Solar Export Credit Rates in 2026: What 10 Utilities Pay for Power You Send to the Grid

Two numbers decide what a solar kWh is worth. A kWh you use in your home avoids your retail energy rate. A kWh you send to the grid earns your utility’s export credit. Under traditional net metering those two numbers are the same. Under net billing, now common for new customers, the export credit is set separately and is usually much lower.

We pulled the export credits that 10 utilities publish for 2026. They range from under 3 cents to more than 30 cents per kWh.

The Short Answer

All figures are for residential customers and come from the utility’s tariff or program page, except the two Virginia surplus rates, which come from summaries of State Corporation Commission orders. “When it applies” matters as much as the rate. The next section explains why.

Three Structures Behind the Numbers

1. Net billing: every exported kWh gets the export rate. Idaho Power, Rocky Mountain Power in Utah, Georgia Power and Hawaiian Electric work this way for new customers. Solar you use the moment it is produced offsets retail power. Everything else is credited at the export rate.

2. Net metering with a low surplus rate. Ameren Missouri nets your solar against your use within the month at the retail rate. Only what is left over at the end of the month gets 3.84¢ or 3.39¢. In Virginia, Dominion and Appalachian Power net one for one over 12 months, and only an annual surplus gets the roughly 5.7¢ to 5.8¢ rate. A system sized to your own use rarely touches these low rates.

3. Sell everything at a fixed price. Under Eversource’s buy-all option in Connecticut, you sell all production at 32.89¢ per kWh, locked for 20 years, and buy all your power as usual. TVA’s program also buys power under a purchase agreement, at a far lower 3.766¢.

Read a 3¢ surplus rate under structure 2 very differently from a 3¢ export rate under structure 1. The first applies to a small leftover. The second applies to most of what a typical system sends out on a sunny afternoon.

Why the Gap With the Retail Rate Matters

The value of a month of solar production is:

Value = (kWh used in the home × retail energy rate) + (kWh exported × export credit)

Here is an illustration using Idaho Power’s Schedule 6 rates for a non-summer month. The first-tier energy charge is 9.9332¢/kWh and the export credit is 2.9019¢/kWh. Assume the system produces 1,000 kWh in the month.

The same panels and the same sunshine are worth $57.14 or $78.24, a 37% difference, depending only on how much of the output the home uses as it is produced.

This is an illustration, not a prediction. The 40% and 70% shares are assumptions chosen to show the effect. Your share depends on when you use power. The example uses the first-tier rate only and leaves out the $15 monthly service charge, which solar does not reduce.

Charges That Are Not Per kWh

Export credits are only part of a solar tariff. Fixed charges come off savings no matter how much you export.

• Alabama Power bills a capacity reservation charge of $5.41 per kW of installed solar each month under Rate Rider RGB. On a 7.2 kW system that is 7.2 × $5.41 = $38.95 a month, or about $467 a year.
• Georgia Power lists a $5.97 monthly metering charge for single-phase service under its RNR-11 tariff.
• Idaho Power has a $15.00 monthly service charge on Schedule 6.
• Dominion Energy Virginia adds a $1 monthly administrative fee for new net metering customers, per a summary of the April 2026 order.

How Export Credits Are Set

Most low export rates are tied to “avoided cost”: what the utility would otherwise pay to generate or buy that energy. A few details from the tariffs:

• AES Indiana: the average marginal price of energy the utility paid in the most recent calendar year, multiplied by 1.25. It resets every year.
• Georgia Power: an annual Solar Avoided Cost Rate (3.2188¢ for 2026) plus a 4¢ adder approved in its 2022 rate case.
• TVA: a baseline rate that TVA can revise at least once a year to reflect its avoided energy costs.
• Hawaiian Electric: fixed by island and time of day, locked for seven years for new customers.

Rates that reset annually add uncertainty to a 25-year investment. A locked rate, like Connecticut’s 20-year buy-all price or Hawaii’s seven-year lock, removes some of it.

What to Do Before You Sign

1. Get the tariff, not a summary. Search for your utility’s name plus “net metering” or “net billing” tariff and check the effective date.
2. Ask which structure applies: every exported kWh, monthly surplus, or annual surplus.
3. Ask your installer what self-use share the quote assumes. If the savings estimate values every kWh at the retail rate, and your utility uses net billing, the estimate is too high.
4. List the fixed charges that solar customers pay.
5. Ask whether your terms are locked and for how long. Existing customers are often kept on older rules. New customers usually are not.
6. Size to your own use. Where export credits are low, extra panels mostly produce low-value kWh.

Our solar payback guide walks through the full calculation, and each state rate guide has a section on that state’s solar rules.

Limitations

• This is a sample of 10 utilities whose rates we could read from a tariff, program page or order summary. It is not a ranking of all U.S. utilities, and one utility does not represent its state.
• The two Virginia surplus rates come from secondary summaries of commission orders, not the orders themselves.
• Ameren Missouri’s rates come from its solar FAQ page, which does not give an effective date.
• Export credits change, some of them every year. Figures were checked on October 5, 2026.
• Nothing here is financial or tax advice. Confirm current terms with your utility before signing a contract.

Sources

• Idaho Power, Schedule 6: Residential Service On-Site Generation
• Rocky Mountain Power, Utah Schedule 137: Net Billing Service
• AES Indiana, Rider 16: Excess Distributed Generation, effective July 27, 2026
• TVA, Dispersed Power Production Guidelines, effective Dec. 1, 2025
• Ameren Missouri, Solar FAQs
• Georgia Power, residential rooftop solar FAQs
• Georgia Power, RNR-11 tariff
• Hawaiian Electric, Smart Renewable Energy Export
• Eversource, Connecticut Residential Solar Incentives
• Virtue Solar, “Net Metering Protected: SCC Rules on Dominion NEM 2.0 in VA,” May 5, 2026
• Southern Environmental Law Center, statement on the Appalachian Power net metering decision, Aug. 29, 2025
• Alabama Power, Rate Rider RGB