Choosing an electricity plan after you install solar

Why your plan should be revisited

Before solar, you were a straightforward consumer of grid electricity, and the best plan was whichever had the lowest usage rate and supply charge for your consumption. After solar, you're a consumer and a generator, with a completely different daily profile - you buy far less during the day and export a surplus.

The plan that was optimal before is rarely optimal after. This is one of the easiest savings available and one of the most commonly neglected.

The three numbers that matter now

Usage rate. Still matters - it's what you pay for the power you still buy, which is now concentrated in mornings and evenings.

Feed-in tariff. Now matters, and varies meaningfully between retailers. But beware: some retailers advertise a high feed-in rate while charging a higher usage rate, which can leave you worse off overall. The feed-in rate alone is not the answer.

Daily supply charge. Fixed regardless of usage, so it becomes proportionally more significant once your consumption drops.

Time-of-use versus flat rates

If you have solar and especially a battery, a time-of-use tariff can work in your favour - you're generating or discharging through the expensive peak periods and buying in cheaper windows. Without storage and with heavy evening use, time-of-use can hurt.

This is genuinely case-by-case and depends on your load shape. It's worth modelling rather than guessing.

How to actually compare

Take your post-solar usage and export figures - after a few months of monitoring you'll have real ones - and run them against plan offers. The government's Energy Made Easy comparison site is the neutral starting point.

We help our customers with this after installation, because a well-designed system on a badly chosen plan is money left on the table.