Solar Feed In Tariff

What is the Solar Feed in Tariff?

The Solar Feed-in Tariff is a federal incentive that allows people to sell back their excess electricity to their power company. Depending on the size of your investment there is a good chance that your solar system will pump out more power than you need, especially if you are working during the day. In Victoria every unit you sell back to the grid is charged out at 66 cents, more than triple what you buy it at.

Of course it does depend on two main factors, what you are doing during the day and how many panels you decide on. If you are at home using all your power during the day then you will have no excess electricity, but if you are at work (or simply don’t use too much power if you are at home) then you will have excess electricity to sell back to the grid, the exact amount you can sell back changes from state to state (and utility to utility).

Different states also have different payment structures, for example NT, NSW and ACT have a gross FIT where you get paid for all the energy your solar solution generates, whereas the remaining states have a net FIT where you get paid for your excess energy once the deduction of any energy outflows from metered energy inflows is calculated.

The real beauty of this incentive is that your FIT rate is locked in for several years (up to 20 years in some states). But this incentive was never intended to be around forever and several states have started reducing or removing their rates, and even though with absolutely no feed-in tariff solar is still a very sound investment, it’s better than not to take advantage of the Governments generosity while it is still around.

Please see the below table which lists each states feed-in tariff in more detail…