NEM 2.0 Solar Billing: SDG&E vs. SDCP on EV-TOU-5

If you have solar and an EV in San Diego and you're grandfathered into NEM 2.0, chances are you're on (or should be on) EV-TOU-5, SDG&E's cheapest rate plan for EV owners, built around a deeply discounted overnight charging window. You've probably also noticed your bill looks different depending on whether your electricity comes straight from SDG&E ("bundled") or from San Diego Community Power (SDCP), a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) that many San Diego County residents were automatically enrolled in starting in 2021–2023.

Two bills, two providers, two sets of numbers and it's genuinely confusing. Here's what's actually happening on EV-TOU-5 specifically, using real, current rates.

The one-sentence version

Your solar credit doesn't disappear when you move to SDCP but it gets split into two separate pieces instead of one combined piece, and one of those pieces is priced slightly lower than what SDG&E would have paid you directly.

First, the two billing structures side by side

Bundled SDG&E (no CCA):

• SDG&E delivers your power and sells you the generation.
• Every kWh you export earns one combined credit: delivery + generation together, at the full retail rate.
• That single credit pool rolls forward and can offset any charge on your bill.
• One true-up, once a year, on your SDG&E statement.

SDG&E + SDCP (CCA):

• SDG&E still delivers your power and owns the wires and meter.
• SDCP now sells you the generation- a completely separate transaction.
• You get two credit ledgers: SDG&E tracks a delivery-only credit, SDCP tracks a generation-only credit (in their own kWh balance, not dollars).
• Delivery credit can only offset delivery charges. Generation credit can only offset SDCP generation charges. They don't mix.
• SDG&E still true-ups delivery once a year, same as always. But SDCP bills generation monthly by default instead of waiting for the annual true-up. See below, this is a bigger deal than it sounds for solar.

The actual rates (effective mid-2026)

This is where it gets concrete. Here's SDG&E's own EV-TOU-5 generation rate compared to SDCP's EV-TOU-5 generation rate- the exact number that determines your solar export credit:

(SDG&E rates per Schedule EV-TOU-5, effective 8/1/2026. SDCP rates per their published 2026 residential rate schedule, PowerOn plan, EV-TOU-5 mapping, effective 5/1/2026.)

SDG&E's delivery rate on EV-TOU-5 is not flat- this is the whole point of the plan. It runs about 31.8¢/kWh during on-peak and off-peak hours, but drops steeply to about 4.7¢/kWh during the overnight super off-peak window (midnight–6am) - an 85% cut, specifically to reward EV owners who charge late at night. That delivery-side discount applies identically whether you're bundled with SDG&E or on SDCP- SDG&E delivers the power either way, so this piece of the bill doesn't change with your CCA status.

One extra thing SDCP customers pay that bundled customers don't: the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA), an exit fee, currently 3.35¢/kWh for the 2021 vintage, the most common vintage for a NEM 2.0 solar system's install date- that funds the generation SDG&E already committed to buying on everyone's behalf before CCAs existed. (PCIA rates are reset periodically by vintage; this is the current 8/1/2026 figure.)

What this means for your actual bill

If you're mostly a net importer, which describes most EV-TOU-5 households, since the whole point of the plan is buying a lot of cheap overnight charging power, the picture comes out close to even, and once PCIA is added back in, SDCP actually lands marginally cheaper than bundled SDG&E in every single period, not just overnight. The gap is small- roughly a quarter-cent per kWh in super off-peak up to about 3.4¢/kWh in summer on-peak, but it's consistently in SDCP's favor for actual import costs on this plan.

If you're mostly a net exporter (a solar household whose daytime production regularly exceeds what the EV and house use), the picture tilts against SDCP. PCIA is a charge, not a credit, it doesn't get added back to your export credit. So when your solar sends power to the grid, you're credited at SDCP's generation rate alone, which runs 3.6 to 6.8 cents per kWh lower than what SDG&E's bundled rate would have credited you, in every time period.

The hidden difference that matters most for solar: monthly billing vs. one annual true-up

This is the change most people don't find out about until it's already happened, and for solar, it can matter more than the rate difference above.

Bundled SDG&E waits until your annual true-up to settle anything. If you overproduce solar in June and underproduce in December, it doesn't matter, SDG&E nets the whole 12-month period together and only bills or pays you once, at the end.

SDCP does not work that way by default. SDCP bills the generation portion of your NEM account monthly, not annually. Every month, they look at whether you were a net generator or net consumer for that month alone: if you generated more than you used, you get a credit; if you used more than you generated, you get charged- right then, on that month's bill. You still have an overall 12-month relevant period and an annual true-up date on paper, but you're not waiting until the end of it to pay or get paid on the generation side.

Why this matters so much for solar specifically: production is wildly seasonal. A typical San Diego solar system might produce two or three times as much in July as it does in December. Under bundled SDG&E's single annual true-up, a big summer surplus quietly carries forward and absorbs a winter deficit automatically- you never see it as a separate transaction. Under SDCP's monthly default, that same winter deficit gets billed to you in real dollars each of those months, even though your account may still finish the year net-positive overall. You're not necessarily paying more over the full year- but your cash flow through the year can look very different, with real charges showing up in your leanest solar months instead of being invisibly absorbed by the annual net.

You can switch back to annual billing on the SDCP side- but only if all of the following are true:

• You're a NEM 1.0 or NEM 2.0 customer who interconnected before April 15, 2023
• You request the switch at the time of your true-up, before SDCP has started billing you for the new period
• Once you switch, you're locked into that choice for a full 12 months before you can change it again

If you qualify and your solar production is seasonally lopsided, annual billing on the SDCP side gets you back to the same smoothing behavior bundled SDG&E gives you automatically- a winter deficit absorbed by a summer surplus within the same 12-month cycle, rather than billed out in real time.

One number that goes the other way, in SDCP's favor: if you finish the year as a net generator, SDCP's payout rate for that surplus (Net Surplus Compensation) is always SDG&E's own NSC rate plus a fixed $0.0075/kWh bonus - a real, published incentive that consistently beats what bundled SDG&E pays for the same surplus energy.

Three things that trip people up

1. "My delivery credit disappeared." It didn't, it's just relabeled. On SDG&E's post-CCA bill format, the line still says "Applied Generation Credit," a leftover from the bundled-bill template, even though SDG&E's own generation charge nets to exactly zero on a CCA account. That line is quietly doing the job of the delivery credit.

2. "I don't see my annual solar payout." If you're on SDCP's monthly billing default, you won't get one big year-end payout the way bundled customers do, you've already been credited or charged for generation each month along the way. Only your final net surplus for the year (if any) shows up as a lump payment, and even that comes as a separate check from SDCP, not a line item on the SDG&E true-up bill.

3. "Did I lose my NEM 2.0 grandfathering by enrolling in SDCP?" No. Enrolling in or opting out of a CCA doesn't reclassify you to NEM 3.0. It does force an interim true-up and reset your NEM anniversary date the moment the switch happens, a one-time disruption, not a loss of grandfathered status.

SDCP's battery rebate program- and how it plays out differently for NEM 2.0 vs. NEM 3.0

SDCP also runs a separate incentive on top of everything above: the Solar Battery Savings Program. It's worth its own section.

How the program actually works, confirmed from SDCP's own March 2026 FAQ:

• Upfront rebate: $350/kWh of usable battery capacity for a new solar + battery install, or $250/kWh for adding a battery to an existing solar system (higher for CARE/FERA customers), up to a $10,000 cap.
• Performance incentive: a flat $0.10/kWh for energy your battery discharges during the required weekday dispatch window — whether that energy powers your home or gets exported to the grid.
• Dispatch requirement: at least 50% of usable capacity must discharge during the window. Home use is served first; any leftover automatically exports. The other 50% stays entirely yours — usable anytime, including full override during an outage.
• Dispatch window: commonly described as "4-9pm," but it's actually a 4-hour window that shifts seasonally — 4-8pm most of the year, 5-9pm from April through September (per SDCP's published 2026 schedule) — always weekdays only.
• Five-year commitment: to keep the full rebate, you must stay enrolled for five years. Leaving early means repaying a prorated share (100% in year 1, dropping to 80/60/40/20% through year 5) and forfeiting future performance payments.
• Grid-charging is not allowed. SDCP is explicit: "Batteries must fully charge by your solar system to be eligible. It cannot be charged from the grid." Any framing that compares "the cost to recharge the battery overnight from the grid" against the export value doesn't apply to this program — there's no grid-charging cost to net against, since it isn't permitted.

NEM 3.0 / Solar Billing Plan customers

Export credits under SBP aren't a flat rate - they're calculated hourly, using SDG&E's Avoided Cost Calculator (ACC), which varies by month and hour of day and is published in advance. Multiple industry sources place the average SBP export credit around $0.05-$0.08/kWh across all hours of the year, a roughly 75% reduction from NEM 2.0's retail-based crediting. Because ACC values are generally higher in the early evening (when grid demand peaks), exports specifically within the 4-9pm dispatch window tend to sit well above that all-hours average, though the exact hourly bounds require pulling SDG&E's published ACC export-pricing file directly rather than relying on a rounded estimate. SDCP adds a modest bonus on top for SBP customers: an extra $0.0075/kWh on new-solar exports (and $0.11/kWh for CARE/FERA customers), on top of the general $0.10/kWh Solar Battery Savings performance incentive.

NEM 2.0 customers

This is the more favorable case, and it comes from the mechanics covered earlier in this piece: NEM 2.0 exports are still credited at a rate built on retail pricing, not avoided cost. If you're on SDCP (SDCP generation credit + SDG&E delivery credit, since delivery is separate), your combined effective export credit during the 4-9pm on-peak window lands well above SBP's avoided-cost pricing, in the same general range as the bundled/CCA retail on-peak totals shown in the rate table earlier in this post (roughly $0.52-$0.80/kWh depending on season, based on the current EV-TOU-5 figures above). Add the $0.10/kWh Solar Battery Savings performance incentive on top of that, and NEM 2.0 households participating in this program are exporting battery-discharged energy at a meaningfully higher combined rate than NEM 3.0/SBP households doing the exact same thing.

Rates cited are current as of the publication date and are subject to change; always confirm against your own SDG&E and SDCP account statements, since your specific rate plan, PCIA vintage, and CARE/FERA status will affect your numbers.