Effectiveness of this varies by state or region. For instance, when I was in the Bay Area 10 years ago and looked into this, PG&E would let your electricity bil

Effectiveness of this varies by state or region. For instance, when I was in the Bay Area 10 years ago and looked into this, PG&E would let your electricity bill get to 0, but wouldn't let you go into rebate territory. They just wouldn't pay you for the additional electricity generated. I think other states/utilities have different options. Most solar quotes take this into consideration, and quote you for enough solar to get into the minimum bill for your region (most utilities have a few hundred Kwh you can use per month at an obscenely low rate, and then it ramps up from there--solar is quoted so that you'll always stay within that cheapest range.) For my current house in Austin, I'm still interested in solar, but it was both more cost-effective and had a shorter payback time to re-insulate to R36 in the attic and redo our horrible system (which had no ducts at all--agh, stupid 1956 house) than it was to do solar at the time.