If you’re looking at exporting your excess solar energy back to the grid and be paid for doing so you need to know about the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG). SEG replaced the previous Feed In Tariff (FIT) in 2020.
SEG requires some electric suppliers to pay for low carbon energy exported back to the grid. To be eligible for a SEG export rate you’ll likely need the following:
* A suitable smart meter
* MCS certificate
* DNO approval letter
and you need to confirm you’re not already receiving FIT payments.
What SEG rates are available?
SEG rates have to be above 0p but they can vary considerably. You don’t necessarily need to be with a supplier for your imported energy as some do offer ‘export only’ tariffs but often the best rates are for suppliers import customers.
When I first considered solar I checked my supplier’s (Utility Warehouse) SEG rate and was slightly shocked to see it was only 2p per kWh. I found I could improve it to 5.6p by taking more services from them. My neigbour said that her supplier, Octopus Energy, at the time would pay her nearly 8p per kWh, which would make a huge difference to payback. I was pleasantly surprised when this was raised to 15p per kWh in September 2022 before I placed our order.
It’s worth researching the best SEG rates are available to you. Which? provide a great article that’s regularly updated which shows the best and worst SEG tariffs for solar panel owners, so you don’t even need to do the legwork to find them!
How SEG improves solar payback
It’s probably obvious that being paid for any excess solar energy you can’t use will help your solar generation system help pay for itself, but the difference a few pence would make really surprised me. You can see below that it would mean my solar install would pay back with circa 12.6 years if I was on Octopus Outgoing (after Sept 2022), 20 years faster than my original supplier.
Based on a 30% solar energy self use of a 3.6kWp system, installed at a cost of £7,765
Considering how much more Octopus Energy offer as a SEG rate, and the fact my 3.6kWp solar system would export circa 70% of the solar energy generated, changing to Octopus Energy just seemed like a sensible thing to do!
Cover photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash.