Solar's new calendar: bills, California and the lease cutoff

The last high bills of summer are reaching most households this month, and for a residential installer late September is where the rest of the year gets decided. Fall 2026 is also the first in a long time with no December homeowner credit rush to plan around. The calendar that replaces it is less obvious, and for an installer who reads it early, more forgiving.

What the second quarter told us

Wood Mackenzie and SEIA’s US Solar Market Insight for the third quarter of 2026, released September 10, put residential installations at 995 MWdc in the second quarter, the segment’s lowest quarterly total in five years. In that release Wood Mackenzie expected a 23% year-over-year contraction for 2026. The same release noted that after a seasonally weak first quarter, national installations across all segments rebounded sharply, and that installers are working through the operational challenges of shifting from cash and loan sales to third-party ownership.

Put plainly: the market is smaller, the first quarter is still the slow one, and more of what sells is a lease or a PPA. Each of those belongs on your calendar.

The bill is the season now

With the homeowner credit gone, the reason a homeowner calls an installer is the power bill, and bills follow the weather and the rate. The EIA’s September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook puts the average residential electricity price at 17.30 cents per kWh for 2025, and forecasts 18.20 cents for 2026 and 18.59 cents for the year after. Within 2025, the quarterly average moved from 16.42 cents in the first quarter to 17.68 cents in the third.

That gives the year a shape:

• Savings pages and search campaigns ready before the first hot month, not built during it.
• The heaviest spend while summer bills are arriving, when the problem is on the kitchen table.
• A fall push aimed at homeowners who are still annoyed about their August statement.

National averages hide wide local differences, so every savings claim on your site should use the rate of the utility the page is written for. A page for one territory quoting another territory’s rate is the kind of detail a careful buyer catches.

December 15 in California

The California Public Utilities Commission says interconnection applications containing solar installation contracts signed on December 15, 2026, or after, must include Version 4 of the California Solar Consumer Protection Guide. In PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, BVES, PacifiCorp and Liberty territory, providers have to collect the customer’s initials and signature on the guide, and customers must be given time to read it before signing.

The date reaches past the contract folder:

• Sales packets, e-signature templates and rep scripts need the new version in place before the first contract signed that day goes out.
• If you sell in Spanish, the CSLB rule still applies: the contract must be written in the language principally used in the sales presentation or in the marketing material the homeowner was given.
• Any page that walks a homeowner through what happens after signing should name the current guide, not the one it replaces.

The lease credit runs through December 31, 2027

IRS Notice 2025-42 ends the 48E and 45Y business credits for a solar facility placed in service after December 31, 2027, where construction began after July 4, 2026. The owner of a leased or PPA system is the one who claims those credits, so the date shapes how financiers price and schedule third-party-owned installs.

Our expectation is that installs bunch toward that date in the months before it, much as 2025 bunched toward the homeowner credit deadline. An installer who paces marketing so that contracts arrive evenly through the spring and summer before the cutoff, rather than in a fourth-quarter scramble, keeps crews busy without overbooking them in the final months. Keep the credit itself out of homeowner ads, since it belongs to the system’s owner.

Tariffs are still moving

California’s Net Billing Tariff has applied to interconnection applications submitted on or after April 15, 2023. It credits exports at their value to the grid, and the CPUC said the design financially incentivizes battery storage, which is why a California quote without a battery now looks incomplete to an informed buyer.

Other states are writing their own successors. The N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center’s 50 States of Solar report for the second quarter of 2026, published in July, counted 45 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico taking some distributed solar policy action. Its examples included Connecticut legislators mandating net metering and community solar successor programs, Maryland lawmakers requiring a successor net metering program and Virginia regulators deciding on Dominion Energy’s successor. If you install in one of those states, your savings pages may be describing rules that are about to change.

One more date sits in Google’s own schedule. Local Services Ads started moving into Google Ads in August 2026, and solar energy contractors were not named in that first phase. Google lists service-area businesses without storefronts for late 2026 and every remaining category for the year after, so expect your account screens to change before long.

What to do this month

• Rebuild savings claims page by page using each utility’s current rate, and take national averages off local pages.
• In California, put Version 4 of the consumer protection guide into packets, templates and scripts well before December 15.
• Ask your financier how it is scheduling third-party-owned installs against that cutoff, and pace lease marketing to match.
• Offer batteries and backup to past customers before winter, starting with California customers on the Net Billing Tariff who went without one.
• Keep review requests going through the slow months. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey found 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months, so the reviews a buyer reads in March are the ones you collect from December on.

A smaller market with fixed dates is easier to plan than it looks, as long as the plan is written around the bill and the paperwork rather than a credit that no longer exists. Our page for residential solar installers shows how we would order the year, and our local search work covers the profile and reviews that carry an installer through a slow first quarter.