What is a solar feed-in tariff?

The rate your retailer pays for each kWh your solar system exports to the grid. It appears as a credit line on your bill, typically between 0 and 12 cents per kWh depending on the plan and state.

Is the highest feed-in tariff the best solar plan?

Often not. Retailers can fund a high feed-in rate with higher usage and supply charges. The right comparison is your net annual position: usage costs plus supply charges minus export credits, using your actual import and export volumes.

Why are feed-in tariffs so low now?

Daytime wholesale prices have fallen as solar floods the grid at midday. That's also why self-consumption — running your hot water, dishwasher and charging during the day — is now usually worth more than exporting.

Guide · Solar

Feed-in tariffs, explained properly.

The feed-in tariff is the most misunderstood number on a solar household's bill — and chasing the biggest one is a classic way to end up paying more overall.

What it is

Every kWh your panels export earns a credit at your plan’s feed-in tariff (FiT). Ten years ago premium schemes paid 40c+; today most market offers pay single digits, because midday wholesale power is now cheap. The premium-scheme era is over — what matters now is the whole plan around the FiT.

What plans actually pay right now

Ranges across the residential plans in our dataset — drawn from the official AER / Energy Made Easy CDR data, fetched 2026-07-08(plans paying under 0.1c excluded):

ACT: 2.5c – 8.0c per kWh
NSW: 1.0c – 15.4c per kWh
QLD: 1.0c – 12.0c per kWh
SA: 0.5c – 8.0c per kWh
TAS: 9.3c – 9.3c per kWh
VIC: 0.5c – 8.0c per kWh

Note the spread — and note that some otherwise-cheap plans pay zero. Neither end of the range tells you which plan wins for your house.

The trap: judging a plan by its FiT

A retailer offering 10c feed-in while charging 34c usage can cost you far more than one offering 3c feed-in on 26c usage — it depends entirely on how much you import versus export. The honest comparison is your net annual position: (usage × rate) + (days × supply charge) − (export × FiT), computed from your actual bill. That’s the calculation our free check runs across every plan in your area — and when a winning plan pays less for exports than your current one, the report says so plainly and shows the working.

Worth more than exporting: using it yourself

Every kWh you use as it’s generated saves you the full usage rate (25–35c) instead of earning the FiT (0–10c). Shifting the dishwasher, washing machine, pool pump and especially electric hot water into daylight hours is usually worth more than any feed-in rate on the market.

Got solar? See your true net position, not the headline rate.

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