Solar is a great way to save money on some utilities, like PG&E, and not as much on some of the others. Regardless of the economic advantage of it, people are motivated in other ways also to do solar, like environmental concerns, and just plain loving the tech. We really focus more on the cost worthy motivation of doing solar, and PG&E makes it very worth it in most cases, due to climbing high rates.
In about 1829, the “photovoltaic affect” was discovered, as UV rays excited the movement of electrons in semiconductor substances like silicon. In 1959, the first PV cell was invented, with credit generally given to Bell Labs. Organizations like NASA began to use it and it was further developed as time went on and breakthroughs happened that revolutionized the processes of production. Around the year 2000, solar tied into the grid began to grow on a residential level. In those days it was still very expensive and in CA, a large rebate began to be offered to cause people to want to do solar. As the rebate amounts went down level by level, the tax credit was un-capped in 2009 to being a % of whatever was spent on solar, with no limit. Also, a peak price of silicon and PV modules was seen in 2008 that began to deflate quickly over the next few years, as silicon became more and more widely produced, in different formats.
Solar on the IOU, or investor-owned utilities, covers much of the CA residents. PG&E is one of them. NEM 1 (Net Energy Metering 1) changed in 2017 to NEM 2, where new solar customers would see a small fee for being on solar. NBT, nicknamed broadly NEM 3, on PG&E began in 2023. This changed the way solar is done in some ways. Modern solar on residential, on NBT, is generally done with batteries paired in WHY BATTERIES to be able to eliminate most of the bill.
