Home Battery Storage
Store your sunshine.
A home battery turns your solar system into power you control — using more of what your roof makes, helping keep the lights on through outages, and making the most of California’s changing utility rates. Bear Solar designs and installs battery storage across all of California.
Why batteries, why now
NEM 3.0 changed the math.
Under NEM 3.0 (the current billing structure for PG&E and California’s other investor-owned utilities), credits for exporting daytime solar to the grid dropped sharply compared with earlier net-metering rules. The value has moved from selling your solar to using your solar.
A battery stores your midday production and dispatches it in the evening when rates are highest — so more of every kilowatt-hour your roof makes offsets electricity you’d otherwise buy. Actual savings depend on your utility, rate plan, usage, and system design.
Resilience
Backup power when the grid goes down.
Public Safety Power Shutoffs and storm outages are a fact of life across California — especially in foothill and canyon fire country. A properly designed battery system is built to keep your essentials running automatically when the grid drops: refrigeration, Wi-Fi, well pumps, garage doors. (Sizing for critical medical equipment deserves its own conversation — ask us.)
We design for your priorities — from an essential-loads panel to whole-home backup — and size the system to how long you need to ride through an outage.
Your utility matters
PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, or municipal? We design for yours.
California homes are served by investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, SDG&E) or municipal utilities like SMUD and LADWP — and the incentive picture is different for each. SGIP battery rebates are funded by customers of the investor-owned utilities, so those homes can qualify; municipal-utility customers aren’t SGIP-eligible but may have programs or rate options of their own — we’ll confirm what applies to your address.
We’ll tell you exactly which incentives apply to your address before you commit — no guesswork.
What we install
Top-tier batteries, installed by the right license.
Bear Solar is an authorized, approved Tesla Powerwall installer, and we design with other leading home batteries where they fit better. Every energy-storage installation is performed by appropriately licensed contractors (C-10 Electrical or General “B”) as required by California law, with permits, inspection, and utility approval handled for you.
Battery storage, answered.
Do I need solar panels to add a battery?+
No — a battery can be added to an existing solar system or installed on its own for backup. That said, pairing storage with solar is usually where the economics work best under NEM 3.0. We’ll model both for your home.
How long will a battery power my home in an outage?+
It depends on the battery’s capacity and what you’re running. An essential-loads setup (fridge, lights, Wi-Fi, garage door) can typically ride through an evening or longer; whole-home backup and multi-day resilience take more capacity. If you have solar, the battery can recharge from your roof each day during an extended outage, weather and usage permitting.
Will a battery eliminate my electric bill?+
No system can guarantee that. A well-designed solar + storage system can significantly reduce what you buy from the grid, but results depend on your usage, utility, rate plan, and system size. We provide a personalized written estimate before any purchase.
What rebates are available for batteries?+
California’s SGIP program offers meaningful rebates for home batteries — the amount depends on your utility, income qualification, and whether you’re in a high fire-threat district or have been through PSPS shutoffs. See our SGIP page for current tiers, or enter your address in our fire-zone checker and a specialist will confirm what applies to you.
Find out what a battery does for your home.
Free, no-pressure assessment — your usage, your utility, your outage risk, your real numbers.
Get a free storage quoteSavings and backup-duration examples are illustrative, not guarantees, and depend on your site, usage, utility, rate plan, system design, and incentives. Incentive availability changes over time and is confirmed during your application.