If your electricity bill keeps climbing, you're not imagining it. PG&E rates have risen steadily for years, and they're expected to keep going. The good news is that you have more control over your bill than it might feel like.
Some of it comes down to small habits, some to timing, and the biggest lever of all is making your own power.
Start with the easy wins
A few simple changes cost nothing and add up over a year.
- Switch any remaining old bulbs to LEDs. They use a fraction of the power and last for years, so it's one of the easiest upgrades there is.
- Unplug what you're not using. Chargers, game consoles, and electronics draw a trickle of power even when they're off or idle. A smart power strip makes it easy to cut that phantom draw in one switch.
- Be a little smarter with heating and cooling. If your home runs on electric heat or air conditioning, this is often your biggest load, so small adjustments matter. A few degrees on the thermostat, closing blinds against the afternoon sun, and using fans go a long way.
None of these are dramatic on their own, but together they trim the baseline your home runs on all year.
Shift your usage out of the expensive hours
This one is specific to how PG&E charges for electricity, and it's a big deal in California. You're not charged a flat rate for power. You pay the most during the late afternoon and evening, when demand across the grid is highest.
That means the same load costs more or less depending on when you run it. Running your dishwasher, laundry, or EV charging in the middle of the day or overnight, rather than during that expensive evening window, can shave real money off your bill without changing how much power you use. If you have an electric car, setting it to charge after the peak hours is one of the easiest wins available.
Once you start thinking about when you use power, not just how much, the bill gets easier to manage.
Tighten up your home
Where your power goes is worth a look too. A home that leaks air makes its heating and cooling work harder than it needs to. Sealing drafts around doors and windows, and making sure your home is reasonably insulated, keeps that big seasonal load in check.
When an appliance wears out, replacing it with an efficient model helps, since the biggest energy users in a home tend to run for years. And setting your water heater to a sensible temperature trims one of the steadiest loads in the house. These are the kinds of improvements that keep paying you back quietly, month after month.
Make your own power: the biggest lever
Everything above helps, but there's a limit to how far habits and efficiency can take you when rates keep rising. The change that moves the needle most is generating your own electricity with solar.
When you put solar on your roof, you stop buying as much power from PG&E and start making your own instead, at a cost you control for decades. Rather than watching your bill climb with every rate increase, you lock in a big share of your power at the cost of a system you own. For many North Bay homeowners, that's the difference between a bill that keeps growing and one that shrinks to a fraction of what it was.
It also gets more valuable over time. Every rate increase makes the power you generate for yourself worth a little more, so a system that pays off today pays off even more as the years go on.
Store it for the evening
Solar handles the daytime beautifully, but your panels make the most power at midday, when many homes use the least, and taper off by evening, right when rates peak and usage climbs. That's where a home battery comes in.
A battery stores the solar your panels make during the day so your home can run on it in the evening, exactly when grid power costs the most. Instead of buying at the priciest time, you draw on power you already made. Paired with solar, a battery is the most complete way to take the expensive evening hours off your bill, and it keeps your home running during an outage as a bonus.
Know your numbers
Whatever you do, it helps to know where your power goes. Your PG&E account holds detailed usage history that shows how much you use and when, which points you straight at what's driving your bill. Our post on what uses the most electricity in your home breaks down the usual suspects, and our walkthrough on gathering your PG&E usage history shows how to pull your own data.
That's exactly where we start when we design a system. We look at your real usage, then build solar and storage sized to cover it, so you're not guessing about your savings.
We've been helping North Bay homeowners take control of their bills since 1984. We're 100% employee-owned; we've installed more than 9,000 systems across Marin, Sonoma, and Napa; and we're licensed as a General Contractor (B) and Electrical Contractor (C-10). We were also one of the first companies in California to earn the state's C-46 solar license, so you have a local team that can show you exactly how much of your bill solar can take on.
Ready to see how low your bill could go? Contact SolarCraft or call Sonoma/Napa 707.778.0568 or Marin 415.382.7717.
