Solar Feed-In Tariffs in 2026: Is Your Rate Still Competitive?

If you have solar panels on your roof, you already know the basic principle: electricity you generate and don't use gets exported to the grid, and your retailer pays you a feed-in tariff (FiT) for each kilowatt-hour exported. What's less obvious is whether the rate you're currently receiving is still competitive — or whether you've quietly slipped into the same loyalty penalty trap that catches non-solar households.

Feed-in tariff rates have shifted considerably over the past few years, and the gap between what different retailers offer varies meaningfully. This article explains how FiT rates work in 2026, what a competitive rate looks like in each state, and how to check whether your current plan is actually working in your favour.

How Feed-In Tariffs Work in 2026

Feed-in tariffs in Australia are now almost entirely market-based. The era of government-guaranteed premium FiT rates — the schemes that paid 44–66 cents per kWh in Queensland and Victoria in the early 2010s — is long over for new entrants. Legacy recipients of those schemes in some states may still receive their grandfathered rates, but for the vast majority of solar households, the FiT is set by your retailer and varies by plan.

The minimum feed-in tariff in most states is set by the relevant energy regulator as a floor, not a ceiling. Retailers are free to offer rates above this floor, and many do — particularly to attract solar customers who represent a different and often more valuable usage profile.

Current minimum FiT rates by state (these vary annually and should be verified against the regulator's current determination):

• Victoria: Set annually by the Essential Services Commission; single-rate and time-varying options available
• New South Wales: No regulated minimum; market-set, with significant variation between retailers
• Queensland: Regulated benchmark rate set by the Queensland Competition Authority
• South Australia: No regulated minimum; rates vary significantly between retailers
• Western Australia: Administered rate set by Synergy for Synergy customers; separate arrangement for non-Synergy areas

The key point is that in states without a regulated minimum — particularly NSW and SA — the variation between what different retailers offer can be substantial. A household exporting significant generation could be leaving meaningful money on the table by staying with a retailer offering a below-market FiT rate.

The FiT Rate Isn't the Only Number That Matters

A common mistake when evaluating a solar electricity plan is focusing only on the feed-in tariff rate and ignoring the import rates — what you pay for the electricity you draw from the grid. An attractive FiT rate can be paired with an uncompetitive usage rate, meaning the plan looks good on the export side but costs you more on the consumption side.

The way to evaluate a solar plan properly is to look at both sides of the ledger:

Import cost: Your usage rate (c/kWh) multiplied by your grid consumption, plus your daily supply charge.

Export credit: Your FiT rate (c/kWh) multiplied by your exported generation.

Your net bill is the import cost minus the export credit. A plan with a higher FiT rate but significantly higher import rates may produce a worse net outcome than a plan with a moderate FiT but competitive import rates — depending on your generation profile and usage pattern.

The ratio of self-consumption to export matters here. If you export a high proportion of your generation (a common pattern for households that are out during the day), the FiT rate has more weight in the calculation. If you self-consume most of what you generate, the import rate matters more.

Time-Varying Feed-In Tariffs

Some retailers now offer time-varying feed-in tariffs — rates that change depending on the time of day export occurs. These mirror the structure of time-of-use import tariffs: higher rates during peak demand periods, lower rates during solar peak hours (typically midday) when grid supply from solar is abundant.

In practice, time-varying FiTs have often disadvantaged solar households because the highest generation periods — midday — coincide with lower-rate export windows. Whether a time-varying FiT works in your favour depends on when you export relative to the tariff windows. If your household has a battery system that allows you to shift export to peak evening periods, a time-varying FiT may be significantly more valuable than a flat rate.

Without a battery, a flat-rate FiT is typically simpler and often more predictable.

How to Check Whether Your Current Rate Is Competitive

Start with your most recent electricity bill. Solar bills should show:

• Feed-in tariff rate: Cents per kWh received for exported electricity
• Total export credit for the period: The kWh exported multiplied by the FiT rate
• Usage rate: What you're paying per kWh imported from the grid
• Net cost for the period: What you actually paid after the export credit was applied

With these figures in hand, the comparison question is whether another retailer would have produced a better net outcome on the same generation and usage pattern.

Compare your current FiT rate against what's currently being offered by competing retailers in your distribution zone. The government comparison tools — Energy Made Easy and Victorian Energy Compare — allow you to filter for solar plans and show FiT rates alongside import rates, making it possible to calculate a net comparison.

If your current retailer's FiT rate is at or near the regulated minimum and other retailers are offering meaningfully higher rates, the comparison is worth running in full. If the market FiT rates are similar across available plans, the focus shifts to finding the best import rate.

When to Review Your Solar Plan

Solar households tend to review their plans even less frequently than non-solar households, partly because the feed-in credits make bills feel smaller and less urgent. This is precisely the dynamic that leads to people staying on uncompetitive plans longer than they should.

Two triggers that should prompt a solar plan review:

1. It's been more than 12 months since you checked your FiT rate against the market. Feed-in tariffs and import rates both change annually in most states.
2. Your export credits have decreased without a corresponding decrease in generation. If your inverter data shows consistent generation but your bill credits are lower, your effective FiT rate may have changed.

Use our [comparison tool](/compare) to find solar-compatible plans in your postcode and compare both the feed-in tariff rate and the import rate side by side. Enter your daily usage and your estimated daily export to get a net cost comparison.

Sources: Essential Services Commission Victoria FiT determinations; Queensland Competition Authority benchmark FiT; Australian Energy Regulator retailer obligation disclosures; Clean Energy Regulator solar installation data.