Solar buy-back rates in New Zealand

When your panels produce more than the house is using, the surplus goes out to the grid and your retailer pays you for it. That payment is the buy-back rate, sometimes called an export rate or feed-in tariff.

It is the part of solar most often misunderstood, in a specific direction: people assume exporting is roughly as good as not importing. It is not, and the gap is the single most useful thing to internalise about the subject.

Why export is worth less than import

Your import price bundles several things: the electricity, the lines company's charge for delivering it, metering, the retailer's costs, and GST. Nationally that came to 42.04c per kWh including GST as at May 2026.

Your exported unit is worth roughly the value of the energy alone. It does not travel far, it does not save the network its fixed costs, and it arrives at times of day when wholesale prices are typically lower, because the middle of a sunny day is exactly when everyone else's panels are exporting too.

So a buy-back rate sits well below a retail rate, and that is structural rather than a retailer being mean about it.

What follows from that

A unit you use is worth more than a unit you export. Often two to three times more, though the exact multiple depends on your retail rate and your retailer's export rate.

Sizing an array beyond your consumption has falling returns. Past the point where the household can absorb production, additional capacity earns the export rate rather than displacing the retail rate.

Export limits cap it further. Your lines company approves the connection and sets a limit on how much you may push back. Limits vary by network; the Electricity Authority publishes the sector's shift toward 10 kW limits as a tracked indicator. Ask what yours is before agreeing a system size.

Moving load into daylight is worth real money. Hot water on a timer, appliances on delay start, an EV charged at midday. Each one converts an exported unit into a displaced unit.

What we publish, and what we do not

We do not publish buy-back rates. Not a table, not a range, not a "typically around" figure.

The reason is the same one that keeps plan prices off this site: we hold no verified rate files from any retailer. A number here would be unsourced, would go stale silently, and would sit on a page people use to make a fifteen-year decision. Comparing buy-back rates properly is a real product. It needs the same dated, sourced rate files as electricity pricing does, and it is a later phase.

What to ask your retailer

Ask all five, and get the answers in writing:

1. What is your current export rate, in cents per kWh?
2. Is it capped? Some plans pay the headline rate only up to a monthly export volume, then less.
3. Can it change, and what notice do I get?
4. Does taking it require a particular plan, and what are the import rates on that plan?
5. How is the credit applied? Off the bill, or paid out if the account is in credit?

Question 4 is the one that catches people. A strong export rate attached to a plan with poor import rates can cost more than a modest export rate on a good plan, because almost every household imports far more than it exports across a year. Compare the whole bill, not the headline.