What is RG&E SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider)?

Residential Time-of-Use. Opt-in RG&E customers with shiftable load — usually an EV, an electric water heater on a timer, or both. It carries a $25 monthly basic service charge and an all-in cost of $0.10–$0.32 per kWh once delivery, supply, and surcharges are combined.

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

Look at the service classification printed on your RG&E bill — it will name the rate directly. Opt-in RG&E customers with shiftable load — usually an EV, an electric water heater on a timer, or both.

What is the Customer Benefit Contribution on RG&E?

$1.16 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 $125 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.

Rochester Gas and Electric · Time-of-use

RG&E SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider) explained

Opt-in RG&E customers with shiftable load — usually an EV, an electric water heater on a timer, or both.

The rate

Residential Time-of-Use

Basic service charge

$25 / month

$300 a year, charged at zero kWh. No amount of solar removes it.

Filed RG&E residential rates and tariffs · verified Apr 2026

All-in cost of energy

$0.10–$0.32 / kWh

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

Filed RG&E residential rates and tariffs · verified Apr 2026Off-peak floor to on-peak ceiling. Your effective rate is a weighted blend of the two.

Customer Benefit Contribution

$1.16 / kW-DC / month

On a 9 kW system that is $125 a year, for the life of the array.

Filed Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) rates · verified Jan 2026The second-highest CBC in the state. On a 10 kW-DC system that is roughly $140 a year, every year.

VDER / NYISO zone

B (Genesee)

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 late afternoon into evening	$0.26–$0.32 / kWh
Off-peak	Overnight, weekends, holidays	$0.10–$0.14 / kWh

Filed RG&E residential rates and tariffs · 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 $0.17 per kWh. On a 13.5 kWh battery at 275 cycles a year that is about $631 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

Summer production overlaps the on-peak window and is worth more; winter production does not. Net effect upstate is modest.

Show the arithmetic

A household using 10,000 kWh a year on SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider) pays roughly $2,100 for energy at the $0.21/kWh midpoint, plus $300 in basic service charges, plus $125 in CBC once a 9 kW array is interconnected. A 100% offset removes the $2,100 and leaves the $425.

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

Storage

What this rate does to battery economics

A real, if small, arbitrage spread exists here. Model it honestly: multiply the spread by usable kWh by realistic cycles per year, then compare against the marginal cost of the battery. In most upstate households the answer is that the battery is still an outage purchase.

Watch out

Catches on this rate

Enrolling without shifting load usually costs you money.
Heat pumps on TOU need a hard look — their load peaks when the rate does.
There are limits on how often you can switch rate options.

Interconnection

Getting connected on RG&E

Shares Avangrid's process with NYSEG.
RG&E carries the highest basic service charge of the upstate investor-owned utilities, which means a Rochester-area bill has a larger fixed floor that solar cannot touch.
Suburban Monroe County circuits generally have healthy hosting capacity; the constraint shows up further out in the rural fringe counties.

Application to Permission to Operate

5–13 weeks

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

Observed GridReady quote and bill review sample · verified Apr 2026

Where this applies

Places on RG&E

7 New York counties have RG&E customers. These are the ones we have local pages for.

Questions

RG&E SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider) FAQ

What is RG&E SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider)?: Residential Time-of-Use. Opt-in RG&E customers with shiftable load — usually an EV, an electric water heater on a timer, or both. It carries a $25 monthly basic service charge and an all-in cost of $0.10–$0.32 per kWh once delivery, supply, and surcharges are combined.
How does SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider) affect solar payback?: Summer production overlaps the on-peak window and is worth more; winter production does not. Net effect upstate is modest.
Is a home battery worth it on RG&E SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider)?: A real, if small, arbitrage spread exists here. Model it honestly: multiply the spread by usable kWh by realistic cycles per year, then compare against the marginal cost of the battery. In most upstate households the answer is that the battery is still an outage purchase.
Am I on SC-1 (voluntary TOU rider)?: Look at the service classification printed on your RG&E bill — it will name the rate directly. Opt-in RG&E customers with shiftable load — usually an EV, an electric water heater on a timer, or both.
What is the Customer Benefit Contribution on RG&E?: $1.16 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 $125 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: Rates and tariffs · Solar and net metering · 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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