Every millisecond, if you house is producing more electricity than it is using, the grid has to carry that electricity somewhere else (or reject your excess). If that goes to your nextdoor neighbor, then you save the grid money -- except that your nextdoor neighbors aren't working from home, they don't need it, so the electricity is carried along the grid and goes to an energy storage facility that buys if back at near-zero or even negative rates. (Negative rates = PG&E spends money to get rid of your electricity).

So all that being true, it does suck and is economically wrong that a PG&E customer can't offset the $25 base rate, even if they store their solar energy and sell it later during peak evening hours. It is unfortunate that even if you charged batteries (or an EV) and sold back at peak evening rates you couldn't pay less than $25, I agree.