Solar Export Prices

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#3502069 11-Jun-2026 13:27

gzt: @cshwone, is this a case of wanting the Genesis benefits without the disadvantages? ; )

Not at all, I only used my particular case as an example. Shopping around you see cases where the export rate is higher but then so are the peak import rates. Or peak export rates are low but off peak export rates are high. Daily lines charges are also a big factor and vary considerably. It is an absolute minefield.

However, the theme that runs across all electricity companies is that the export rate, as a factor of the import rate, is abysmally low. The gentailers are making more profit from the consumers capital investment.

wellygary

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#3502083 11-Jun-2026 14:21

cshwone:

However, the theme that runs across all electricity companies is that the export rate, as a factor of the import rate, is abysmally low. The gentailers are making more profit from the consumers capital investment.

Because unless you are Meridian, The other gentailers have no ability to offset their own grid production by buying your rooftop solar.

Mercury's dams on the Waikato are basically run of river, They're only allowed to vary lake Taupo by a maximum of 1.4m (~600Gwh)

Everything else is pretty much instant dispatch (Wind, geothermal, commercial solar)

Contact and Genesis are in a similar boat, the only generation they can really scale back is thermal, and during daylight hours this doesn't usually run very hard at all - (Except basically in Winter)

Lots of rooftop solar is a bag of hammers for commercial grid operators, and you only have to look across to OZ to see where it can end up with dynamic generation controls being mandated on pretty much all new instals.

cshwone

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#3502089 11-Jun-2026 14:59

wellygary:

cshwone:

However, the theme that runs across all electricity companies is that the export rate, as a factor of the import rate, is abysmally low. The gentailers are making more profit from the consumers capital investment.

Because unless you are Meridian, The other gentailers have no ability to offset their own grid production by buying your rooftop solar.

Mercury's dams on the Waikato are basically run of river, They're only allowed to vary lake Taupo by a maximum of 1.4m (~600Gwh)

Everything else is pretty much instant dispatch (Wind, geothermal, commercial solar)

Contact and Genesis are in a similar boat, the only generation they can really scale back is thermal, and during daylight hours this doesn't usually run very hard at all - (Except basically in Winter)

Lots of rooftop solar is a bag of hammers for commercial grid operators, and you only have to look across to OZ to see where it can end up with dynamic generation controls being mandated on pretty much all new instals.

So the takeaway from this is the generation and retailing should be decoupled?

wellygary

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#3502093 11-Jun-2026 15:18

cshwone:

So the takeaway from this is the generation and retailing should be decoupled?

Probably would not make much difference, the Grid is still the grid, the generators will still be generating Electrons they need to do something with,

If there was money in paying more for your solar, places like Electric Kiwi should be banging down doors offering better buy back rates... but unless you sign up o a peak pricing plan their standard rate is only 9c/unit...

SolarZero tried to arbitrage the market by buying in customers' solar, storing it in a battery and then selling it to the market in peak times, They managed to burn through a couple of $100 million and still couldn't make the model work...

fastbike

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#3502116 11-Jun-2026 16:44

wellygary:

cshwone:

So the takeaway from this is the generation and retailing should be decoupled?

Probably would not make much difference, the Grid is still the grid, the generators will still be generating Electrons they need to do something with,

If there was money in paying more for your solar, places like Electric Kiwi should be banging down doors offering better buy back rates... but unless you sign up o a peak pricing plan their standard rate is only 9c/unit...

You're ignoring the gaming of the market that the 4 gentailers engage in.
All of the small retailers cannot compete so end up going bust or getting bought out.

ComCom are useless.

Otautahi Christchurch

wellygary

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#3502123 11-Jun-2026 17:07

fastbike:

You're ignoring the gaming of the market that the 4 gentailers engage in.
All of the small retailers cannot compete so end up going bust or getting bought out.

ComCom are useless.

Creating another layer of profit seeking companies between the customer and the generator is probably not the way to lower prices....

Also in such a situational, keeping the generators out of the commercial market would be difficult, I mean at what consumption level do you allow generators to sell directly to customers.. Tiwai... a Pulp mill, an office block??

There s little sense in preventing Generators directly selling to large commercial users, but where-ever you set the level, you simply create an incentive for smaller users to band together so they can be big enough to "cut out" the retailer middle man....

Pretty much all the pricing power in the market is in the hands of the Generators, whether they have directly attached retailers or not is probably just window dressing...

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fastbike

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#3502130 11-Jun-2026 18:20

wellygary:

fastbike:

You're ignoring the gaming of the market that the 4 gentailers engage in.
All of the small retailers cannot compete so end up going bust or getting bought out.

ComCom are useless.

Creating another layer of profit seeking companies between the customer and the generator is probably not the way to lower prices....

Also in such a situational, keeping the generators out of the commercial market would be difficult, I mean at what consumption level do you allow generators to sell directly to customers.. Tiwai... a Pulp mill, an office block??

There s little sense in preventing Generators directly selling to large commercial users, but where-ever you set the level, you simply create an incentive for smaller users to band together so they can be big enough to "cut out" the retailer middle man....

Pretty much all the pricing power in the market is in the hands of the Generators, whether they have directly attached retailers or not is probably just window dressing...

The sector needs a thorough shakeup as it has not delivered what mad max promised close on 30 years ago.

If I were redesigning the sector from scratch, I would:

Separate retail from generation ownership and forbid cross ownership.
Keep several competing generators.
Create a publicly owned strategic reserve and dry-year insurance mechanism.
Improve hedge-market access for independent retailers.
Set explicit affordability and reliability targets.

That approach preserves investment incentives and competition while addressing the biggest weakness in the current New Zealand market: the advantages that vertically integrated gentailers enjoy over independent retailers and consumers.

As an alternative, a fully publicly owned generation company could probably reduce financing costs (govt bonds are cheaper) and potentially lower prices, but the long-term risk is that electricity investment becomes a political rather than economic decision.

We need to balance the risk of underinvestment (usually a more costly failure) against higher prices.

For an electricity system expected to support widespread electrification over the next 30 years this needs to be resolved.

Anyway, probably a bit off track, but relevant to the OP observation above the spread between his export/import prices.

Otautahi Christchurch

gzt

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#3502145 11-Jun-2026 20:33

For now the government is increasing electricity industry penalties for failure to provision fuel for dry year risk:

NZHerald: “Dry-year risk sits with the electricity sector, not with taxpayers and not with households,” Energy Minister Simeon Brown said. “It is only fair that the big power companies and large electricity users are the ones responsible for managing it. “By planning ahead for periods when hydro generation is constrained, the system will be more resilient, reducing the risk of outages and sharp price spikes.

Maximums are $10m, or three times the commercial gain, or 10% of a company’s turnover whichever is the greatest.

gzt

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#3502146 11-Jun-2026 20:42

wellygary: SolarZero tried to arbitrage the market by buying in customers' solar, storing it in a battery and then selling it to the market in peak times, They managed to burn through a couple of $100 million and still couldn't make the model work...

That might be debatable. I'm not sure the battery aspect was critical. The aggregation certainly was. SolarZero's major finance commitment pulled out when it was made clear that the new government was completely unfriendly to the idea of supporting a better regulatory environment for that operation.

raytaylor

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#3502807 14-Jun-2026 12:47

Jase2985:

every kW/h generated by solar/wind is potentially a kW/h not needed to be generated by hydro which can then save that water for another time when there is less wind/solar and more need, like during a dry year.

That is a very good point and one which I often remind people of because it seems to be forgotten in the argument.
It is the current strategy.
But it will only last us to a certain point until solar and wind is supplying 100% of daytime usage. At that point we are still relying on hydro to fill the gaps overnight which wont work for long as the national vehicle fleet switches to electric and overnight car charging becomes a problem.

Anyone who owns a fee-based carpark should be covering the roof with solar panels and setting up car chargers so people can charge while they park. And we need to get away from charging only dedicated carparks. Every car park eventually needs to have a charger avaliable.

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#3502809 14-Jun-2026 12:55

wellygary:

Lots of rooftop solar is a bag of hammers for commercial grid operators, and you only have to look across to OZ to see where it can end up with dynamic generation controls being mandated on pretty much all new instals.

I love the new rules with the free daytime power over there.

In 3 states, they have mandated that all electricity retailers need to give each residential customer 3 hours of free power during the day (up to 24 kwh daily) to absorb the excess solar they now have on the grid.

Its something like 11am to 2pm in 2 states and 12pm-3pm in a 3rd state

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#3502912 14-Jun-2026 18:44

I'm also on 12.5 for export. I could move to a Meridian plan for higher buyback, but did the sums and the way higher daily fixed charge blew away any export savings for me

deadlyllama

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#3503061 15-Jun-2026 09:38

raytaylor:

I love the new rules with the free daytime power over there.

In 3 states, they have mandated that all electricity retailers need to give each residential customer 3 hours of free power during the day (up to 24 kwh daily) to absorb the excess solar they now have on the grid.

Its something like 11am to 2pm in 2 states and 12pm-3pm in a 3rd state

That's "forget about solar, install a battery only" territory!

timmmay

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#3503088 15-Jun-2026 11:00

deadlyllama:

That's "forget about solar, install a battery only" territory!

Just about! Maybe a small solar system and a large battery, keeping a house cool in Aust probably takes a bunch of power for air con.

HarmLessSolutions

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#3503703 17-Jun-2026 10:34

In our case we have generated about 18,500 kWh in the past year, self consumed just under 7,000 kWh of that, imported 4,200 kWh and exported 11,500 kWh. We charge 2 EVs almost exclusively from solar, our HWC uses diverted solar and our rural home is optimised towards self consumption. Our Ecotricity account has been in credit since October; $573 CR currently.

My point is that to optimise ROI on solar maximising self consumption is key. Self consumption's value to you is whatever your import tariff is at that time of consumption which will almost always be much higher than the FIT/s offered by your electricity supplier. Exporting at that lower rate and then importing at elevated supply tariffs is akin to using the grid as a very inefficient battery.

That said since April we have been enjoying a peak export rate of 31c/kWh from Ecotricity thanks to the 6c/kWh lines company credit and GST. Off peak FIT is 18.4c/kWh. Import tariffs of 46.7c and 33.7c peak/off peak definitely incentivise us to minimise import but our consumption model has made things work in our favour.

We have no battery storage but the idea of using one of our EVs does appeal. Our installer advised us against forking out for a battery which was sound advice in hindsight but the opportunities a V2G/V2H based system would provide for us would likely challenge that logic, perhaps including going off grid. The portability of battery storage in the form of a V2H enabled EV could be used as a safety net in poor weather periods by charging at a DC charger and then using that capacity at home. A theory still at this stage but as supply and lines charges keep increasing it's one would keeping in mind.

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