Net Metering in Roseville, CA: Do You Have NEM 3.0 or Something Better?

If you have been researching solar and keep running into headlines about NEM 3.0 cutting into California solar savings, here is something most of those articles will not tell you. If you live inside Roseville city limits, NEM 3.0 probably does not even apply to you.

That single distinction changes the entire conversation, and it is one that generic, statewide solar content almost never covers, because most of it is written for a broad California audience served by PG&E, not for homeowners in a city that runs its own electric utility.

What Net Metering Actually Means

Net metering is the general term for how a utility credits you for solar power your system generates but does not use right away. When your panels produce more electricity than your home needs, the extra flows back to the grid, and your utility gives you some form of credit for it. When your panels are not producing enough, at night for example, you pull power from the grid as usual. Net metering is simply the accounting behind that back and forth.

The rate at which that surplus energy is credited is where things get complicated, and where policy differs significantly depending on which utility actually serves your home.

A Quick History: From NEM 1.0 to NEM 3.0

California has gone through several versions of net metering policy over the past two decades. Early versions credited exported solar power at close to the full retail electricity rate, which made the payback math on a solar system fairly simple and favorable. Over time, as more homes adopted solar, the state's utility regulators revisited the policy.

The most recent version, officially called the Net Billing Tariff and commonly known as NEM 3.0, took effect in 2023. It significantly reduced the credit rate for exported solar energy for customers of the state's big investor owned utilities, shifting the value toward using your own solar power directly in your home rather than selling it back to the grid. This is the version most online solar content refers to when it warns about shrinking solar savings.

The Detail Almost Everyone Misses: Roseville Runs Its Own Utility

Unlike most of California, the City of Roseville is not served by PG&E. Roseville operates its own municipal electric utility, Roseville Electric. That matters enormously here, because NEM 3.0 is a policy decision made by the California Public Utilities Commission, and it only governs the state's investor owned utilities, primarily PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric. Municipal utilities like Roseville Electric were never required to adopt it, and Roseville set its own separate rules instead.

What Roseville Electric Customers Have Instead

Roseville runs its own solar compensation structure for customer generated power, set by the city rather than by the state regulatory decision that created NEM 3.0. It is a genuinely separate program with its own rate structure, not a local rebrand of the statewide policy. If your home is served by Roseville Electric, the NEM 3.0 headlines you have been reading do not directly describe your situation.

If You Are Just Outside City Limits, the Story Changes

Homes in unincorporated Placer County or across the border in El Dorado County are frequently served by PG&E rather than Roseville Electric. If that describes your address, you likely are on NEM 3.0, with its lower compensation for exported power and a much stronger financial case for pairing your solar system with battery storage to maximize self consumption.

How to Find Out Which Utility Actually Serves You

• Check a recent electric bill. The provider name at the top will say either Roseville Electric or PG&E.
• If you are unsure, your street address alone is usually enough for a solar installer familiar with the local area to identify your utility before you even request a quote.
• Do not assume based on your mailing address alone. City limits and utility service territory do not always follow the same boundary you would expect.

Why This Matters When You Are Comparing Quotes

A lot of the solar math you will find online, including payback period estimates and sample savings figures, assumes you are a PG&E customer under NEM 3.0. If you are inside Roseville and someone hands you a quote built on those generic assumptions, the numbers may not actually reflect your real situation, in either direction. The reverse is also true. If you are just outside city limits on PG&E and a quote does not account for NEM 3.0's export rates and the case for battery storage, that estimate is likely overly optimistic.

Getting this right at the very start of the process is not a minor technicality. It is the difference between a quote that reflects your actual bill and one that is guessing.

Frequently Asked Questions