A solar feed-in tariff is the rate your electricity retailer pays you for the solar power you send back to the grid, measured in cents per kilowatt-hour. In 2026 that rate is usually only a few cents, commonly somewhere around 3 to 8 cents per kWh (last checked June 2026), and some plans pay close to nothing, while the power you import from the grid costs roughly 30 cents per kWh or more.
That gap is the whole story. Exporting solar used to be a tidy little earner. Now it is closer to loose change, and the real value of a solar system has quietly moved somewhere else.
What a feed-in tariff actually is
When your panels make more electricity than your home is using, the surplus does not vanish. It flows out through your meter and into the grid, and your retailer credits you for it on your bill. That credit, per unit of energy, is the feed-in tariff, or FiT.
One point matters above all others. A FiT only applies to energy you export. Power you generate and use inside your own house never touches the grid, so it earns no feed-in tariff at all. Instead it avoids a purchase, which, as we will see, is the more valuable outcome by a wide margin.
Why feed-in tariffs collapsed
Cast your mind back a decade and some households were on premium schemes paying 44 cents or even 60 cents per kWh, locked in by state governments to kick-start rooftop solar. Those legacy rates are now mostly expired, and nothing has replaced them at that level.
The reason is simple supply and demand. So many Australian homes now have solar that, on a sunny day, the grid is awash with cheap exported power at midday, exactly when nobody needs much of it. Wholesale daytime prices can fall to near zero, and occasionally below it. Retailers are not going to pay you 40 cents for electricity they can barely give away at noon, so the feed-in tariff fell to meet reality.
Most states no longer mandate a generous minimum FiT. A few regulators still set a small benchmark, others leave it entirely to the market, and retailer offers vary widely as a result. The days of the feed-in tariff carrying the economics of a solar system are over.
Feed-in tariffs by state in 2026
Here is the rough lie of the land. Treat every figure as an approximate range for typical retail plans, not a quote, because rates differ by retailer and change often.
| State or region | Typical feed-in tariff range (2026) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| NSW | ~3 to 8 c/kWh | No mandated rate; benchmark guidance only, retailer offers vary widely |
| VIC | ~2 to 8 c/kWh | Small regulated minimum has been set in the past; check the current year |
| QLD | ~4 to 10 c/kWh | Regional customers may see a set rate; south-east is market-based |
| SA | ~2 to 8 c/kWh | Market-based; some plans add time-varying or negative midday periods |
| WA | ~2 to 10 c/kWh | Often a time-of-day structure, higher in the late afternoon |
| TAS | ~5 to 9 c/kWh | A regulated minimum has typically applied |
| ACT | ~4 to 10 c/kWh | Market-based; compare retailer offers |
| NT | ~ up to retail parity in places | Smaller market; arrangements differ, check locally |
A note on those numbers. Several markets are moving to time-varying feed-in tariffs, where a sunny midday export might earn one or two cents, while energy you push out at 6pm earns far more because that is when the grid is stretched. This is not a gimmick. It is a signal, and it points squarely at storage.
“Feed in tariff nsw” is one of the most searched solar questions in the country, and the honest answer is the same one that applies everywhere else: there is no single rate, only a spread of retailer offers to compare.
Do not pick a plan on the feed-in tariff alone
Here is the trap. A retailer waves a juicy feed-in tariff at you, say 12 cents, and it looks like the best deal in the market. Then you read the fine print and find the usage rate is steeper, or the daily supply charge is higher, than the plan next door paying 5 cents.
A high feed-in tariff is a headline. The usage rate and supply charge are the actual price.
The reason this works as a marketing tactic is that retailers know a big FiT number catches the eye. But for most homes the energy you buy from the grid dwarfs the energy you export, so a small saving on import beats a large gain on export almost every time. The only households for whom a high FiT genuinely dominates are big exporters with modest evening use, and even they should run the full sums.
The fix is to compare plans on the total annual cost for your actual usage, not on any single line. The government’s Energy Made Easy comparison site lets you do exactly that, and it is free.
Where the value really lives now
If exporting pays a few cents and importing costs thirty-something, the maths writes itself. Every kilowatt-hour of your own solar that you use inside the house, rather than send to the grid, is worth the full retail price you would otherwise have paid. That is self-consumption, and it is now the beating heart of solar economics.
This reframes how you should think about a system. The goal is no longer to build the biggest array you can and sell the surplus. It is to match generation to the way your household actually uses power, so more of it is consumed on site. If you are weighing up a new install, our friends at Why Solar make the same point: size the system for self-consumption first, and treat export as a small bonus rather than the main event.
Picture a home that exports 10 kWh on a typical day at a 5 cent feed-in tariff. That is 50 cents. The same 10 kWh, used at home instead of bought from the grid at 33 cents, is worth $3.30: more than six times the value, purely because of which side of the meter it lands on. Across a year the difference runs to hundreds of dollars, and well over a thousand for a heavy user.
It also explains the battery boom. A battery stores your cheap midday surplus and hands it back at night, so instead of exporting at 3 cents and re-buying at 33 cents, you keep the power and pocket the difference. That spread, not the feed-in tariff, is what makes storage stack up, and it is the single biggest reason batteries have surged across Australian rooftops. We dig into the numbers in our guide to solar battery costs in Australia, and if you are still deciding on the panels themselves, is solar worth it in Australia runs the full payback case.
The bottom line
A solar feed-in tariff in 2026 is worth only a few cents per kilowatt-hour, often around 3 to 8 cents and sometimes less, while the power you buy back costs roughly ten times that. Rates vary by state and retailer and change often, so check current offers before you sign anything, and never choose a plan on the headline FiT alone, because the usage rate and supply charge decide what you actually pay.
The bigger shift is the one behind the numbers. Solar no longer pays you to export. It pays you to use your own power, and increasingly to store it, which is why a battery has become the natural next step rather than a luxury. If you want to chase the savings to their source, start with the rebates on offer in our solar rebates guide, then work out which unit fits your home in our rundown of the best home batteries in Australia. The grid will keep paying you small change for your sunshine. The trick now is to keep more of it for yourself.