7 guides
Solar power in New Zealand
What solar actually does to a New Zealand power bill, what decides whether it is worth it at your address, and the questions worth asking before you take a quote.
- What you pay per unit, May 2026
- 42.04c
- Cheapest town we track
- 37.01c
- Dearest town we track
- 52.52c
national average per kWh, GST inclusive — the price solar displaces
Wellington City — solar displaces less where power is cheap
Balclutha — the same array is worth more here
MBIE's Quarterly Survey of Domestic Electricity Prices, May 2026. Solar economics are driven more by what electricity costs where you live than by anything about the panels, which is why these are the numbers on this page and system prices are not. Prices by town
Most of what is written about solar in New Zealand is written by people who sell it. That is not a scandal, since installers know the most about installing, but it does mean the material a household finds first is organised around getting to a quote rather than around whether a quote is a good idea.
These pages are the other half. They exist to make you a better-informed buyer, and we do not sell solar.
The honest headline
Solar economics in New Zealand are driven mostly by what electricity costs where you live. Not by the panels, which are broadly commodity hardware, and not by how sunny it feels.
The reason is arithmetic. A kilowatt hour your array produces and your household uses at that moment is a kilowatt hour you did not buy. So the value of that unit is your retail rate, the numbers at the top of this page. A kilowatt hour you export instead earns the buy-back rate, which is normally a good deal lower.
That single fact explains most of what follows: why self-consumption matters more than array size, why a heat pump on a timer changes the payback, why the same system pays back faster in an expensive network area, and why an installer's production estimate is only half the answer.
What this section covers
The pages below take one subject each. If you are early in the decision, read the worth-it page first, because it is the one that decides whether the rest matters.
What we will not do
We will not tell you which installer to use, because we have not verified anything about any of them. We will not publish a system price, because a quote depends on your roof, your switchboard and your site, and a number here would become a benchmark it has no right to be. And we will not publish buy-back rates until we hold verified rate files, for the same reason we publish no plan prices.
Where we have a gap, it is stated on the page rather than in a disclaimer. That is the same discipline the rest of this site runs on.
What we can do
Once panels are on the roof, the decision that is left is an electricity one: which retailer, which plan shape, what buy-back rate, and how the daily charge interacts with a much smaller import volume. That is squarely our subject, and we compare 8 power companies on it.
7 guides
Solar, subject by subject
Home batteries
A battery does one economic thing, converting exported units into used ones, and one practical thing, which is backup during an outage. They are separate decisions with separate arithmetic.
How solar works
Four pieces of equipment and one decision the system makes thousands of times a day, which is whether to use it here or send it out. Understanding that decision explains most of solar's economics.
Is solar worth it?
The return comes from electricity you do not buy, so it turns on your retail rate and on how much of the production your household actually uses. Both are things you can check before getting a quote.
Solar buy-back rates
Exporting surplus electricity earns a rate your retailer sets, and it is normally well below what you pay to import. That gap is why self-consumption matters more than array size.
Solar grants and subsidies
The honest answer to "what is the government solar subsidy" is that there is no national one for household panels. Here is what public funding does cover, and where local schemes can exist.
Switching with solar
With panels on the roof, you buy less electricity and you sell some. Both change which plan is a good deal, and the daily charge starts mattering more than the unit rate.
What solar costs
We publish no system prices, because a quote depends on your roof, your switchboard and your site. What we can do is show you what moves the number and how to compare two quotes on the same basis.
What we don't publish about solar
- We do not list, rank or recommend solar installers. There is no installer inventory behind this site — no verified data on any of them, and no commercial arrangement with any of them.
- We do not publish buy-back or export rates. They are set per retailer, they change, and we hold no verified rate file for any of them. Ask the retailer for their current rate in writing.
- We do not publish system prices. A quote depends on the roof, the switchboard and the install, and a number here would be a guess presented as a benchmark.
Solar power in New Zealand — common questions
Is solar worth it in New Zealand?
It depends more on what electricity costs where you live than on anything about the panels. Every unit your array produces and your household uses is a unit not bought at your retail rate — 42.04c per kWh on the May 2026 national average — and that displaced cost is most of the return. In Balclutha at 52.52c the same array is worth noticeably more than in Wellington City at 37.01c.
Do you recommend solar installers?
No. We do not list, rank or recommend installers, and we have no commercial arrangement with any of them. There is no installer inventory behind this site, so anything we said about a particular company would be unverified, and we hold ourselves to the same standard on solar as on the 8 power companies we do compare.
What do you actually publish about solar?
Explanation, not comparison. How the system works, what drives a quote, how buy-back and export limits work, what batteries change, and what the subsidy position actually is. Where we hold no verified data — installer pricing, export rates, system costs — we say so on every page rather than filling the gap.
Does solar change which power company I should be with?
Yes, and this is the part we can help with. A household with panels buys less electricity overall and buys it at different times of day, which changes whether a low daily charge or a low unit rate suits you, and makes the buy-back rate a real line in the comparison. Our guide to switching with solar goes through it.
Will solar keep my lights on in a power cut?
Usually not. A standard grid-connected system shuts down during an outage, deliberately, because it protects the line workers fixing the fault. Keeping power during a cut needs specific equipment, normally a battery with a hybrid inverter set up for backup, and it is worth confirming in writing rather than assuming it comes with the system.
Already have panels?
Then the decision in front of you is an electricity one, and it is the part we do. Compare 8 power companies and see what each offers at your address — the comparison asks about solar from the start, because it changes which plan shape suits you.
Compare power companies