How California gets its power: PG&E, CCAs and your own solar

Two jobs, often two companies

Delivery. PG&E owns and maintains the poles and wires, reads your meter, sends your bill and responds to outages.

Supply. In many cities, a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) buys or builds the electricity instead of PG&E. A CCA is a not-for-profit public agency run by local governments. PG&E still delivers the power over its lines.

One bill. You get one PG&E bill that shows PG&E’s delivery charges and your CCA’s generation charges. PG&E collects the payment and passes the CCA’s share along.

Your CCA doesn’t send its own wires to your house. It puts the same amount of electricity onto the grid that its customers use. Once electricity is on the grid, no one can tell which power plant it came from.

The 12 CCAs in PG&E territory

Across California

California’s three large investor-owned utilities are PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. CCAs operate in all three territories. Statewide, 25 CCAs serve more than 15 million customers in over 200 cities and counties.

Some cities run their own municipal utility instead. Santa Clara, for example, is served by Silicon Valley Power, so PG&E and CCA rules don’t apply there in the same way.

What to know as a CCA customer

• You’re enrolled automatically. When your city or county joins a CCA, you’re switched over unless you opt out.
• You can opt out. Requests go to the CCA, not PG&E. If you opt out after your first 60 days, you stay with PG&E for one year before you can rejoin.
• You’ll see a PCIA charge. The Power Charge Indifference Adjustment covers power PG&E bought for customers before they switched. It’s part of PG&E’s charges on your bill.
• Your programs stay. CARE, Medical Baseline, net metering and other solar programs are still available to CCA customers.

How making your own clean energy saves you money

Whether your power comes from PG&E or a CCA, you are buying every kilowatt-hour you use. Solar lets you make some of it yourself.

• Solar you use at home is worth the most. Under California’s Net Billing rules (PG&E calls it the Solar Billing Plan), solar power your home uses directly replaces electricity you would otherwise buy at the full retail rate.
• Extra solar earns export credits. Power you send to the grid is credited at its value to the grid. That’s usually lower than the retail rate, but it can rise above it on late summer evenings.
• A battery makes your solar go further. A home battery stores midday solar so you can use it in the evening, when grid power costs the most, or send it to the grid during high-value hours.
• Credits roll over. You pay monthly, and extra credits roll forward until your annual true-up.
• Apply before the end of 2027. Residential PG&E customers who apply to connect before the end of 2027 get slightly higher export credits for nine years.

In San José? See how San José Clean Energy handles solar credits on our San Jose solar page.

Every home is different. Our free assessment uses your real bills to show what solar and a home battery could do for you. You can also try our savings calculator.