What is National Grid SC-1 (voluntary TOU option)?

Residential Time-of-Use. Opt-in only. Realistically worth it for households that can move a large, movable load — EV charging, a pool pump, laundry — into the overnight window. It carries a $21 monthly basic service charge and an all-in cost of $0.11–$0.34 per kWh once delivery, supply, and surcharges are combined.

Am I on SC-1 (voluntary TOU option)?

Look at the service classification printed on your National Grid bill — it will name the rate directly. Opt-in only. Realistically worth it for households that can move a large, movable load — EV charging, a pool pump, laundry — into the overnight window.

What is the Customer Benefit Contribution on National Grid?

$0.69 per kW-DC per month, charged on net-metered systems interconnected on or after January 1, 2022. On a 9 kW system that is about $75 a year, every year, for the life of the array. It is charged on installed capacity rather than on export, which is why oversizing costs you twice.

National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) · Time-of-use

National Grid SC-1 (voluntary TOU option) explained

Opt-in only. Realistically worth it for households that can move a large, movable load — EV charging, a pool pump, laundry — into the overnight window.

The rate

Residential Time-of-Use

Basic service charge

$21 / month

$252 a year, charged at zero kWh. No amount of solar removes it.

Filed National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) residential rates · verified Apr 2026

All-in cost of energy

$0.11–$0.34 / kWh

Delivery plus supply plus surcharges. Divide your own bill total by your kWh to find your real number.

Filed National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) residential rates · verified Apr 2026Low end is the off-peak all-in cost, high end is on-peak. Your blended rate depends entirely on when you use power.

Customer Benefit Contribution

$0.69 / kW-DC / month

On a 9 kW system that is $75 a year, for the life of the array.

Filed Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) rates · verified Jan 2026Applies to net-metered systems interconnected on or after January 1, 2022. National Grid's is the lowest CBC of the six investor-owned utilities.

VDER / NYISO zone

A (West), C (Central), D (North), E (Mohawk Valley), F (Capital)

Determines Value Stack pricing where VDER applies instead of net metering.

Time of use

When power costs what

This is the whole reason to be on a TOU rate. If your usage does not move, the rate does not help you.

Period	Hours	All-in cost
On-peak	Weekday afternoons and early evening	$0.28–$0.34 / kWh
Off-peak	Overnight, plus weekends and holidays	$0.11–$0.15 / kWh

Filed National Grid (Niagara Mohawk) residential rates · verified Apr 2026

The arbitrage arithmetic, done properly

Spread is the difference between on-peak and off-peak. Take the mid-spread, multiply by the usable kWh of the battery, then by realistic cycles a year — 250 to 300, not 365. That is the gross annual arbitrage value. Compare it against the marginal cost of the battery over its warranty term before you let a salesperson call storage an investment.

On this rate the mid-spread is roughly $0.18 per kWh. On a 13.5 kWh battery at 275 cycles a year that is about $668 a year, gross, before round-trip losses and before you account for the fact that you cannot arbitrage a battery you are also holding in reserve for outages.

Solar

What this rate does to solar economics

TOU cuts both ways for solar. Summer afternoon production lands in the on-peak window, which is worth more. But winter production lands mostly off-peak, when it is worth less. Upstate, with production concentrated April through September, the net is usually mildly positive — but only if your consumption pattern cooperates.

Show the arithmetic

A household using 10,000 kWh a year on SC-1 (voluntary TOU option) pays roughly $2,250 for energy at the $0.23/kWh midpoint, plus $252 in basic service charges, plus $75 in CBC once a 9 kW array is interconnected. A 100% offset removes the $2,250 and leaves the $327.

Midpoint arithmetic for illustration. Your all-in rate depends on your supply arrangement and the season.

Storage

What this rate does to battery economics

This is the one upstate National Grid rate where a battery can actually arbitrage: charge off-peak, discharge on-peak. The spread is real but modest, and on a 13.5 kWh battery it typically works out to a couple of dollars a day at best. Run the number before you let it justify the hardware.

Watch out

Catches on this rate

Switching to TOU without moving any load usually raises your bill. The rate rewards behavior change, not the mere act of enrolling.
Electric heat plus TOU is a bad combination upstate: heating demand peaks in the exact hours that cost the most.
There are switching restrictions on how often you can move between rate options. Ask before you enroll.

Interconnection

Getting connected on National Grid

Residential systems under 25 kW-AC run through the standardized interconnection process. Expect the utility-side review itself to be uneventful; the delay is usually the meter swap.
The bi-directional meter exchange is scheduled separately from the electrical inspection. Systems routinely sit finished-but-off for weeks waiting on it. Ask your installer who is responsible for chasing that appointment.
Permission to Operate is the date that matters for your net-metering vintage, not the install date.
Rural single-phase laterals in the Southern Tier and North Country hit hosting-capacity limits well below what an urban circuit tolerates.

Application to Permission to Operate

4–12 weeks

Utility-side only. Permitting and install scheduling are on top.

Observed GridReady quote and bill review sample · verified Apr 2026Application to Permission to Operate, on completed residential jobs homeowners have reported to us. Excludes time the installer spent on permitting.

Where this applies

Places on National Grid

35 New York counties have National Grid customers. These are the ones we have local pages for.

Questions

National Grid SC-1 (voluntary TOU option) FAQ

What is National Grid SC-1 (voluntary TOU option)?: Residential Time-of-Use. Opt-in only. Realistically worth it for households that can move a large, movable load — EV charging, a pool pump, laundry — into the overnight window. It carries a $21 monthly basic service charge and an all-in cost of $0.11–$0.34 per kWh once delivery, supply, and surcharges are combined.
How does SC-1 (voluntary TOU option) affect solar payback?: TOU cuts both ways for solar. Summer afternoon production lands in the on-peak window, which is worth more. But winter production lands mostly off-peak, when it is worth less. Upstate, with production concentrated April through September, the net is usually mildly positive — but only if your consumption pattern cooperates.
Is a home battery worth it on National Grid SC-1 (voluntary TOU option)?: This is the one upstate National Grid rate where a battery can actually arbitrage: charge off-peak, discharge on-peak. The spread is real but modest, and on a 13.5 kWh battery it typically works out to a couple of dollars a day at best. Run the number before you let it justify the hardware.
Am I on SC-1 (voluntary TOU option)?: Look at the service classification printed on your National Grid bill — it will name the rate directly. Opt-in only. Realistically worth it for households that can move a large, movable load — EV charging, a pool pump, laundry — into the overnight window.
What is the Customer Benefit Contribution on National Grid?: $0.69 per kW-DC per month, charged on net-metered systems interconnected on or after January 1, 2022. On a 9 kW system that is about $75 a year, every year, for the life of the array. It is charged on installed capacity rather than on export, which is why oversizing costs you twice.

Next step

Find your own number

The band above is a range for the whole territory. Your all-in rate is one division away.

Official source: Service rates · Distributed generation / interconnection · Outage map

Badge key:Filed — from a tariff, statute, or government datasetModeled — from a published model or datasetDerived — calculated by us from the inputs shownObserved — from proposals and bills readers send us

How this page is built

This is a generated page: the structure is shared across locations, the numbers are not. Every figure comes from the source cited beside it, with the date we last checked it. Nothing here is a quote, an appraisal, or tax advice, and none of it is specific to your roof.

Rates and incentive programs change. We re-verify utility tariffs and NYSERDA program status on a rolling schedule and stamp the date on each number rather than on the page, so you can see which specific figures are fresh. Full methodology · Program status tracker · About the Local Energy Playbook

Page content last reviewed April 2026.

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