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 (currently $0.05598 per kWh) – 25% higher than PG&E’s rate. It was $0.04190 per kWh for the true-up period ending April 2021.
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. Net Consumers will see their true-up charge on May bills. Net Generators will receive a check from the City of San José in June. Net generators can also choose to receive a bill credit instead of a check. Please contact Customer Service at info@sanjosecleanenergy.org or (833) 432- 2454 if you would rather receive a bill credit.
- 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 new customer has received SJCE service for less than 10 billing cycles in their first annual true-up period, it is SJCE policy to extend the annual true-up period 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.
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.