What do you get paid for the solar power you export?

Whatever your panels make that the house does not use goes out to the grid, and an energy supplier pays you for it. The scheme is called the Smart Export Guarantee, and the rate you get depends almost entirely on which supplier you pick.

How it works

• Every supplier with 150,000 or more domestic customers has to offer an export tariff. Smaller ones can choose to.
• They set their own rate. The only rule is that it has to be more than zero.
• You need a smart meter that records export.
• For a home system (anything up to 50kW), both the installation and the installer have to be MCS certified. Without that, the supplier does not have to pay you anything.
• You do not have to export to the same supplier you buy your electricity from. But the best rates only go to people who do.

The rates, checked 17 October 2026

Supplier and tariff	Pence per unit	Catch
Octopus Outgoing	12p	Buy your power from Octopus
Octopus Outgoing SEG	4.1p	None, any supplier
EDF Export 12m V2	13p	Buy your power from EDF
EDF SEG Export Variable	3p	None, any supplier
E.ON Next Export Exclusive v3	13p	Buy your power from E.ON Next
E.ON Next Flex Export	6p	None, any supplier
British Gas Export Premium	12p	Buy your power from British Gas
British Gas Export SEG	3p	None, any supplier
OVO SEG Beyond	12p	Buy your power from OVO
OVO SEG	4p	None, any supplier

There are higher rates again (17p to 20p) from suppliers who also sold you the panels. Those only apply if you bought the system from them.

The pattern: stay with your current supplier and export elsewhere, and you get 3p to 6p a unit. Move your electricity to the same supplier and you get 12p to 13p. On a typical Hereford system that is a difference of a couple of hundred pounds a year.

These rates move. Check the current figures on the supplier’s own website before you sign up to anything.

What that means for a Hereford roof

A 4kW system on a south-facing roof in Hereford makes around 3,990 units a year, going by the EU’s PVGIS solar data for the city.

The Energy Saving Trust’s figure is that most households without a battery use 15% to 25% of what their panels make, and export the rest. Take the top of that range:

• About 1,000 units used in the house, saving you around £263 at the October 2026 price cap rate of 26.32p.
• About 3,000 units exported: around £359 a year at 12p, or around £90 at 3p.

So the export tariff alone can swing what a system is worth by about £270 a year. Pick it as carefully as you pick the panels.

Batteries change the sums

A battery keeps more of your own power in the house, which is worth 26p a unit instead of 3p to 13p.

Some tariffs also let you charge the battery from the grid overnight on cheap power and export at the evening peak. Be careful here. Suppliers do not have to pay export on electricity that came from the grid in the first place, and each one handles it differently. Some pay on everything, some pay on none of it, some want extra metering. Read the terms before you buy a battery on the strength of it.

More on that in do you need a battery with solar?

Plug-in solar

Plug-in kits became legal on 27 August 2026, but at the time of writing export payments for them are listed as “coming soon” by British Gas and are not generally available yet. More in our plug-in solar guide.

What to do

Pick the export tariff when you pick the system, not after. When we survey your roof, bring a recent bill and we will run the sums with the export rate you would actually get, not the best one on the market.

Free solar survey in Hereford and Herefordshire.