What Solar Really Costs in San Diego in 2026
Home › Guides
Guides
What Solar Really Costs in San Diego in 2026
Google rating
★★★★★ 4.9 — 150+ reviews
Homes protected
3,200+Across San Diego County since 1981
License
CSLB #1130793B · C-10 · C-39 — verify with the state
Where we are
Mira Mesa9520 Padgett St, Suite 107, San Diego, CA 92126
Licensed & insured
In-house crews — no subcontractors
Written warranty on every job
Se habla español
Free estimates · $399 inspection report — credited toward your job
The short version
If you are reading roofing-and-solar websites in San Diego right now, you are going to see the number 30% a lot. It is out of date. The federal residential solar tax credit that homeowners had claimed for twenty years — Internal Revenue Code section 25D — no longer applies to expenditures made after 31 December 2025. That is not an interpretation. The statute says it: "The credit allowed under this section shall not apply with respect to any expenditures made after December 31, 2025." (26 U.S.C. §25D(h))
We are a roofing and solar company. It would be more convenient for us if that were not true. It is true anyway, and you are going to find out eventually, so you should find out from us.
This page covers what changed, what is genuinely still available in 2026, why the export credit is no longer the reason to go solar in SDG&E territory, why the battery is, what solar does not remove from your bill, and how to check any incentive number a contractor — including us — puts in front of you.
What changed on 1 January 2026
Two things, and the second one is the one that catches people.
First: the credit terminated. Section 25D was ended by Public Law 119-21 (July 2025). For a residential system you own, there is no 30% federal credit in 2026.
Second: the IRS measures the deadline by completion, not by payment. This is where a lot of homeowners got hurt. The rule is that "an expenditure with respect to an item is treated as made when the original installation of the item is completed." The IRS spelled out the consequence directly: "If installation is completed after December 31, 2025, the expenditure will be treated as made after December 31, 2025, which will prevent the taxpayer from claiming the section 25D credit." (IRS FAQs on OBBB modifications to §§25C, 25D and others)
So: a contract signed in October 2025 did not preserve the credit. A deposit paid in December 2025 did not preserve it. A system that was still waiting on permit or interconnection when the calendar turned did not preserve it. Only a completed installation before 1 January 2026 did.
If someone sold you a system in late 2025 on the promise that a deposit would lock in the credit, that is a conversation to have with a tax professional, not with a salesperson. We are not tax advisors and this page is not tax advice.
What still exists in 2026 — checked, not promised
Here is the honest inventory. Every item below is dated, because every one of them can move.
Commercial solar still has a federal credit, on a clock. Section 48E — the clean electricity investment credit — is alive for business-owned systems, but the timeline tightened sharply. Solar facilities that began construction after 4 July 2026 must be placed in service by 31 December 2027 to claim it (26 U.S.C. §48E(e)(4)). Projects that started earlier have longer runways. Energy storage is carved out of that solar-and-wind sunset. There are also foreign-entity sourcing restrictions that now apply. If you own a commercial building in Miramar, Kearny Mesa, or Poway, this is a real deadline and the engineering lead time is not short. Talk to your CPA before you talk to us.
Third-party ownership (lease and PPA) is structurally different, and that is the point. With a lease or a power purchase agreement, you do not own the system, so there is nothing for you to claim — the company that owns it may be able to claim §48E. Congress denied that credit for leased solar water heating and leased small wind, but not for leased solar electric property (§48E(i), which references paragraphs (1) and (4) of §25D(d) — solar electric is paragraph (2)). What that means for you: any benefit reaches you only as a lower price or rate, if the provider chooses to pass it through. It is not "you still get 30%." Ask to see the escalator, the term, the buyout, and what happens if you sell the house or need a roof under the array.
California's property tax exclusion for solar is real and it expires soon. An active solar energy system currently does not trigger a property tax reassessment as new construction — but only for systems in progress or completed before 1 January 2027. Systems excluded before the sunset stay excluded until the property changes ownership. (California BOE Letter to Assessors 2024/031) This is one of the few genuine 2026 deadlines left, and it is a completion deadline, not a contract deadline.
SGIP battery rebates: mostly closed in SDG&E territory right now. The Self-Generation Incentive Program is administered here by the Center for Sustainable Energy. As of the program's own metrics dated 20 August 2026, the general Small Residential Storage category shows Closed, at a Step 7 rate of $0.15 per watt-hour. The higher equity rates ($1.10/Wh) belong to income-qualified equity categories, and those show closed or waitlisted as well. (SGIP program metrics · CPUC SGIP overview)
We are not going to quote you a battery price with an SGIP rebate subtracted out of it. If a category reopens and you qualify, we will tell you and help you file. Until then it is not in the math.
San Diego Community Power. If you are in the City of San Diego, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, La Mesa, National City, Encinitas, or unincorporated county, your generation charges come from SDCP rather than SDG&E, and SDCP administers its own net billing tariff. Poway and Santee are not SDCP communities. SDCP's terms are separate from SDG&E's delivery charges and worth reading directly (SDCP billing and rates).
There is no California state income tax credit for residential solar. There never was one in the sense people mean.
Why exports are no longer the story
Under the net billing tariff — NEM 3.0 — which has applied to every new interconnection since 15 April 2023, the energy you send back to the grid is credited at values from the CPUC's Avoided Cost Calculator, which the CPUC itself describes as "usually lower than import rates." (CPUC, Net Energy Metering and Net Billing)
Practically: the kilowatt-hour your panels make at 11 a.m. and push to the grid is not worth the same as the kilowatt-hour you buy back at 6 p.m. It is worth considerably less. An oversized array that exports heavily in the middle of the day is no longer the efficient design it was under NEM 2.0.
If you already have NEM 2.0, you keep that tariff for 20 years from your interconnection date. That legacy is worth protecting, and it is one of the specific reasons to be careful about who touches your array during a reroof. (See: Reroofing Under Existing Solar Panels.)
Why the battery is the story
SDG&E's on-peak window is 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. — SDG&E's own guidance to solar customers is to "try to use your battery during on-peak hours from 4pm to 9pm when electricity is priced the highest." (SDG&E Solar Billing Plan)
That is the whole economics of solar in San Diego in 2026, compressed into one sentence. The value is in not buying expensive evening electricity, not in selling cheap midday electricity. The CPUC reports that roughly 70% of net billing customers paired storage with their solar by the end of 2024, and that is why.
It also means a smaller, well-matched array with storage frequently beats a bigger array without it. We would rather sell you the right system twice — panels now, storage when it pencils — than an oversized one once.
What solar does not remove from your bill
This gets left out of a lot of proposals, so here it is plainly.
SDG&E's Base Services Charge applies to residential customers including solar customers, because the house is still connected to the grid. As published by SDG&E, it runs roughly $24 per month for general residential customers (about $22.22–$26.18 depending on billing cycle length), about $12 for FERA/DRAH, and about $6 for CARE, effective October 2025. Solar export credits do not net against it. It replaced minimum bill amounts and certain monthly service fees. (SDG&E, Base Services Charge — check this page for current amounts, they change with rate cases.)
There are also non-bypassable charges for public purpose programs that export credits cannot offset.
So "solar eliminates your electric bill" is not a thing that happens. "Solar substantially reduces the usage-based portion of your bill, and a battery attacks the most expensive hours" is a thing that happens.
What we will not tell you
We will not give you a savings number before we have seen a full year of your bills. Not a ballpark, not a "typical customer saves." Your usage shape — when you use power, not just how much — determines the answer, and two houses on the same street in Scripps Ranch with the same square footage can land in different places. Send us twelve months of SDG&E statements and we will model it. Before that, any number we gave you would be a sales prop.
We will not tell you that you need a new roof when you don't. If your roof has fifteen years left, we will tell you that and we will mount to it. If it has four, we will tell you that too, because putting an array on a roof with four years left means paying to take it off and put it back — and it can jeopardize your NEM 2.0 continuity if the removal is handled carelessly. (See: Do I Need a New Roof Before Solar?.)
We will not quote a federal residential tax credit. There isn't one.
How to check whether a quoted incentive is real
This is not a trick and it is not aimed at any particular competitor. Most solar salespeople in San Diego are working from slide decks that were accurate in 2024 and were never updated. Here is how to check any of it yourself, in about fifteen minutes.
Ask for the incentive by name and citation. Not "the tax credit" — the section number, the program name, or the utility tariff. A real incentive has a name. If the answer is a category ("all the rebates"), that is a flag.
If it is the federal residential credit, it does not exist. Read §25D(h) and the IRS FAQ yourself. Both are short.
If it is SGIP, look up the category status. Go to selfgenca.com program metrics, find CSE (that is SDG&E territory), and read the status column: open, waitlisted, or closed. Then ask which specific category and step they are claiming, and whether you income-qualify for it.
If it is a lease or PPA, ask who claims the tax credit. The answer is the provider, not you. Then ask, in writing, how that shows up in your price.
Ask for the CSLB Solar Energy System Disclosure Document before you sign. It is required in 16-point boldface on the front or cover page of every residential solar contract, and it must show total cost (CSLB solar requirements). You are also required to be given the California Solar Consumer Protection Guide, with time to read it (CPUC). If the presentation was in Spanish, the contract must be in Spanish.
Check the down payment. On a home improvement contract in California, "the down payment cannot be more than $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less," and payments cannot exceed the value of work performed (CSLB). A large upfront ask is a real warning sign regardless of the company's reviews.
Look up the license. Use CSLB's license lookup. Check status, expiration, and — this is the one people skip — the classifications. A contractor holding only C-46 (solar) is barred from performing other building trades except as required to install the solar system. That contractor cannot legally re-roof your house.
If a company's numbers survive all seven, they are probably being straight with you. Ours should survive them too. Run them on us.
The part that is actually our specialty
Most of San Diego's solar problems are not solar problems. They are seam problems: panels mounted to a roof that needed replacing, a warranty voided by an attachment nobody coordinated, a detach-and-reset handled by a subcontractor who left the array off for six weeks and put the homeowner's tariff at risk.
We do both trades under one license, one crew, and one warranty — from the deck up through the panels. That is not a slogan about scale. It is about who you call when water shows up under an array, and whether that call turns into two companies pointing at each other.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a 30% federal solar tax credit in 2026? Not for residential systems you own. Section 25D does not apply to expenditures made after 31 December 2025. Business-owned systems may still qualify under section 48E, subject to construction-start and placed-in-service deadlines. Talk to your CPA.
I paid a deposit in 2025. Did that lock in my credit? No. The IRS treats the expenditure as made when the original installation is completed. If completion happened in 2026, the credit is not available. This surprised a lot of homeowners and it is worth reviewing with a tax professional.
Is solar still worth it in San Diego without the credit? For many households, yes — but for different reasons than three years ago, and the honest answer depends on your bill. The value now comes from self-consumption and from avoiding 4–9 p.m. peak pricing, not from export credits. We will not tell you whether it pencils for your house until we have seen twelve months of your usage.
Why does everyone keep pushing batteries now? Because under net billing, exported energy is credited at avoided-cost values that the CPUC acknowledges are usually below import rates. Storing your midday production and using it during the 4–9 p.m. peak captures more value than selling it. That is also why an oversized array without storage is often the wrong design in 2026.
Will solar eliminate my SDG&E bill? No. The Base Services Charge applies to solar customers — about $24 a month for general residential customers as of October 2025, less for CARE and FERA — and export credits do not offset it, nor do they offset non-bypassable public purpose charges. Solar reduces the usage-based portion of the bill.
Can I still get an SGIP rebate for a battery? As of 20 August 2026, the general residential storage category in SDG&E territory shows closed, and the income-qualified equity categories show closed or waitlisted. Check the current status yourself at selfgenca.com. We will not build an SGIP rebate into a quote for a category that is not open to you.
Do I need a new roof before I install solar? It depends on the roof's remaining life, not on a rule. If your roof has ten-plus good years, mount to it. If it has under five, replacing first is almost always cheaper than paying for a removal and reinstall later. We will give you the roof answer even when it means telling you to wait on the solar.
I have NEM 2.0. Will a reroof cost me my tariff? It does not have to. NEM 2.0 customers keep that tariff for 20 years from interconnection, and a properly sequenced detach-and-reset is designed to preserve it. The risk comes from long outages, unpermitted changes, and system modifications handled without attention to the interconnection record. This is a large part of why we do both trades in-house.
Is there a deadline I should actually care about in 2026? One: California's property tax exclusion for active solar energy systems requires the system to be in progress or completed before 1 January 2027. Like the federal rule, it turns on completion, not on signing. Permit and interconnection timelines are the constraint, so this is a fall decision, not a December one.
Tell us what's going on
Estimates are always free — no deposit, no pressure. Need the full picture on an existing roof or system? Our $399 inspection report gives you the answer in writing, credited in full toward the work if you hire us.
