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Everything You Need to Know About California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP)
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What is SGIP?
California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) provides funding for solar and home batteries in the Golden State. The new SGIP Equity Rebate, which opened on May 20th, 2025, provides funding specifically for households with less than 80% of area median income.
Who is eligible?
The new Equity rebate funding is available to homes with solar and battery systems in certain parts of California.
In order to qualify, your household income (the total income of everyone living in your home) must be less than 80% of the median for your county. You can check whether your household income qualifies by using this tool from the federal government, selecting your county, and clicking “View County Calculations”. Look for the last row in the table and the column with your household size.
The new Equity rebate is launching initially for customers in PG&E, SCE, SDG&E and SoCalGas service territories. Come next fall, the rebate will launch for customers in LADWP as well.
Why is California funding this?
The state of California wants solar and battery energy systems to be more accessible, since they help strengthen the reliability and resilience of the electric grid. SGIP funding is one way California is making that happen.
If I enroll as a Sunrun customer, what else should I keep in mind?
One additional aspect of this program is that your battery will be enrolled in an SGIP Virtual Power Plant (VPP) to occasionally support the grid when demand is highest (we anticipate around once per month). This will replace participation in other VPPs such as Sunrun CalReady. For most customers who already cycle their batteries to reduce utility bills, this simply means that a small portion of your stored power will occasionally be used for this program to further support California’s energy reliability. This is possible when stored energy is sent to your home to reduce demand, and to the grid to increase supply. And don’t worry, when exporting for the VPP, you’ll keep a backup reserve just in case, and your battery will not export power in the event of an outage. To learn more about this, check out the SGIP VPP Terms and Conditions or contact us at grid@sunrun.com.
While we advise against it in the vast majority of cases, if you have a unique circumstance and want to reserve all stored energy for backup at all times in case of an outage (and never use any for other benefits and purposes), then the SGIP Equity Rebate program is likely not a good fit for you.