Solar Energy in the Bay Area

Which community choice aggregator is on a Bay Area bill

Find your city, then look for the same name on the generation lines of your PG&E bill. Each CCA's own site names the places it serves:

• •Ava Community Energy is the default provider in most of Alameda County, including Oakland, Fremont, Hayward, Livermore and Pleasanton.
• •MCE serves 38 communities in Contra Costa, Marin, Napa and Solano counties, among them Richmond and Walnut Creek.
• •CleanPowerSF serves San Francisco. In its own words, it buys clean electricity for you and PG&E delivers that electricity to your home.
• •San José Clean Energy is the City of San José's own not-for-profit supplier for San Jose, run by its Energy Department.
• •Silicon Valley Clean Energy lists 13 Santa Clara County communities, including Sunnyvale and Mountain View.
• •WestLight Energy, the new name of Peninsula Clean Energy, serves communities in San Mateo County and Los Banos. Its site names no member cities, so check the bill in San Mateo or Half Moon Bay; the San Mateo County solar companies page lists each city's permit office.
• •Sonoma Clean Power is the public power provider for Sonoma and Mendocino counties, and Santa Rosa is one of its member cities.
• •Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) counts Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Monterey, Salinas, Seaside, Marina and Pacific Grove among its members, plus the County of Santa Cruz, which covers Aptos.

Sources, each checked September 23, 2026: Ava, Who We Serve; MCE, Service Area; CleanPowerSF, Understanding My Bill; City of San José Energy Department; SVCE, Communities; WestLight Energy; Sonoma Clean Power, Who We Are; 3CE Implementation Plan Addendum No. 5 (May 15, 2023).

What a CCA changes in a solar quote

Sonoma Clean Power puts the split plainly: PG&E charges you for distribution, the poles and wires, and on the same bill the CCA charges you for generation. A proposal that prices every kWh at PG&E's bundled rate is modeling a bill you may not have.

Ask each bidder which generation provider the estimate assumes, which rate plan it uses for the PG&E delivery portion, and how exports are credited on each part. MCE and the other CCAs let customers opt back to PG&E generation, so use the provider your current bill actually shows.

For the delivery side, the PG&E bill guide and the PG&E time-of-use guide walk through the charges. Coastal fog and inland heat make a neighbor's production a poor stand-in for yours, so get an estimate for your own roof.

What electricity costs on a Bay Area bill

The CPUC Public Advocates Office put PG&E's residential average rate at 33.7 cents per kWh in June 2026, the same as in March. It has risen 8% over three years, 39% over five and 69% since January 2016, and the office reports that 1,356,481 PG&E customers, about one in four, were behind on their energy bills in May 2026. Since March 2026 PG&E has moved part of its costs into a Base Services Charge of about $24 a month, $6 for CARE households and $12 for FERA, and lowered its per-kWh prices; PG&E says some customers' total bills went down and others rose slightly.

The 33.7-cent figure is PG&E's bundled average. In a city with a community choice provider, the generation part of each kWh is priced by that provider instead, so compare the generation line on your own bill with the provider's posted rates rather than with the average.

How solar changes that bill

A new system goes on PG&E's Solar Billing Plan: exports earn credits that vary by time of day, day of the week and season, customers who start before 2028 get Energy Export Bonus Credits, and a True-Up statement closes each 12-month cycle. PG&E says customers save the most when they use the energy they produce on-site, and the Base Services Charge stays on the bill either way. That is why storage has become common: the cities' own 2024 permit reports to the Energy Commission show 79% of San Jose's residential solar permits and 74% of Fremont's included a battery. To line up installers city by city, see how to compare solar companies across the Bay Area.

Sources, each checked September 23, 2026: CPUC Public Advocates Office, Q2 2026 Electric Rates Report; PG&E, Base Services Charge; PG&E, Solar Billing Plan; San José Clean Energy, solar billing; California Energy Commission, SB 379 solar permit reports.