If you own commercial or industrial property in Los Angeles, the LADWP Feed-in Tariff is the most direct answer to a simple question: what is my roof actually worth? Under the FiT, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power buys every kilowatt-hour a qualifying solar system produces at a fixed, published price, under contracts that can run 20 years. Here are the current numbers and what they mean for property owners.
Current FiT Base Prices
LADWP prices the program by system size for in-basin solar projects. As of this writing, the published base prices are 14.5 cents per kWh for systems from 30 kW to 500 kW, 14.0 cents per kWh from 500 kW to 3 MW, and 13.5 cents per kWh above 3 MW. Smaller projects earn the highest rate, which rewards exactly the kind of rooftop and carport systems that fit commercial properties.
Contract Terms Worth Knowing
Applicants can choose a straight 20-year contract or a 10-year term with the option to extend up to 10 more years in one-year increments. The minimum eligible system size is 30 kW, which a modest section of unshaded commercial roof can support. Those two facts together are what make the program bankable: a fixed price, a long horizon, and a creditworthy municipal utility on the other side of the contract.
What That Looks Like in Dollars
As an illustration, a 500 kW rooftop array in Los Angeles typically produces on the order of 750,000 to 850,000 kWh per year depending on orientation, tilt, and shading. At 14.5 cents per kWh, that is roughly $110,000 to $123,000 in contracted energy revenue every year. That revenue stream is what funds the guaranteed rent a property owner collects under a hosting lease: we build, own, and operate the system, LADWP pays for the power, and the property owner gets paid for the space. Actual figures depend on site conditions and are modeled during a free assessment.
Capacity Is Not Unlimited
The FiT operates under a total program cap of 235 MW. Per LADWP's published allocation figures, roughly 126 MW is already in service and another 55 MW is active in the pipeline, leaving on the order of 54 MW available for new applicants. Programs like this historically fill, and applications are processed as they come. Property owners who wait until the allocation is spoken for do not get a second chance at today's prices.
FiT+ Adds Batteries to the Model
LADWP's FiT+ program extends the feed-in tariff concept to paired solar plus battery storage projects, turning intermittent rooftop generation into dispatchable clean energy. For property owners, the practical meaning is that the hosting model now reaches storage too, and projects can be designed for the grid LADWP is actually building toward.
Carports Stack on Top
For parking lots and structures, the separate Carport and Canopy Incentive adds $0.90 to $1.70 per watt for qualifying new solar carports in LADWP territory, with EV charging built into the program's requirements. Combined with FiT revenue, it is the reason we tell owners that parking areas are the most underrated real estate they hold.
The Bottom Line
The 2026 FiT prices are published, the contracts are long, and the remaining capacity is finite. If your building or lot sits in LADWP territory, the numbers above are not hypothetical. They are the current terms on the table, and finding out what your specific property could earn costs nothing.
Program prices, terms, and capacity figures are set by LADWP and subject to change; confirm current terms with LADWP or with our team before making commitments.