If you have solar panels and you have never looked at your export rate, you are almost certainly on one you did not choose. That is not carelessness. It is how the Smart Export Guarantee was designed, and most households have no idea it is a decision at all.
Here is what the scheme is, what it pays, and why the answer differs so much from one supplier to the next.
What the Smart Export Guarantee is
The Smart Export Guarantee, usually shortened to SEG, is a UK obligation that came into force on 1 January 2020. It requires larger electricity suppliers to offer households a payment for every unit of electricity they export to the grid from solar panels, wind, or other small-scale generation.
It replaced the Feed-in Tariff, which closed to new applicants at the end of March 2019. If your system was registered before that date you may still be on a Feed-in Tariff agreement, and in most cases you should stay on it. Everything below applies to systems that came after.
The difference between the SEG and the Feed-in Tariff
This is the part that catches people out, because the two schemes sound similar and behave nothing alike.
The Feed-in Tariff paid a rate set by government. It was index-linked, it was guaranteed for twenty years or more, and every supplier paid the same. You did not shop around because there was nothing to shop for.
The Smart Export Guarantee sets no rate at all. It obliges larger suppliers to offer an export tariff, and it requires that tariff to be greater than zero. That is the extent of the protection. What you are actually paid is a commercial decision by your supplier, it varies enormously between them, and it can be changed.
Who has to offer an SEG tariff
The obligation falls on suppliers above a customer threshold, so the largest names in the market must offer an export tariff. Smaller suppliers may offer one voluntarily, and some of the more competitive rates have come from suppliers who were never obliged to offer anything.
Importantly, you do not have to buy your electricity from the same company that pays for your exports. Import and export can sit with different suppliers. That single fact is the reason shopping around is worth the afternoon it takes.
Whether you qualify
Most domestic solar installations qualify. In practice you need three things:
- An installation of 5MW capacity or less, which every domestic rooftop system is by an enormous margin.
- MCS certification, or an equivalent recognised standard, covering the installation and the equipment.
- A meter capable of providing half-hourly export readings. In practice this means a working smart meter, and it is the requirement that most often trips people up.
If your smart meter has gone dumb after a supplier switch, which happens often enough that most installers will warn you about it, you can be generating and exporting and earning nothing for it, because nobody is reading the export figure.
How to find out what you are actually being paid
Most people cannot answer this from memory, and the number rarely appears on a normal bill in any obvious way. Four places to look:
- 1Your supplier's online account. Export payments are usually listed separately from your import charges, often under a heading like "export" or "generation", and sometimes on a different statement entirely.
- 2The tariff name on your bill. If you signed up for an export tariff it will have a name, and searching that name plus your supplier will get you the current rate faster than a phone call.
- 3Your annual statement. Export credits sometimes appear only here, aggregated across the year, which is why a household can go twelve months without ever seeing the rate.
- 4Ask directly. If none of the above produce a number, that is itself informative: an account with no export tariff attached is not being paid for exports at all.
The table below carries the rates we hold, each with the date it was last checked.
| Supplier | Tariff | Rate | Import account required? | Checked |
|---|
Why the same roof earns different amounts
Two houses on the same street, same array, same orientation, same family size, can earn materially different sums from their panels. Nothing physical explains it. The difference is entirely which supplier is doing the paying.
This matters more than it first appears, because export rates and import prices move independently. A supplier can be genuinely competitive on the price you pay for electricity and near the bottom of the market on what it pays for yours. Being on a good deal for one tells you nothing about the other.
It also means switching has two separate levers, and they are worth understanding apart from each other: you can change what you are paid for export, and you can change what you pay for import. Some of the strongest export rates are only available if you also move your import account, which is a real trade rather than free money.
What to do about it
Find your current export rate. Compare it against what else is available. Work out what the difference is worth across a year on your actual export volume, not a typical household's, yours, because export volume varies more between homes than almost any other figure in this calculation.
Our calculator does the last part with your own numbers, and shows the result as a range with a stated lower bound rather than a single flattering figure. It also tells you when the answer is that a change is not worth the effort.
Smart Export Guarantee scheme rules are administered by Ofgem. Scheme dates and eligibility criteria Checked 2026. Source