Policy & Advocacy

From Running the Program to Shaping the Policy

  • April 1, 2026
Large solar panel array installed on sandy ground with rolling hills and trees in the background under blue sky

Some of GRID Alternatives’ strongest policy wins didn’t start in a hearing room. They started on rooftops.

In 2008, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) selected GRID as the statewide program administrator for the Single-family Affordable Solar Homes (SASH) program, a ratepayer-funded incentive program that helped income-qualified homeowners go solar. SASH launched in 2009. Under SASH and its second phase (SASH 2.0), GRID installed solar on close to 10,000 homes before the program’s incentives were fully reserved at the end of 2021.

Running SASH meant bringing the program to life in homes, in permitting offices, and on rooftops throughout California. That experience taught GRID exactly where the program’s design helped income-qualified families and where it fell short of reaching the communities facing the greatest environmental and economic burdens. It also made clear that the need for the program’s support would continue long after funds dried up. GRID put those lessons to work.

Turning field experience into a policy win

Once the initial round of SASH funding was spent, GRID sponsored a bill – California Assembly Bill 217 – that extended the state’s low-income solar programs and provided $108 million in additional funding to keep benefits flowing to communities in need. Then, as the program’s sunset approached, GRID worked with a broad coalition of partners to advocate for a successor program that would build on the work that SASH started. 

Directed by California Assembly Bill 327 and CPUC Decision 18-06-027, the CPUC created a new, more targeted program in 2018: Disadvantaged Communities – Single-Family Solar Homes, or DAC-SASH. Modeled after SASH but focused on frontline communities, DAC-SASH serves low-income households in one of the top 25 percent most disadvantaged communities statewide, based on the state’s CalEnviroScreen tool. It runs through 2030, provides $8.5 million in incentives annually, and builds job training into every project it funds. GRID was selected as the program administrator, the same role it had played for SASH, only now aimed squarely at the communities most left out of the solar market.

What that policy win built

The CPUC’s most recent independent evaluation of DAC-SASH, covering 2022 through 2024, shows how the program is delivering real community benefits:

  • Applications nearly doubled. DAC-SASH received 3,301 applications between 2022 and 2024, up from 1,785 in the prior evaluation period.
  • Nearly 2,000 systems completed. 1,922 DAC-SASH projects were completed, representing more than 10,699 kW of new solar capacity in disadvantaged communities.
  • Reaching households with real need. The median DAC-SASH participant household earned $37,990 a year with four people in the home, and the evaluation specifically found the program serving many larger, lower-income households, not just those at the top of the eligibility range.
  • Cutting bills in half or more. Solar generation cut participants’ monthly bills by an average of 68 percent for PG&E customers, 57 percent for SCE customers, and 81 percent for SDG&E customers.
  • Growing climate impact. Completed DAC-SASH projects avoided an estimated 463 metric tons of CO2 in 2022, climbing to 2,558 metric tons in 2024 as more systems came online, and a forecasted 3,014 metric tons of avoided emissions per year going forward.
  • Real relief, not just numbers. In participant surveys, 71 percent said they felt less stressed about energy costs and 67 percent said they felt less stressed about energy use since going solar. Overall program satisfaction reached 87 percent.
  • Job training built in, not bolted on. Every DAC-SASH project integrates job training opportunities, continuing the workforce development approach GRID brought to SASH.

A cycle that keeps reinforcing itself

This is the pattern behind a lot of GRID’s policy work: implementing a program surfaces what’s working and what isn’t, that field knowledge shapes the case GRID brings to legislators and regulators, and the resulting policy win creates a better program, one GRID then implements, learns from, and builds on again. SASH became DAC-SASH. And what GRID is learning now, installing solar in the state’s most disadvantaged communities, is shaping the policy conversations it’s part of today.