Is SGIP still available in 2026? California's battery rebate, explained

SGIP is a California rebate program overseen by the CPUC that pays a rebate for installing behind-the-meter energy storage, which for a home means a battery. For most of its life it was funded through a small charge on utility bills and administered by the utilities, including PG&E.

The rebate was paid based on the usable storage capacity of the battery, measured in dollars per kilowatt-hour, and reserved when an installer submitted the application. The important thing to understand in 2026 is which parts of it are still open, because most of the program has closed.

For practical purposes, yes. The ratepayer-funded SGIP budgets, which included the General Market tier that ordinary market-rate homeowners used, along with the Equity and Equity Resiliency tiers, closed to new applicants on December 31, 2025.

That means a typical Bay Area homeowner who does not meet income or special-eligibility rules can no longer apply for a standard SGIP battery rebate. This mirrors what happened with the federal residential solar tax credit, which also closed at the end of 2025.

There is one pathway still open, but it is narrow. A separate, state-funded SGIP budget called Residential Solar and Storage Equity, created under Assembly Bill 209, continues for income-qualified households. It is generous when funds are available, historically up to around $1,100 per kilowatt-hour for storage, plus an incentive for paired solar.

The catch is availability. This budget has been heavily subscribed, and at times all of its funding has been reserved, with new applications placed on a waitlist that is funded only as earlier projects drop out. So even for households that qualify, it is not money you can assume is waiting.

The remaining pathway is for income-qualified and high-need households. In general, a home may qualify if its income is at or below 80% of the area median income, if it is enrolled in the CARE or FERA rate discounts, if it sits in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 high fire-threat district, or if a resident relies on electric-powered medical equipment.

If none of those apply to you, the honest expectation is that SGIP is no longer an incentive you can count on. Confirm your eligibility and the current waitlist status before you plan a battery purchase around it.

While it was open, the General Market tier was the smallest, and it had stepped down over the years as budgets filled. In its final stretch it paid roughly $150 to $300 per kilowatt-hour of storage, so on a typical home battery it was a useful discount rather than a game-changer.

The much larger figures people remember, enough to cover most or all of a battery, came from the Equity Resiliency tier, which was always limited to qualifying low-income and high-fire-risk households. Those ratepayer-funded tiers are now closed to new applicants as well.

It changes the math, but it does not remove the reasons to add storage. Under PG&E NEM 3.0, a battery is the load-bearing part of a solar system, because it moves your own daytime solar into the expensive evening hours and captures high-value export windows.

A battery also keeps your home running through an outage, which matters if you are exposed to Public Safety Power Shutoffs, and it can help avoid a costly panel or service upgrade when you electrify. With both SGIP and the federal residential credit gone for most homeowners in 2026, the right approach is to size the battery so it earns its place on those merits, not on a rebate.

Potrero will check whether you qualify for the remaining income-qualified SGIP pathway and tell you plainly if you do not, including whether the budget is currently reserved. We do not put a rebate you cannot actually get into a quote.

For most homeowners, that means we size the EG4 storage to your PG&E usage, your evening load, and your backup goals, so the system pays off on its own. The fastest way to see where you land is to get an instant estimate for your address, then review the real numbers together before anything is installed.