See if solar is worth it — in 30 seconds.

What households actually pay

Australia is not America, and the difference decides whether solar pays. Here a household exports power for a few cents while buying it back for thirty — so the value is in using what you make, not selling it. These figures come from the retail plans energy companies are actually offering right now, not a published average.

What the numbers say

South Australia has the dearest power at 42.9c/kWh — 69% above Tasmania at 25.4c. That spread matters more than sunshine does: a dear state pays back a system faster even with less sun, because every kilowatt-hour you avoid buying is worth more. On the bill modelled above, South Australia is quickest at 2.9 years.

Feed-in tariffs average 3.5c/kWh across these states — a fraction of what the same power costs to buy. That single fact drives everything else on these pages. Exporting is close to giving power away, so a system sized to your daytime use beats a bigger one sized to sell, and a battery is worth pricing up rather than dismissing.

Tasmania is the exception that proves the rule, and even there an exported unit earns 37% of a bought one — against 4% in South Australia. Nowhere on the national market does selling power back come close to matching the value of not buying it.

Australia still has a solar rebate

The Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme discounts a system at the quote through small-scale technology certificates — no forms, no waiting. On the systems modelled here it is worth $950–$1,596. It also shrinks every January, because the scheme closes at the end of 2030 and each year of delay is one less year of entitlement — 5 years are left to claim on a system installed today. Each state page shows the current figure.

There is now a federal battery rebate too

Everything above is about panels. Since 2025 there has also been a national discount on home batteries — the Cheaper Home Batteries Program — worth roughly 30% off the installed cost of a system between 5 and 100 kWh, delivered the same way the panel rebate is, through small-scale technology certificates your installer claims and takes off the price. Only the first 50 kWh of usable capacity earns certificates, and from 1 May 2026 the certificates are tiered by battery size rather than flat.

The taper is worth understanding before you size a battery. A typical household system sits inside that first band, where the discount is applied in full — so for most buyers the rule changes nothing. It bites on the way up: capacity beyond 28 kWh earns certificates at 15% of the base rate, which is close enough to nothing that the last stretch of a very large battery is effectively bought at full price.

It matters here more than it would elsewhere. Every page on this site argues that Australian exports are worth a fraction of retail, so the value is in using what you make — and a battery is the most direct way to use more of it. We do not model the battery rebate in the calculator above, because what a battery is worth depends on your own load shape rather than on a state median, and we would rather leave it out than guess it.

Sources: DCCEEW — Cheaper Home Batteries Program · Clean Energy Regulator — solar batteries

Where these numbers come from

Rates and feed-in tariffs are medians of current residential market offers published through the Australian Energy Regulator's Consumer Data Right, covering the states under the National Energy Customer Framework. Only single-rate plans feed the headline rate — a time-of-use plan is not comparable to a flat rate without knowing when a household actually uses power, and pretending otherwise would make the figures tidier and wronger. Solar yield is the Clean Energy Regulator's postcode zone rating. Western Australia and the Northern Territory sit outside the national framework, so they are not covered rather than estimated.

Data current as of 2026-08-24.