Orange & Rockland Utilities · Flat rate
O&R SC-1 explained
Default residential class for O&R.
The rate
Residential Service (flat)
Basic service charge
$24 / month
$288 a year, charged at zero kWh. No amount of solar removes it.
Filed Orange & Rockland residential rates · verified Apr 2026
All-in cost of energy
$0.24–$0.32 / kWh
Delivery plus supply plus surcharges. Divide your own bill total by your kWh to find your real number.
Filed Orange & Rockland residential rates · verified Apr 2026
Customer Benefit Contribution
$1.29 / kW-DC / month
On a 9 kW system that is $139 a year, for the life of the array.
Filed Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) rates · verified Jan 2026The highest Customer Benefit Contribution in New York State. On a 10 kW-DC system it is roughly $155 a year.
VDER / NYISO zone
G (Hudson Valley)
Determines Value Stack pricing where VDER applies instead of net metering.
Solar
What this rate does to solar economics
Retail net metering at a mid-to-high all-in rate. Economics land between upstate and Con Edison territory.
Show the arithmetic
A household using 10,000 kWh a year on SC-1 pays roughly $2,800 for energy at the $0.28/kWh midpoint, plus $288 in basic service charges, plus $139 in CBC once a 9 kW array is interconnected. A 100% offset removes the $2,800 and leaves the $427.
Midpoint arithmetic for illustration. Your all-in rate depends on your supply arrangement and the season.
Storage
What this rate does to battery economics
Flat rate, no arbitrage. Storage here is outage coverage, and this territory has enough tree-driven outages that the case is easier to make than the spreadsheet suggests.
Watch out
Catches on this rate
- Heavy tree canopy across this territory drives both shading losses and outage frequency. The same trees that cut your production are the ones that take down your power.
- The basic service charge is among the higher ones in the state and does not go away.
Interconnection
Getting connected on O&R
- Process is similar to Con Edison's but on a smaller and generally faster scale.
- The highest CBC in the state means the per-kW penalty on oversizing is real here. Right-sizing matters more in O&R territory than anywhere else.
Where this applies
Places on O&R
Questions
O&R SC-1 FAQ
- What is O&R SC-1?
- Residential Service (flat). Default residential class for O&R. It carries a $24 monthly basic service charge and an all-in cost of $0.24–$0.32 per kWh once delivery, supply, and surcharges are combined.
- How does SC-1 affect solar payback?
- Retail net metering at a mid-to-high all-in rate. Economics land between upstate and Con Edison territory.
- Is a home battery worth it on O&R SC-1?
- Flat rate, no arbitrage. Storage here is outage coverage, and this territory has enough tree-driven outages that the case is easier to make than the spreadsheet suggests.
- Am I on SC-1?
- Look at the service classification printed on your O&R bill — it will name the rate directly. Default residential class for O&R.
- What is the Customer Benefit Contribution on O&R?
- $1.29 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 $139 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.
- Electric bill checkWork out your own all-in $/kWh from a real bill, not from an average.
- Full bill reviewLine-by-line read of delivery, supply, and surcharges.
- ESCO mailer decoderIf a third-party supplier is on your bill, this works out whether it is costing you.
Official source: Rates and tariffs · Outage map
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.