When your panels produce more than your house is using, the surplus goes to the grid. You can be paid for it. The scheme that does this is the Smart Export Guarantee, usually shortened to SEG.
It is not the Feed-in Tariff. If you have read anything about solar written before 2019, it is almost certainly describing a scheme you cannot join.
The Feed-in Tariff has closed
The Feed-in Tariff closed to new applicants after 31 Mar 2019, and the export tariff closed at the same time. Households already accredited keep their payments for the rest of their term. Nobody installing today can apply.
It matters because the Feed-in Tariff paid a generous, government-set, index-linked rate for twenty years, and a lot of the solar advice still circulating online quietly assumes it. If you see a page promising a specific guaranteed return from the government, check when it was written.
Source: Ofgem, Feed-in Tariffs scheme closure. Checked 4 Nov 2026.
How the Smart Export Guarantee works
The SEG requires larger licensed electricity suppliers to offer at least one export tariff. The important difference from the old scheme is that suppliers set their own rates. There is no standard rate and no government figure. The only rule is that the rate has to be above zero at all times.
To qualify:
- Your system must be 5000kW or less, which every domestic system is.
- For solar of 50kW or less it must have been commissioned by an installer certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), using MCS-certified products.
- You need an export meter or a smart meter that can take half-hourly readings.
That MCS requirement is the reason certification matters. It is not a badge. Without it you cannot be paid for your exports at all. See choosing an installer.
Source: Ofgem, Smart Export Guarantee. Checked 4 Nov 2026.
You do not have to export to the company you buy from
Import and export are legally separate under the SEG. You can buy your electricity from one supplier and sell your exports to another.
In practice, most of the better flat rates are only offered to customers who also buy their electricity from that supplier. So the right is real, and the choice is narrower than it sounds. It is still worth knowing, because it means you are never stuck with your current supplier’s export offer.
What the rates actually are
Flat export rates from the larger suppliers currently sit around 12p to 13p per kWh if you also buy your electricity from the same supplier. If you buy your electricity from someone else, expect 2p to 6p per kWh.
We deliberately do not publish a supplier-by-supplier table. Suppliers change their rates at short notice: one large supplier cut its open export rate from 3p to 2p in October 2026. Any table we published would be wrong within weeks and would mislead you rather than help.
Ofgem publishes the list of suppliers that must offer an export tariff. Each one publishes its own rates. Check them again just before you sign up rather than when you first start looking.
Rates last reviewed 4 Nov 2026.
Flat rates and time-of-use rates are not the same thing
This is where people get caught out.
If you see an export rate quoted around 27p or 30p, that is almost certainly a time-of-use export tariff. It pays that rate only during a peak window, typically in the early evening, and it generally only makes sense if you have a battery that can hold electricity back and release it then.
A flat rate pays the same whenever you export. Solar mostly exports in the middle of the day, when electricity is cheapest, which is why flat export rates are lower than the price you pay to import.
So:
| Flat export tariff | Time-of-use export tariff | |
|---|---|---|
| Rate | Same all day | Much higher in a peak window, low outside it |
| Works without a battery | Yes | Poorly. Solar exports at the wrong time of day |
| Works with a battery | Yes | This is what it is designed for |
| Predictable | Yes | Less so |
A headline rate quoted without saying which of these it is tells you nothing.
A unit used at home is worth about twice a unit exported
This is the single most useful piece of arithmetic on this site.
At the current price cap you pay about 26.32p for a unit of electricity. A flat export rate pays roughly half that.
So every unit your panels produce that you use in the house saves you the full import price. Every unit you export earns you around half of it.
That has a practical consequence. Two identical systems on identical roofs can be worth very different amounts, purely because of when the households use electricity. Someone at home during the day, running a heat pump, or charging a car in daylight, gets far more out of the same panels than someone out from eight until six.
It is also the whole argument for a battery: a battery turns exported units back into used units.
Energy price from the Ofgem price cap for 1 Oct 2026 to 31 Dec 2026. Checked 4 Nov 2026.
How to apply
Your installer does not do this for you. After the system is commissioned:
- You receive your MCS certificate. Keep it. You cannot apply without it.
- Choose a SEG tariff. Check Ofgem’s list and compare it against what your own supplier offers.
- Apply to that supplier. They will ask for the MCS certificate, your meter details and usually a photograph of the installation.
- Make sure you have a smart meter capable of half-hourly readings. If you do not, ask your supplier to fit one. Without it most suppliers will not pay you.
It is worth starting this the week the system is commissioned. Exports before you are signed up are not backdated.