A feed-in tariff (FiT) is the credit your retailer pays for each kilowatt-hour of solar power your system exports to the grid. It appears on your bill as a credit line, and it is the number solar owners compare plans on first. That instinct is understandable, and usually wrong: for most households the usage side of the plan matters far more than the feed-in side.
How feed-in tariffs work now
In most of Australia, feed-in tariffs are set by retailers, plan by plan. There is no single "solar rate", and the same retailer can offer different FiTs on different plans, sometimes with tiers (a higher rate for the first few kWh exported each day, a lower rate after that) or conditions.
The regulated landscape has thinned out. Victoria scrapped its regulated minimum from 1 July 2025: the Essential Services Commission no longer sets a minimum feed-in tariff, and retailers set their own, which simply cannot go below zero. A few places still have set or overseen rates, such as regional Queensland's regulator-set tariff and Tasmania's regulated rate, but in the competitive markets the FiT is just another plan feature. Wholesale daytime prices have fallen as solar floods the grid in the middle of the day, and feed-in rates have followed them down.
The practical takeaway: legacy premium schemes aside, a FiT today is a modest credit, not an income stream, and plans compete on it far less than their marketing suggests.
Why the highest FiT rarely wins
Retailers know solar owners filter by feed-in rate, so a common plan shape is a headline FiT paired with higher usage rates or a higher supply charge. Whether that trade is good for you comes down to one ratio: how much you export versus how much you import.
- Every kWh you export earns the FiT, typically a few cents.
- Every kWh you import costs the usage rate, typically five to ten times more.
- Every kWh you use as it is generated (self-consumption) avoids the usage rate entirely, which makes it worth several times more than exporting it.
A typical solar household still imports plenty of electricity in the evening, so a plan with cheap usage rates and a modest FiT very often beats a plan with a headline FiT and dear rates. And the cheapest improvement is free: run the dishwasher, washing machine and pool pump while the sun is up, and heat water in the middle of the day if your setup allows it, so more of your solar is used rather than exported.
How to compare plans when you have solar
Our calculator does both sides for you. Enter your daily usage, turn on the solar option, and add your average daily export from a recent bill; each plan's bill is reduced by its feed-in credit, so plans are ranked on your net cost. Pick your State to start; in the six eastern States and Territories you can import real plans for your postcode.
Two things to get right:
- Use the right numbers. Your bill's import kWh is the figure for usage, not your solar generation; our bill reading guide shows where to find it, and if the bill only shows a net figure, the retailer's app usually has the split. Enter your average daily export in the solar field.
- Trust the standard rate, not the headline. The calculator credits each plan's standard ongoing feed-in rate and deliberately ignores headline rates that are capped to the first few kWh a day, or paid only at certain times, because a single daily export figure cannot value those fairly; those plans are flagged rather than credited. That is this guide's whole argument built into the tool: a capped headline number cannot win on a rate you would rarely earn.
That order matters because the usage side is where the big differences live. A one-cent FiT gap on 8 kWh of daily exports is worth about $29 a year; a five-cent gap in usage rate on 16 kWh of daily imports is worth about $292.
A note on bigger pictures
If your export credits keep shrinking, the structural answers are self-consumption, a battery, or a plan type built for solar-heavy homes (some retailers offer time-varying feed-in or wholesale-linked exports). Those are system decisions rather than plan-switching decisions, and worth their own research. For choosing a retailer this year, the rule stands: compare whole bills first, feed-in second. Our switching guide covers the mechanics once you have picked.