Jun 2025 - May 2026) delivery year to 2028/2029 (Jun 2028 - May 2029). That is the price of being available at the grid's peak hours — and it is exactly the cost a battery paired with solar can reduce, by shifting a home's own draw away from those hours instead of relying on solar production alone, which does nothing for a peak that lands after sunset.

This is a mechanism, not a solar-specific savings estimate — this site does not have a sourced dataset for panel costs, installation pricing or storage payback periods, so none is shown here. The point that holds regardless of the specific numbers: as the capacity component of a bill rises, a system that only avoids kilowatt-hours (solar alone) captures less of that rise than one that can also shift when a home draws from the grid (solar plus storage).

Questions worth asking before you sign anything

• What does my utility actually pay for exported kWh? Full retail rate, an avoided-cost rate, or a separate feed-in tariff are very different economics — get the number in writing, not the installer's summary of it.
• Is there a minimum bill or grid-access fee for solar customers? Some utilities bill this separately from the standard fixed customer charge.
• What is the true-up period, and what happens to unused credits? Monthly true-up and annual true-up produce very different outcomes for a system that overproduces in summer and underproduces in winter.
• Is net metering policy actually stable in my state? Several states have revised or are revising net-metering rules; a policy that applies to new interconnections today is not guaranteed to be the one your system was quoted under.
• Does my market structure change anything? See deregulated vs. regulated states — net metering is a utility/regulatory program, not a retail-supply contract, so it generally applies regardless of whether you also shop for a supplier.

See your baseline before you compare quotes

Enter your state and bill: the calculator shows where you stand against your state's average and which capacity increases are already locked in — the number any solar quote's savings claim should be measured against. Nothing you type is stored.

Keep going

• The PJM capacity charge, explained — the mechanism and the documented arithmetic.
• Which states actually pay it, ranked — the projected dollar impact by state.
• How to read your electric bill — the supply/delivery split this page builds on.