PG&E electricity rates have climbed steeply over the past decade, and the increases show no sign of stopping. For homeowners in Marin, Sonoma, and Napa, the trend has turned a routine monthly bill into one of the larger line items in the household budget, and into a reason a growing number of residents are reconsidering how they buy power.
SolarCraft has worked with North Bay homeowners and businesses on exactly this problem since 1984, designing solar and battery systems that reduce reliance on the utility. The sections below lay out how much rates have risen, what is behind the increases, how time-of-use pricing and the 2026 bill restructuring change the picture, and the options available to homeowners who want to limit their exposure.
A decade of rising rates
The direction of PG&E rates has been consistently upward. Over the past ten years, many North Bay households have watched their effective electricity rate roughly double, and in recent years, the California Public Utilities Commission has approved multiple PG&E rate increases within a single calendar year rather than a single annual adjustment. The result is a cost of electricity that now sits well above the national average and continues to rise faster than general inflation.
For planning purposes, the more important point is not any single increase but the long-term trajectory. A bill that climbs year after year compounds, and a household evaluating a long-term decision, such as whether to install solar, has to weigh today's rate against a decade of further increases rather than against the rate alone. A rate that has doubled once in ten years is a different planning assumption than a rate expected to hold steady.
What is driving the increases
Several forces sit behind the trend, and they are unlikely to reverse soon. A large share of recent increases in funds for wildfire mitigation and grid hardening across PG&E's service territory is allocated to undergrounding lines and upgrading equipment in high-risk areas. Alongside that, ongoing maintenance and replacement of aging infrastructure add steadily to the cost base. And demand itself is rising, as homes and vehicles electrify and as energy-intensive data centers expand across the state, adding pressure to a supply that is already strained. None of these drivers is temporary, which is why long-term planning in the region generally assumes continued increases. SolarCraft examines the underlying causes in more detail in its overview of why PG&E rates are so high in the North Bay.
Time-of-use pricing changes when power is expensive
Beyond the headline rate, how PG&E charges for power matters as much as the rate itself. Most residential customers are now on time-of-use plans, under which electricity costs significantly more during the late-afternoon and evening peak than it does during the middle of the day. For a typical household, that means the electricity used to cook dinner, run appliances, and light the home in the evening is billed at the day's highest rate. Time-of-use pricing also shapes the value of solar and storage, since a system that can serve evening demand from stored solar avoids the most expensive hours entirely.
The 2026 change to PG&E billing
In 2026, PG&E restructured the residential electric bill, introducing a fixed base services charge that applies regardless of how much electricity a household uses, alongside the usage-based charges that have always appeared on the bill. The practical effect is that a portion of the monthly bill is now harder to reduce through conservation alone, which changes the math for some households and makes on-site generation and storage more relevant, not less. Homeowners should review their own bill to understand how the restructuring applies to their account and how much of the total is now fixed.
What rising rates mean for a household
The cumulative effect of these increases is straightforward: the same amount of electricity costs more each year, and the share of the bill that conservation can touch is shrinking. For a household that does nothing, the bill simply continues to climb with each approved increase. For one that generates its own power, the rising rate has the opposite effect, because every kilowatt-hour produced on-site offsets electricity that grows more expensive over time. Rising rates are, in effect, what makes solar increasingly worthwhile.
What rising rates mean for solar
The value of a solar system is tied directly to the price of the electricity it replaces, so a rising rate environment strengthens the case for solar rather than weakening it. Power generated on a homeowner's roof offsets electricity at today's rate and continues to do so as rates climb, which is why the savings from a well-designed solar system tend to grow over time rather than stay flat.
Under California's current NEM 3.0 billing rules, pairing solar with battery storage further improves the picture, because stored solar can be used during the expensive evening peak instead of being exported to the grid for a smaller credit. For many North Bay homeowners, that combination is now the most effective hedge against continued rate increases.
What North Bay homeowners can do
The first step is understanding your own usage and rate plan, which is the foundation of any decision about reducing a bill. SolarCraft's overview of how to gather your PG&E usage data walks through pulling the figures that matter, including when your home uses the most power and how much of that falls in peak hours. From there, shifting heavy usage away from peak evening hours, improving home efficiency, and evaluating solar and battery storage are the levers with the largest effect.
For a homeowner who wants to know precisely how solar would perform against their own rising bill, a site-specific analysis is the reliable path. SolarCraft's energy consultants provide that assessment, with realistic expectations rather than optimistic projections, through the contact page.
