Electricity Rates in the San Fernando Valley (2026)

The San Fernando Valley looks like one place, but it is split across four utilities. Most Valley neighborhoods — Northridge, Van Nuys, Encino, Woodland Hills, Reseda and dozens more — are inside the City of Los Angeles, so they are served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the country's largest municipal utility. Step across a city line and everything changes: Burbank and Glendale run their own municipal utilities, while Santa Clarita, the incorporated City of San Fernando, and west-end cities like Calabasas and Agoura Hills are served by Southern California Edison (SCE), an investor-owned utility.

That distinction is not trivia. It determines how your rate is built, how often you are billed, and — importantly for solar owners — which net-metering rules you fall under. For context, the U.S. Energy Information Administration put California's average residential rate at 35.25¢/kWh in April 2026, versus a U.S. average of 18.83¢/kWh — so nearly every Valley household pays close to double the national norm (EIA).

If you are in the Valley proper, you are almost certainly an LADWP customer. Its standard residential schedule (R-1A) is tiered: the more you use in a billing period, the higher the price of each additional kilowatt-hour. In 2026, Tier 1 energy runs roughly 24–26¢/kWh (LADWP revises rates in January, April, July and October), and the top summer tier climbs to about 39–41¢/kWh during high-usage months (LADWP).

Two quirks catch people off guard. First, LADWP bills most residential customers every two months, so a "monthly" bill is usually covering roughly 60 days of usage — which is why the number can look alarming. Second, because LADWP is a municipal utility, it is not governed by the state's NEM 3.0 net-billing rules that apply to SCE (more on that below).

SCE prices electricity almost entirely on time of use — what you pay depends on when you use it. On 2026 residential TOU plans, summer off-peak energy is roughly 34¢/kWh, while the weekday peak window is where it hurts: about 58¢/kWh on TOU-D-4-9PM (peak 4–9 p.m.) and as high as 74¢/kWh on TOU-D-5-8PM (peak 5–8 p.m.), plus a basic charge around $0.79/day (SCE). SCE customers who add solar, a battery or an EV are generally moved onto a TOU-D-PRIME-style plan.

Like LADWP, Burbank and Glendale are municipal utilities — which shapes how solar pays back for their customers.

Two policy facts matter across every Valley address in 2026.

1) Net metering differs by utility. California's NEM 3.0 — officially the CPUC Net Billing Tariff — cut the credit for exported solar and applies to the investor-owned utilities, including SCE, for interconnection applications submitted on or after April 15, 2023 (CPUC). It does not apply to the municipal utilities — LADWP, Burbank and Glendale each run their own net-metering programs. In practice, that often makes solar economics on a muni look different (and frequently friendlier for exports) than on SCE, which is why pairing SCE solar with a battery has become the norm.

2) The 30% federal credit has ended for homeowners. The federal Residential Clean Energy Credit (the 30% ITC) is not available for homeowner-owned residential systems placed in service after December 31, 2025; unused credit from a qualifying earlier install can still carry forward (IRS). State and utility incentives such as SGIP for batteries still exist, but they vary by category, step down over time, and depend on available funding.

We install across all four Valley utilities and build every quote around your actual utility, rate plan and usage — no guesswork, no hype. Cali Energy is based in Northridge (CSLB #1032379, in-house crews). Call (323) 844-7777 or find your neighborhood on Our Projects.