Solar Export Prices

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80 posts

Master Geek
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#3509644 9-Jul-2026 11:25

Hi guys. FYI. I'm with Poweredge. Buying for 21.2c and selling for 17.4c. Daily charge is $2.85. I don't have a battery yet. Faster payback without one. But it is certainly an option for the future, particularly when prices come down a bit more.

MikeAqua

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#3509725 9-Jul-2026 13:40

mattwnz:

You could always buy batteries to store and then use that electricity you are producing. IMO all solar panels effectively do is reduce the amount people spend on power at a big upfront cost. If I was installing them I would want to go off the grid completely so I am not also paying daily grid connection fees which keep increasing.

That's what we'll be doing. With a impot-export deficit of 15c kWh or higher it starts to stack up, once you consider the fixed charge savings. In a new build situation, if you're a reasonable distance from the road boundary, you also avoid trenching and cabling costs.

Once sodium battery chemistry starts to become widely available, which won't take too long, storage batteries will even cheaper per kWh.

Mike

mattwnz

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#3509733 9-Jul-2026 14:38

Based on what’s happening in Oz I wouldn’t expect power companies to continue buying back solar forever if solar uptake increases. In Oz they are apparently giving power for free during the day and not paying to buy it back. But yet solar uptake is a lot higher due to the government incentives

personally I think if one had solar, you really need an EV to get the most benefit, or a power wall to store it

tripper1000

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#3509760 9-Jul-2026 16:06

If you check here you can see the wholesale price of electricity and how much the gentailers are or aren't gaming the system.

There are two parts to the Gentailer story:

a) They hydraulic the prices to keep out competition (Generator jacks the wholesale price up, retail arm sells it for a huge "loss", the parent company still makes a net profit. An outsider simply is unable to buy on the wholesale market and retail it at a profit.

b) They overcharge for off peak use, and subsidise on peak use. Solar generally makes most power on-peak but these subsidy (and lack of truth in pricing) distorts the market and depresses solar buy back prices. This behaviour is mirrored (and encouraged?) by the government via Transpower who has a levy to pay for upgrades to cope with peak demand but charge it against off-peak usage (no just on peak). Both of these encourage thoughtless use of power. Peak load shifting (eg hot water cylinders heating off-peak) isn't a thing anymore in NZ.

Comparisons should not be made to the Australian market:

1) They have a stupidly large amount of solar and are oversubscribed in some areas. We are in not in the slightest danger of that problem nor the consequences.

2) 80% ish of our power comes from hydro. Hydro is a giant hydraulic batery. Every watt produced by solar (or wind) in NZ is a watt conserved in a dam for use later. Thermal plants are very expensive and slow to start and stop - hydro is far more dynamic. Australia simply doesn't have the ratio of hydro to thermal that NZ does so is unable to absorb and respond to solar like the NZ power system could.

Regarding point 2) above and dry years: In dry years the sun usually shines more, so solar compliments hydro in this regard.

Seasport

80 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 29

#3509878 9-Jul-2026 18:12

MikeAqua:

mattwnz:

You could always buy batteries to store and then use that electricity you are producing. IMO all solar panels effectively do is reduce the amount people spend on power at a big upfront cost. If I was installing them I would want to go off the grid completely so I am not also paying daily grid connection fees which keep increasing.

That's what we'll be doing. With a impot-export deficit of 15c kWh or higher it starts to stack up, once you consider the fixed charge savings. In a new build situation, if you're a reasonable distance from the road boundary, you also avoid trenching and cabling costs.

Once sodium battery chemistry starts to become widely available, which won't take too long, storage batteries will even cheaper per kWh.

Our import-export deficit is only about 4c? Pay back should be around 6 years at the moment, without a battery, and a couple more with a battery. Obviously, only if you have a location/roof suitable for solar.

There are a lot of things happening in the NZ energy market currently which will drive costs up. So solar is pretty much a no-brainer at the moment, imho, if you own a home and plan to stay there for a while.

mattwnz

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#3509904 9-Jul-2026 22:16

tripper1000:

Comparisons should not be made to the Australian market:

1) They have a stupidly large amount of solar and are oversubscribed in some areas. We are in not in the slightest danger of that problem nor the consequences.

2) 80% ish of our power comes from hydro. Hydro is a giant hydraulic batery. Every watt produced by solar (or wind) in NZ is a watt conserved in a dam for use later. Thermal plants are very expensive and slow to start and stop - hydro is far more dynamic. Australia simply doesn't have the ratio of hydro to thermal that NZ does so is unable to absorb and respond to solar like the NZ power system could.

There is potentially a significant amount of solar generation going in throughout NZ onto kiwi farmland. At least one I have seen plans for is being setup by overseas investors. This could significantly increase generation at the same times of the day as those that have their own solar panels on their roofs. So i can’t see how there can’t be a glut of power being generated Within a relatively small part of the day. So it looks like there is the possibility of a significant amount of solar generation that could come on stream during off peak times during the day, at the same time that people want to sell back power to the grid

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fastbike

574 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#3510916 13-Jul-2026 12:24

Seasport:

Our import-export deficit is only about 4c? Pay back should be around 6 years at the moment, without a battery, and a couple more with a battery. Obviously, only if you have a location/roof suitable for solar.

There are a lot of things happening in the NZ energy market currently which will drive costs up. So solar is pretty much a no-brainer at the moment, imho, if you own a home and plan to stay there for a while.

Is that with a ToU plan ? We're with Meridian and have about a 1c penalty for import (18c) cf exports (17c) between 9pm and 7am. During the day it is much larger as the rate is 30c. Likely we locked in a $1/day line charge with the 5 year plan the offered in 2024.

I installed a battery last year, it has enough capacity to run the house full noise (both ovens, heat pumps etc) and still plenty to spare so it is only cycling through the NMC sweet spot. Realistically it will last around 30 years so probably outlive me. In the meantime the house has become an ATM which will be useful as I head into a phase of lower income.

I think the lesson is that each person's circumstances, requirements and motivations are different so blanket advice does not help to reach their optimal outcome.

Otautahi Christchurch

Seasport

80 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 29

#3511042 13-Jul-2026 14:04

fastbike:

Seasport:

Our import-export deficit is only about 4c? Pay back should be around 6 years at the moment, without a battery, and a couple more with a battery. Obviously, only if you have a location/roof suitable for solar.

There are a lot of things happening in the NZ energy market currently which will drive costs up. So solar is pretty much a no-brainer at the moment, imho, if you own a home and plan to stay there for a while.

Is that with a ToU plan ? We're with Meridian and have about a 1c penalty for import (18c) cf exports (17c) between 9pm and 7am. During the day it is much larger as the rate is 30c. Likely we locked in a $1/day line charge with the 5 year plan the offered in 2024.

I installed a battery last year, it has enough capacity to run the house full noise (both ovens, heat pumps etc) and still plenty to spare so it is only cycling through the NMC sweet spot. Realistically it will last around 30 years so probably outlive me. In the meantime the house has become an ATM which will be useful as I head into a phase of lower income.

I think the lesson is that each person's circumstances, requirements and motivations are different so blanket advice does not help to reach their optimal outcome.

No it is fixed. Great that you fixed that low daily rate. I agree about each person's circumstances. I did an analysis earlier this year, before we had our system installed, and PowerEdge was slightly better than the alternatives. I used an AI model and fed it our historical monthly electricity usage and also the no of panels with their location/orientation, etc. One of my mates works for an installer in sales, and so has visibility of a lot of installations and the economics. I'll probably get a battery at some stage too. My brother has installed a system with no battery and it also is an ATM. I'm not sure he's ever going to be able to spend all the surplus though, as it's a holiday home!

Wheelbarrow01

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Chorus

#3511147 13-Jul-2026 23:33

raytaylor:

And we need to get away from charging only dedicated carparks. Every car park eventually needs to have a charger avaliable.

I fear it'll never happen as the sheer amount of infrastructure upgrades required to support charging at a decent speed in every carpark are astronomical both in terms of scale and cost.

The Sierra apartment building in Hawthorn, Melbourne did it (equipped all 251 basement carparks with an EV charger) and the developers waxed lyrical about how forward thinking and green it all is.

In reality the Australian taxpayer paid the $1.5M installation cost (I'm sure a huge weight off the shoulders of the wealthy apartment owners), but the upgrades required for the grid to handle fast charging were never made, so consequently the system only trickle charges a small number of parked cars for 10 minutes at a time, before the computer switches charging over to a different cluster of cars for the next 10 minutes. Level 1 trickle charging a typical EV in a continuous cycle of 10 minutes on and (for argument's sake) 110 minutes off equals a charge time of several days to achieve a full battery.

Of course the electricity supply in the great state of Victoria has a target carbon dioxide equivalent of 860g per kWh (vs ~74g in NZ) so not only is the charging at Sierra apartments not particularly fast, it's also not particularly green.

But i digress...

We have a bach down south and I often wonder what size solar/battery setup would realistically be required to take it off grid. Heating is exclusively by log burner, we have gas hot water (and mostly gas BBQ cooking) so it's really only the LED lights, the occasional oven use and the stereo/tv/fibre that need electrons. Either way, when nobody is there (most of the time), there'd be an awful lot of excess solar to sell...

dantheperson

241 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 68

#3514016 24-Jul-2026 14:54

mattwnz:

There is potentially a significant amount of solar generation going in throughout NZ onto kiwi farmland. At least one I have seen plans for is being setup by overseas investors. This could significantly increase generation at the same times of the day as those that have their own solar panels on their roofs. So i can’t see how there can’t be a glut of power being generated Within a relatively small part of the day.

Note that solar farms are much less peaky than residential. As they rotate the panels to follow the sun, the production profile is actually quite flat during the day. Residential on the other hand you get that peak at solar noon for a couple hours only. Still doesn't help for winter evenings once the sun has gone down though.

fastbike

574 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 436

#3514027 24-Jul-2026 15:53

dantheperson:

mattwnz:

There is potentially a significant amount of solar generation going in throughout NZ onto kiwi farmland. At least one I have seen plans for is being setup by overseas investors. This could significantly increase generation at the same times of the day as those that have their own solar panels on their roofs. So i can’t see how there can’t be a glut of power being generated Within a relatively small part of the day.

Note that solar farms are much less peaky than residential. As they rotate the panels to follow the sun, the production profile is actually quite flat during the day. Residential on the other hand you get that peak at solar noon for a couple hours only. Still doesn't help for winter evenings once the sun has gone down though.

All the farms I've seen have panels attached to fixed supports. Tracking would add a heck of a lot of costs and complexity and introduce maintenance requirements for a small additional gain.

Otautahi Christchurch

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fastbike

574 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 436

#3514042 24-Jul-2026 16:40

fastbike:

dantheperson:

Note that solar farms are much less peaky than residential. As they rotate the panels to follow the sun, the production profile is actually quite flat during the day. Residential on the other hand you get that peak at solar noon for a couple hours only. Still doesn't help for winter evenings once the sun has gone down though.

All the farms I've seen have panels attached to fixed supports. Tracking would add a heck of a lot of costs and complexity and introduce maintenance requirements for a small additional gain.

I stand corrected. I just had a read of some Transpower publications and they show many farms use a single tracker. The output profile is interesting.

Source if you are interested

Otautahi Christchurch

pdh

590 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 429

#3514103 24-Jul-2026 18:15

Back when solar panels cost 1000's, it made sense to put them on 100+ $ mechanisms (which, as fastbike said, also then require maintenance).
Now they are almost free, the costs are installing them and running wires...
Much cheaper just to put some pointing east and some west - or just a few more optimised for the site.

The stupidest solar install I've ever seen was full-on tracking at a Canadian National Park installation.
It was 2015 and beautifully done and I'm sure it captured every skerrick of available sunshine.
But it was located just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle. (at 64.5 degrees N).

On its best day, it possibly produced 1% of the electricity required for the large interpretive centre & accommodation block for park staff & grad students.

I imagine it fulfilled some Green mandate to roll out solar - in spite of having a pay-back of millennia.
In fact, due to the need to maintain it - it's probably cost more than it brought in, every year that it exists.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3514104 24-Jul-2026 18:24

It's increasingly recommended both here and especially in Aus to go for a mix of East and West facing panels, instead of North. This gets you less total energy, but a flatter curve with more power in the morning and evening. This also means smaller inverters.

raytaylor

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#3514353 26-Jul-2026 02:53

Wheelbarrow01:

I fear it'll never happen as the sheer amount of infrastructure upgrades required to support charging at a decent speed in every carpark are astronomical both in terms of scale and cost.

Thats the thing though.
A single 32 amp 4mm TPS cable can serve 50 carparks right now given that probably only 10 would be in use at any one time so you dont need to pick a specific carpark.
My real agenda is to get rid of the EV's having special dedicated carparks that take away from the number of carparks avaliable to everyone else.

As soon as a car has had its first 1.25kwh (enough to get from home to the supermarket and back) then any extra charging can be at a slow rate balanced across all the cars plugged into that circuit.
Or individual carparks are prioritised by how much watt hours that have recieved. On a 32amp 7kw line, split between all the cars on that circuit, the last car to plug in gets a higher wattage than the car that has received the largest number of watt hours since plugging in.
As cars come and go from the circuit, a charge wattage rate may change throughout the day.

There isnt a need to upgrade the transformer or the incoming connection. Just make smart use of the existing unused capacity.

We arent charging to go on a long journey in these situations - those high current chargers are on the side of state highways.

The low output chargers in carparks are only to get you a few kilometres home or to the next carpark.

Countdown in Napier just had the carpark resealed. I really wish they had used the opportunity to put in ducting for charging cables to every carpark but i didnt see them doing this.

Ray Taylor

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