Ten years ago, solar payback was simple: generate, export, credit. Under today’s time-of-use rates, utilities pay little for your midday exports and charge a premium for the evening power you buy back. Storage closes that gap.

A worked example

Take a 12 kW array in Fresno with a PowerCell 15. The battery shifts roughly 13 usable kWh from noon to the 4–9 PM peak window every day. At a 38-cent spread, that’s about $1,800 a year the panels alone couldn’t capture — before counting a single outage avoided.

The incentive stack

The 30% federal Investment Tax Credit applies to storage as well as panels, and several states layer rebates on top. Ask for the itemized incentive sheet in your quote — if a vendor won’t itemize, that tells you something too.