A state-average electricity price is useful for comparing states. It is not enough to price one home's solar exports. The payback error begins when a calculator assigns the same value to every kilowatt-hour produced, even though the house may consume some immediately and sell the rest under a different utility tariff.
First correction: EIA average price is not a tariff
The U.S. Energy Information Administration builds its published average price from utility revenue divided by sales. That is an observed statewide average across customers and charges, not the line-by-line rate schedule governing a particular address.
About the quoted excerpts: each one was compared word for word with the linked document on the date shown on it. That check covers the quoted passage only. It does not review your eligibility or confirm that the rest of the document is current.
EIA also says it does not publish utility tariffs, demand charges, or peak and off-peak prices. A calculator cannot infer those terms from Table 2.10. The homeowner has to identify the serving utility, exact residential schedule, new-customer distributed-generation rider, and effective date.
The four quantities a real estimate separates
- Annual production. Monthly and annual kilowatt-hour production from a roof-specific estimate, with tilt, azimuth, shading, and losses stated.
- Instant self-consumption. Solar used behind the meter while it is generated. This usually avoids the variable import price applicable at that hour.
- Exports. Production sent to the grid. These kilowatt-hours receive the tariff's export credit, which may or may not equal retail.
- Fixed and non-bypassable charges. Charges that remain after solar and therefore cannot be counted as savings on each kilowatt-hour.
The year-one energy value is: self-consumed kWh multiplied by the avoided import price, plus exported kWh multiplied by the export-credit price. Fixed charges are excluded unless the tariff explicitly makes them avoidable. If a proposal instead multiplies total production by one headline rate, it silently assumes every produced kilowatt-hour has equal value.
Three labels that should not be collapsed
- Retail net metering. Exported energy receives bill credit tied to the retail rate under the applicable tariff and netting period. True-up and surplus rules still matter.
- Net billing. Onsite production avoids imports, while excess generation receives a separately determined credit. Import and export values are deliberately different.
- Utility-set or no statewide mandate. The contract or utility schedule, not a state label, determines whether exports receive a credit and how that credit is capped or carried.
These are categories for reading a document, not promises about every utility in a state. Municipal utilities, cooperatives, competitive retail suppliers, grandfathered systems, and new interconnections can sit under different rules at the same address over time.
Primary-document comparison: California and Utah
California's Public Utilities Commission describes the structural difference directly. Legacy net-energy-metering tariffs apply retail-rate bill credits and are closed to new enrollment. Since April 15, 2023, eligible new interconnection applicants in the three large investor-owned utility territories take service on the net billing tariff, where onsite production serves onsite load first and excess generation is credited according to its value to the grid.
The California state page names the time-of-use rate that net billing customers must take at each of the three large utilities, and follows PG&E's own tariff sheets to its current energy prices and export adder. SCE's and SDG&E's rate sheets are not reviewed there.
Utah demonstrates a second reason to record the document date. The Utah Public Service Commission's February 23, 2026 letter in Docket 26-035-T03 approves Rocky Mountain Power Schedule 137 Sheet 137.3 effective March 1, 2026. It documents different summer and non-summer export credits for that schedule. This is a dated document comparison, not a claim that every Utah customer or a later tariff revision uses the same prices.
The Utah state page covers the rest of the Schedule 137 document trail for a Rocky Mountain Power customer.
Illustration: the same output, two energy valuations
Assumed inputs, not a real tariff: 10,000 kWh first-year production from a 10 kW system, 40% self-consumption, 20¢/kWh avoided imports, 5¢/kWh exports and a $30,000 cash price. Set degradation, escalation, incremental annual costs and incentives to zero for this illustration.
Illustrative year-one energy value: 4,000 self-consumed kWh × 20¢ = $800; 6,000 exported kWh × 5¢ = $300. This site's calculator totals $1,100 a year and returns no break-even within 25 years. At year 25 the unrecovered cost is $2,500. Plain cost divided by annual energy value is 27.3 years, an extrapolation outside the model horizon, not a reported break-even result.
In the retail-value illustration the same 10,000 kWh is all valued at 20¢, giving $2,000 a year and 15.0 years payback. That is $900 more annual energy value without any additional production. The difference is the assumption about exports, not better panels.
To reproduce the split in this site's calculator, choose any state in “State dataset (confirm or correct)”; the state only sets starting values, which you then overwrite. Enter System size (kW DC) 10, Assumed installed cash price ($) 30000, Assumed year-one production (kWh) 10000, Assumed avoided import price (¢/kWh) 20, Assumed export credit (¢/kWh) 5, Production used on site (%) 40, Assumed recurring solar cost ($/year) 0, Assumed electricity-price escalation (%/year) 0 and Assumed production degradation (%/year) 0. Leave the optional incentives at zero. For the retail-value illustration, change only Production used on site (%) to 100. Use your own tariff's import and export prices in place of these assumed ones, not a made-up state tariff.
The tariff worksheet to demand before signing
- Serving utility and exact residential rate-schedule name.
- Distributed-generation rider or tariff name, version, and effective date for a new 2026 applicant.
- Netting interval: instantaneous, hourly, monthly, or another period.
- Import price by relevant time period, including non-bypassable charges.
- Export-credit formula or published price by season and time period.
- Credit rollover, annual true-up, cash-out, expiration, and cap rules.
- Grandfather term and the event that starts it: application, approval, interconnection, or another documented milestone.
- Modeled self-consumption percentage and the hourly load data or stated assumption behind it.
In this illustration the self-consumption share alone moves the annual energy value from $2,000 at 100% to $1,100 at 40%. To get your own number, ask the serving utility for downloadable hourly (interval) usage for the last 12 months, and ask the installer for the hourly production-versus-load model behind the percentage in the quote. If neither exists, run the calculator at a low and a high share and keep both results, rather than picking one.
How to use this site's state pages
Use the state table as a common retail-value benchmark with no incentive deduction, then use the state notes to identify the rule that needs checking. In a custom scenario, replace the benchmark with your cash price, production estimate, avoidable import price, export credit and self-consumption share. The annual model cannot infer time-of-use prices, export caps or true-up rules from a ZIP; record those separately in the downloadable worksheet.
These state pages each carry a written analysis built from the dated tariff sheets, commission orders or rules they cite. After each state is one of the three categories above, followed by the export label used on that state's page, both taken from the documents the page cites. Neither is a promise about every utility, cooperative or new interconnection in that state.
- Arizona: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- California: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- District of Columbia: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- Florida: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- Hawaii: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- Illinois: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- Indiana: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- Kentucky: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- Louisiana: Net billing (avoided-cost export credit). State page label: Avoided-cost export compensation in the cited territory.
- Massachusetts: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- Michigan: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
- New Jersey: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- New York: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- North Carolina: Retail net metering. State page label: Net metering, subject to eligible charges and surplus settlement.
- South Carolina: Utility-set or no statewide mandate. State page label: Utility tariff or retail-provider contract.
- Texas: Utility-set or no statewide mandate. State page label: Utility tariff or retail-provider contract.
- Utah: Net billing. State page label: Export value differs from the full retail bill.
The decision rule
Do not rely on a payback worksheet that cannot name the utility tariff and distinguish self-consumed production from exports. When the export price is lower than the import price, valuing exports at retail overstates energy value under otherwise identical assumptions. A current primary tariff, commission order, or utility rider—not a state label—decides whether equal prices are justified.