California Just Opened the Door for Your Battery to Make You Money

Most people are still thinking about batteries the old way. Backup power. Maybe a little savings at night. Peace of mind when the grid goes down.

That is where the conversation used to end.

But something just shifted in California, and if you own a home or business, especially here in Sonoma or Marin County, it is worth paying attention to.

On April 7, 2026, SB 913, introduced by Josh Becker, passed the Senate Energy Committee with unanimous support. That does not happen often. And what this bill is proposing is not small.

It is the beginning of a new model where your battery is no longer just sitting there waiting for an outage. It can actually work for you and potentially generate value when the grid needs it most.

Right now, even if your battery sends energy back to the grid during peak demand, you are not compensated for that contribution. The system only recognizes reduced usage, not exported energy. So even if your home is actively supporting California’s energy needs, there is no real upside for you beyond your own savings.

SB 913 is designed to change that.

If this moves forward, homeowners and businesses will be able to export stored energy and receive compensation when the grid is under stress. That means your battery could participate in programs that function very similarly to traditional power plants, just on a distributed scale.

This is where the term Virtual Power Plant starts to matter.

A Virtual Power Plant is essentially a network of homes and buildings, each with their own battery systems, working together as a single energy resource. Instead of relying only on large centralized plants, California can call on thousands of smaller systems at once. When demand spikes, those systems respond. When supply tightens, they help stabilize the grid.

Up until now, the structure has been incomplete. Customers could participate, but they were not being fully credited for what they provided.

This bill starts to close that gap.

And it is not happening in isolation.

Another bill moving through the legislature, AB 1975, introduced by Nick Schultz, is focused on something called grid utilization. It is pushing utilities to use the infrastructure we already have more efficiently instead of constantly expanding it.

If you think about how the grid actually operates, most of it is underused for the majority of the year. There are only certain hours where demand peaks and pushes capacity to its limit. Traditionally, the response has been to build more infrastructure to handle those peaks.

But that is expensive, slow, and ultimately gets passed back to customers through higher rates.

What California is starting to say is, what if we used the systems already installed in homes and businesses to help manage those peaks instead?

That is where batteries come in.

Instead of building new substations or expanding lines, the grid can rely on distributed energy. It can ask homes to shift usage, discharge stored energy, and reduce strain during critical moments. And if SB 913 passes, those contributions finally come with compensation.

At the same time, there are financial considerations that are also moving right now. AB 2389, introduced by Jacqui Irwin, is working to extend the property tax exclusion for solar systems. If that does not pass, new systems installed starting in 2027 could be subject to additional property tax assessments.

So you have a combination of factors all happening at once.

New opportunities for batteries to generate value.
Pressure on the grid that is not going away.
Policy changes that may impact long term costs.

And all of it points in one direction.

Energy is becoming something you actively manage, not just something you pay for.

If you live in the North Bay, you are already seeing why this matters. Rates are not stabilizing. They are increasing. Outages are not becoming less frequent. They are becoming part of the reality. And homes are using more electricity than ever before, especially with EVs, electrification, and smart home systems becoming more common.

Solar alone helps offset your usage, but it does not give you full control.

Control comes from storage.

When you have a battery, you decide when to use your power, when to store it, and soon, when to send it back to the grid. That flexibility is what turns a solar system into a true energy system.

And this is where most homeowners are still behind.

They are installing solar without thinking about what comes next. Or they are delaying battery decisions because it feels like an add on instead of a core component.

But the reality is, the homes that are going to benefit the most from what is coming are the ones that are already set up.

When compensation programs expand and utilities begin leaning more heavily on distributed energy, demand for batteries is going to increase quickly. Install timelines will extend. Equipment availability will tighten. Pricing will adjust.

It always follows the same pattern.

The opportunity is not in reacting to the shift. It is in getting ahead of it.

At Grid Titans, this is exactly how we approach system design. We are not just looking at what works today. We are looking at how your system will perform as the market evolves.

That means thinking through how your battery integrates with your solar, how it interacts with your electrical panel, how it can support EV charging, and how it can adapt to programs like Virtual Power Plants as they become more accessible.

It also means making sure the equipment you choose is capable of participating in these programs. Not every system is built the same way, and not every setup will be ready for what is coming.

The goal is not just to install something that works right now. It is to build something that continues to work for you over time.

If you already have solar, this is one of the most important moments to evaluate adding a battery. Not just for backup, but for what it opens up moving forward.

If you are considering solar for the first time, battery integration should be part of that conversation from the beginning. It is much easier to design a system correctly upfront than to retrofit later.

And if you are somewhere in between, just exploring your options, this is exactly the kind of shift that makes it worth taking a closer look.

Because the question is no longer just about whether solar makes sense.

It is about whether your home is set up to benefit from where energy is going.

If you want to understand what that could look like for your home, your usage, and your goals, we can walk you through it. No pressure. No assumptions. Just a clear picture of what is possible and what makes sense for you.

The future of energy is not just about saving money on your bill.

It is about having control over it.