Annual True-Up
Together, SJCE and PG&E provide your electric service. SJCE generates your electricity from clean sources. This includes usage not covered by your panels. PG&E delivers the electricity to you over its poles and wires. You have always paid for generation and delivery. You are not being double charged; SJCE replaces what you would have paid to PG&E for generation. For your convenience, your PG&E bill includes SJCE charges.
PG&E sends SJCE solar customers monthly statements that show a running balance of electricity used and generated. It is not a bill. Instead, every April, we settle the previous 12-months of SJCE charges and credits. We bill solar customers that use more electricity than their panels generate, and we send checks to solar customers that generated more electricity than they used. This once-a-year process is called a true-up.
- Net Consumers are customers whose panels generate less electricity than they consume over the annual true-up period
- Net Generators are customers whose panels generate more electricity than they consume
SJCE customers who are Net Generators during an Annual True-Up Period will be paid for the excess energy at the Net Surplus Compensation rate – 25% higher than PG&E’s rate.
True-Up Dates
Since both SJCE and PG&E provide your electric service, you have two true-up dates – one with SJCE for electric generation, and one with PG&E for electric delivery.
- All solar customers will true-up for SJCE generation charges every April. Most Net Consumers will see their true-up charge on May bills and most Net Generators will be paid in June. Customers whose net surplus compensation is less than $100 will automatically receive a bill credit. Customers whose net surplus compensation is more than $100 will automatically receive a check in the mail.
- For new customers, the annual true-up period for the first year will cover the period starting on the date that the customer began SJCE service through the customer’s April billing date. In cases where a customer has received SJCE service for less than 10 billing cycles in their first annual true-up period, the annual true-up period will be extended to the following April billing date. Therefore, customers may see significantly more than 12 months of SJCE true-up charges. This policy allows new solar customers to benefit from their NEM program for both summer months when excess credits are often generated and winter months when credits are often used up. If you wish to avoid more than 12 months of true-up charges, you can request to be trued-up with less than 10 months of service. Please use our online form to make that request or call 833-453-2454. This request must be made by April 1.
PG&E true-up dates depend on the following:
- For customers that already had solar when they enrolled with SJCE, their PG&E true-up is the month of enrollment with SJCE.
- For customers that installed solar after being enrolled with SJCE, their PG&E true-up is the month their system began operating. SJCE enrolled non-solar customers in February 2019.
The PG&E true-up charges will be listed in the details of PG&E charges section. SJCE true-up charges will be listed in the details of San Jose Clean Energy charges section. These sections are on separate pages.