Draft Report - Solar feed-in tariff benchmark range methodology - February 2025

Since 2012, IPART has been setting benchmarks to guide customers about the value of feed-in tariffs they could expect to be paid by their retailers for their solar exports. These benchmarks provide information about how much their solar exports are worth and aim to help customers see if they are getting a reasonable feed-in tariff from their retailer and to compare offers.

This report outlines our draft decisions on our feed-in tariff benchmarks for 2025-26. 

We held a public workshop on 11 March 2025 to seek feedback on the changes to our methodology and we also accepted written submissions from stakeholders on our approach to setting our solar feed-in tariff benchmarks.

Draft solar feed-in tariff benchmarks for 2025-26

Our draft decision for the all-day solar feed-in tariff benchmark range for 2025-26 is 4.9 to 7.4 c/kWh. To guide customers about the value of their exports at different times of the day, we have also set time-dependent feed-in tariff benchmarks. In 2025-26, we expect exports in the late afternoon and evening to be worth significantly more than the all-day solar feed-in tariff benchmark – higher than 20 c/kWh in some cases.

Changes to our approach to forecasting the value of solar exports

Our draft decision is to use the last 3 years of solar export volume-weighted (“solar-weighted”) average prices to set the range for estimating the wholesale value of solar in the benchmark year. Our proposed approach is simpler than previous years, and it provides a closer estimate of the actual wholesale price when solar is exporting when applied to previous time periods.

Our draft benchmarks for 2025-26 also include the impact of new network tariffs. These are charges and rebates applied by network providers and faced by retailers when their customers export solar to the grid. For Ausgrid customers, the average cost of these network tariffs is a few dollars per year. The network tariffs have a very small impact on the average value of solar exports, reducing the bottom end of our solar feed-in tariff benchmark range by around 0.14 c/kWh.