If you installed solar a decade ago, there’s a good chance you were exporting surplus power at a rate that made it genuinely worthwhile to send everything you didn’t use straight back to the grid. That equation has changed. Feed-in tariffs across most of Australia — NSW included — have been trending steadily downward for years, and the maths that made sense when you first went solar might not be the maths that makes sense today.
Here’s what’s actually driving the decline, and what it means for how you should be thinking about your system now.
Why Feed-in Tariffs Keep Falling
Feed-in tariffs are set based on the wholesale value of electricity at the time it’s exported to the grid — and solar exports overwhelmingly happen during daylight hours, when a huge number of other rooftop solar systems are exporting at exactly the same time. That flood of midday supply pushes the wholesale value of exported solar power down, sometimes close to zero or even negative in some states during peak generation periods.
This isn’t a conspiracy or a punishment for solar owners — it’s straightforward supply and demand. So many households now generate simultaneously that midday solar power has genuinely become less scarce, and its market value has fallen accordingly.
What This Means for the Old “Export Everything” Strategy
For a long time, the standard solar mindset was simple: generate as much as possible, use what you need, export the rest, and collect a decent feed-in credit. That strategy is becoming less rewarding every year as tariffs fall, particularly for households without a battery who have no way to store surplus generation for use later in the day.
The practical shift happening across the market is toward maximising self-consumption — using more of what you generate yourself, either by shifting usage to daylight hours (running the dishwasher, washing machine or pool pump while the sun’s up) or, more significantly, storing surplus generation in a battery to use during the evening peak when grid electricity is at its most expensive.
The Battery Case Gets Stronger as Tariffs Fall
This is really the core shift worth understanding: every dollar a falling feed-in tariff removes from the value of exporting a kWh is a dollar that storing and self-consuming that same kWh becomes relatively more attractive. A battery lets you effectively “buy” your own exported power back at your usual electricity rate, rather than selling it cheaply and buying it back from the grid at full price a few hours later.
Time-Varying Tariffs and What They Mean
Some retailers now offer time-varying feed-in tariffs — a lower (sometimes near-zero) rate during the traditional solar export window in the middle of the day, and a meaningfully higher rate for exports during the early evening peak, when the grid genuinely needs the extra supply.
If your retailer offers this kind of tariff, a battery becomes even more valuable — instead of exporting your surplus at the worst time of day for near-nothing, you can store it and either self-consume it in the evening or export it during the higher-value evening window instead.
What This Doesn’t Mean
It doesn’t mean solar has stopped being worthwhile. Self-consumption — using your own generation directly during the day rather than exporting it — is unaffected by feed-in tariff changes and remains the single biggest source of solar savings for most households. Falling feed-in tariffs specifically affect the value of the portion you export, not the value of the portion you use yourself.
It also doesn’t mean every household needs a battery immediately. Households with high daytime usage (someone home during the day, a home business, or significant daytime appliance use) are already capturing most of their solar value through self-consumption and are less exposed to falling export tariffs than households that are empty all day and export the bulk of what they generate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why has my feed-in tariff dropped so much?
Feed-in tariffs are largely driven by the wholesale value of electricity at the time of export. Because so many households now export solar power simultaneously during the day, that midday supply glut has pushed wholesale — and therefore feed-in — values down significantly in recent years.
Is solar still worth it with lower feed-in tariffs?
Yes, for most households — the bulk of solar savings come from self-consumption (using your own generation instead of buying from the grid), which isn’t affected by falling export tariffs. The export/feed-in portion of your savings has become less valuable, which is exactly why battery storage has become more relevant to the overall solar-savings equation.
Should I get a battery because my feed-in tariff dropped?
It’s a reasonable trigger to look into it, particularly if you’re regularly exporting a large share of what you generate. The lower your feed-in tariff and the higher your evening electricity usage, the stronger the financial case for storing rather than exporting.
Are feed-in tariffs going to keep falling?
The underlying driver — midday oversupply from rooftop solar — isn’t going away, so the general trend has been downward for several years.
See What a Battery Would Actually Save You
If your feed-in tariff has fallen since you first went solar, it’s worth recalculating what storing your surplus generation would be worth instead of exporting it at today’s rate.
