
By Jessica Sletmo
Quick Navigation:
- How much will I get paid for selling my excess solar energy?
- Why aren’t export rates higher?
How quickly it takes you to payback your solar panels depends on two things. 1. How much money you save on generating your own electricity compared to buying it from the grid. 2. What you can earn from selling any excess electricity that you produce. However, you’ll quickly find that export rates aren’t very high. In this Green Guide we explain why solar export rates aren’t higher.
Before we dive in, let’s look at how much you can expect to be paid for exporting your excess solar energy to the grid. There are a few things to keep in mind here. Firstly, there are Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) export tariffs and “normal” export tariffs.
The SEG is a government backed scheme set up to reward customers for selling electricity back to the grid. All UK energy suppliers with over 150,000 customers have to offer an SEG tariff, but they only have to offer it at a rate above £0. This is reflected in the SEG rates on offer, with tariffs ranging from 1.5 p / kWh to 16.5 p / kWh.
Normal export tariffs are voluntary for energy suppliers to offer, and the normal export tariffs are usually set at a higher price than SEG export tariffs. Some rates are as high as 16.5p / kWh! The reason for this is that these “normal” tariffs come with certain requirements. You may, for example, need to import electricity from the same supplier that you export it to. This is not just a trick to attract your business, but genuinely makes it more cost-effective for the supplier to offer you an export tariff. That’s why they’re able to set higher export rates. We’ll dive deeper into this below!
By the way, do you want a better overview of how much you can get paid for exporting your solar power to the grid? We’ve collected all export rates available on the market in a handy table in our guide on how to apply to the SEG.
There are a few reasons as to why export rates aren’t higher. We’ve outlined some of them below.
It’s a shame that the process of exporting excess energy to the grid isn’t set up better. We’d love to see households be fairly compensated for their contribution in greening the grid, and supporting the UK’s energy independence.
Recommended Guides:
- Smart meters and solar panels: Can they be used together?