Plug-in solar on Southern California Edison

The rates that matter to you

The Base Services Charge is worth understanding: it's payable regardless of how little electricity you buy, so solar doesn't touch it. Anyone telling you a panel will "eliminate your bill" hasn't looked at an SCE bill.

What a kit saves on SCE

Estimated using NREL irradiance data for Orange County and a 33.2-cent blended rate. Full working.

If you're on a time-of-use plan

Most SCE residential customers now are. It changes what a panel is worth in two directions.

Against you: the panel is finished producing before the 4pm peak really bites, so most of what it makes displaces cheap off-peak power.

For you: anything you can shift into daylight is worth much more. Moving a dishwasher cycle from 8pm to 1pm on TOU-D-4-9PM in summer changes the price of that electricity from roughly 58 cents to roughly 24 — and if your panel is covering it, to nothing.

A west-facing panel helps here, because it pushes production later into the afternoon. More on this.

Where SCE's territory is

Most of Orange County, including Irvine, Santa Ana, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach. Note that the city of Anaheim is served by Anaheim Public Utilities, not SCE — a municipal utility, also covered by SB 868. Beyond Orange County, SCE serves most of Los Angeles County outside the city of Los Angeles, plus large parts of the Inland Empire, Ventura and the central coast.

South Orange County — San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, and parts of Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel and Laguna Hills — is SDG&E. The boundary runs roughly along La Paz Road, Laguna Hills Drive and Crown Valley Parkway.

If your bill shows Orange County Power Authority, that's a Community Choice Aggregator buying your electricity while SCE still delivers it. It changes the generation charge on your bill, not how any of this works.

SCE's position on plug-in solar

SCE, and its parent Edison International, opposed SB 868. Their stated concerns were about safety, metering and the absence of inspection.

Once the bill is in force, SCE will be prohibited from charging any fee on the device or on the electricity it produces, and from requiring approval or permission to operate. It may require a simple online registration — address, make, model, size. That's a notification, not an application; you don't wait for a response.

SCE had not published a registration process or a customer-facing position as of 1 September 2026. We'll update this section the moment it does.

Before the law takes effect, SCE can technically still assert interconnection requirements for a device that backfeeds. If you want to install before January 2027, either use a zero-export device or ring SCE and get their current position in writing.

Worth doing first, free

Check whether you're on the right rate plan. SCE publishes a rate comparison tool that uses your actual usage history. For some households, switching plans is worth more than a small solar panel, and it costs nothing.

Work out your savings → · SDG&E · PG&E