Solar and batteries
Solar feed-in tariffs in NSW: what the benchmark means, and why yours keeps falling
Every year IPART publishes a range for what your exported solar is worth in NSW. Two things about it surprise people. It is a guide, not a rule, and your retailer is free to ignore it. And it is far below what you pay for the same electricity, for reasons that are not a rort. Here is the whole picture, from the regulator's own page.
If you have rooftop solar in New South Wales and your feed-in tariff has been shrinking year after year, you are not imagining it, and you have not been singled out. The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, IPART, sets a benchmark range each financial year, and it has moved down.
The benchmark, and what it is not
| 2026-27 all-day range | IPART’s page states: Our all-day solar feed-in benchmark 2026-27 is 3.4 to 6.5 c/kWh. |
|---|---|
| 2025-26 all-day range | 4.8 to 7.3 c/kWh, so the range has fallen at both ends. |
| Is it binding? | No. IPART states that electricity retailers in NSW are not required to set their solar feed-in tariff offers within IPART’s benchmark range. |
What the benchmark is actually for
It is a yardstick you can hold an offer against. In IPART’s words, the ranges
provide a guide about the value of the solar feed-in tariffs to help you see if your
electricity retailer is offering a reasonable solar feed-in tariff
.
Which means the practical use of it is comparison. If your retailer pays you below the bottom of the range, that is not illegal, but it is a fact you can act on by switching. IPART points readers to the Commonwealth’s Energy Made Easy comparison site for actual offers, and warns that a headline feed-in rate is not the whole deal: some plans pair a high feed-in tariff with higher usage rates.
Why it fell
The benchmark is not a policy lever and it is not set by how much solar is worth to you. It
is an estimate of what the electricity you export is worth on the wholesale market at the moment
you export it. IPART’s explanation for the drop is exactly that:
This reflects that wholesale prices are expected to be a bit lower over the 2026-27 financial
year at the times solar is exporting.
That last clause is the whole thing. Rooftop solar exports overwhelmingly in the middle of the day, which is precisely when there is the most solar on the grid and the least need for more of it. The more rooftop solar there is in NSW, the less a midday kilowatt hour is worth, and the benchmark follows the wholesale price down.
Why you get 5 cents for the electricity you buy back at 30-something
This is the part that feels wrong, and the answer is genuinely mundane. When your exported
kilowatt hour is sold on to a neighbour, the retailer still has to pay to deliver it. IPART
lists the costs, and the largest is the network:
The main charges are those paid to the network operator for using the energy grid. These can
be around 30 c/kWh during peak times.
On top of that sit the retailer’s environmental obligations and the gap between the wholesale price when solar is exporting and their higher average wholesale cost. So the difference between the feed-in tariff and the retail price is not margin. Most of it is poles, wires and scheme costs that exist whether the electron came from your roof or a power station.
The number that is actually worth chasing: time of day
IPART publishes time-of-day benchmark ranges as well as the all-day one, and the spread
between them is much larger than the year-on-year fall everyone notices. Relative to the all-day
figure, IPART records that the midday benchmarks are 0.4 to 0.6 c/kWh lower, while
The benchmarks in the evening are around 4 to 12 c/kWh higher.
Read that against a 3.4 to 6.5 cent all-day range and the implication is hard to miss: an exported kilowatt hour in the evening peak can be worth several times a midday one. That is the economic case for a home battery stated in the regulator’s own numbers, and it is a better argument than any retailer’s brochure, because it is the reason the money exists rather than a claim about a product.
And the charge going the other way
Separately from what your retailer pays you, your network can charge for
exporting. Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy each set their own export tariffs,
approved by the Australian Energy Regulator, and they are designed as a price signal: IPART
describes them as including a charge for solar exports during certain daytime hours after a
free threshold is reached
and a rebate for solar exports during peak evening times
.
Two things follow. Your network and your retailer are different companies making different
calculations about the same exported electricity. And IPART is not the body to complain to about
the export charge: it says plainly that IPART does not regulate or set export charges.
What to do with all this
Compare your current feed-in rate against the range above, and then against the whole plan rather than the feed-in line alone. If you are shopping, look at whether the offer is time-of-day, because the evening spread is where the value has moved. And treat a falling benchmark as information about the grid rather than about your panels: the same abundance that pushes the midday value down is what makes shifting your own consumption, or storing it, worth more each year.
About this page
This is an explainer built entirely from IPART’s own published guidance, which any reader can open at the link below. Every quoted passage was checked character by character against that page, read on 23 August 2026. The 2025-26 comparison range is IPART’s own, from the same page’s history table.
Figures on this page are dated on purpose. A benchmark range is reset every financial year, so treat the numbers as belonging to 2026-27 and check the source page before relying on them in a later year. We hold no commercial relationship with any electricity retailer, network or solar installer, and nothing here is a recommendation of a product or a plan.
Sources
- Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, Solar energy (IPART, read 23 August 2026): the 2026-27 all-day benchmark range and the 2025-26 range it replaced, IPART's statement of what the benchmark is for, that retailers are not required to price within it, the wholesale-price explanation for the fall, the network charge of around 30 c/kWh at peak times, the time-of-day benchmark differences, and the description of network export charges and rebates.
Spotted an error, or has the benchmark moved? Tell us and we will check it against the source and log the outcome here.