Solar export tariffs, commonly nicknamed the “sun tax”, are no longer a future policy in the horizon. Ausgrid, the largest electricity distributor on Australia’s East Coast, introduced its two-way tariff on an opt-in basis in July 2024, and it became mandatory for eligible export-enabled customers from July 2025.
It’s now been in place for over a year, and other networks around the country have since introduced their own versions of the same idea. Here’s what the sun tax actually turned out to mean for solar households: the current rates, how the rollout played out, and what it means if you’re considering solar or a battery today.
What Is the Sun Tax?
When your rooftop panels make more electricity than your home is using—usually in the middle of a sunny day—the surplus flows out to the grid. For years, that simply earned you money: your retailer paid a feed-in tariff for every kilowatt-hour you sent out. The catch now is that so many homes have solar that they all export at once, flooding the grid at midday with more power than it can use and pushing wholesale prices to zero.
The “sun tax” is the network’s response. It’s a charge applied to the solar energy you export during those saturated hours, above a free daily allowance—and, in some cases, a higher reward for exports later in the day when the grid actually needs the power.
The goal, as distributors have consistently framed it, is to manage the sheer volume of rooftop solar now flowing into the grid, avoid costly network upgrades, and encourage households to shift their energy use—and their exports—to times that are more useful to the grid.
What Are Ausgrid’s Current Export Tariff Rates in 2026?
As of the 2025–26 pricing period, Ausgrid’s export tariff (known as EA029) charges 1.23 cents/kWh for exports between 10 am and 3 pm once a customer’s daily export exceeds a free threshold and pays a 3.85 cents/kWh rebate for exports between 4 pm and 9 pm.
The midday charge only applies once you cross a free daily allowance called the Basic Export Level, which is currently at 6.85 kWh per day. Everything you export up to that point is free; only the surplus beyond it is charged.
It’s also worth understanding that this is a network charge, not something applied directly to your bill by Ausgrid. The charge and reward are passed through to retailers, who then decide how to bundle them into their own plans, so what you actually see on your bill can vary between retailers.
Because the evening reward is roughly three times the size of the midday charge, households that shift more of their export to the evening can end up with a net credit rather than a net charge. Storing midday solar in a battery and releasing it after 4 pm is the most reliable way to do this, which is another reason why solar batteries are considered worth the investment.
There are also several ways to minimise your costs under Ausgrid’s export charges aside from installing a battery, like shifting when you run appliances to choosing a retailer plan that passes the tariff through in your favour.
These rates are reviewed regularly, so if you’re reading this well after 2026, check Ausgrid’s current published tariffs rather than relying on the figures above.
How Did the Rollout Actually Play Out?
This is the question most homeowners actually want answered now: after more than a year of the mandatory charge, was the sun tax the disaster some headlines predicted, or did it turn out to be a non-event?
The honest answer is closer to the latter. Ausgrid’s original estimate–an annual bill increase of around $6.60 for a household with a 5 kW solar system–has broadly held up as a reasonable ballpark for households that didn’t change their habits at all.
Meanwhile, a higher alternative figure of around $70 a year, turned out to overstate the real-world impact for most households, mainly because it didn’t account for how much of that midday export gets absorbed by the free daily threshold before any charge applies.
Solar Battery Adoption
What most changed how people use rooftop solar wasn’t the export charge—it was what happened alongside it. Home battery adoption accelerated dramatically once the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program launched in July 2025, offering roughly a 30% discount on eligible battery installations.
Installations jumped from an average of around 200 per day before the rebate to more than 1,500 per day afterwards, and the average battery size installed nearly doubled. While the battery rebate wasn’t designed as a direct response to the sun tax, the two policies reinforced each other: exporting midday solar became slightly less attractive right as storing it at home became significantly more affordable. Ausgrid also rolled out community batteries under the Federal Government’s Community Batteries for Households Program to soften the transition for households without their own home power battery.
There hasn’t been a public backlash or policy reversal on the scale some commentators predicted in 2024. If anything, the conversation has shifted. The homeowners and installers now talk less about avoiding the sun tax and more about maximising self-consumption and evening export, which the tariff structure was designed to encourage in the first place.
It’s No Longer Just an Ausgrid Story
The original version of this article is focused on Ausgrid because it was the first mover, but solar export tariffs are now a broader Australian trend. Other distributors and networks in other states have followed with their own versions.
Other NSW Networks
Essential Energy and Endeavour Energy, the two other electricity distributors covering NSW, run their own versions of a two-way tariff, though the details differ from Ausgrid’s.
Endeavour’s tariff charges around 1.86 cents/kWh for exports above an 8 kWh daily threshold between 10 am and 2 pm, but rewards evening exports far more generously with 11.71 cents/kWh from November to March, or 3.47 cents/kWh from April to October, for exports between 4 pm and 8 pm on weekdays.
Essential Energy took a slower path: its export tariff was set to $0 for 2024–25, and only new customers have been assigned to it since July 2025. Existing customers aren’t due to be moved across until 2028.
South Australia
SA Power Networks now charges retailers 1 cent/kWh for residential and small business customer exports above a 9 kWh daily free threshold between 10 am and 4 pm, applying to systems with inverters up to 30 kW AC. For 2026–27, SA Power Networks has moved to a more detailed structure with distinct “Solar Sponge” windows layered alongside its export tariff.
As in NSW, the charge is billed to retailers first, and the impact on individual households depends on how each retailer passes it through.
Queensland
South East Queensland, served by Energex, has not introduced an equivalent mandatory export tariff at the time of writing. The AER rejected Energex and Ergon’s original 2024 two-way tariff proposal, and Energex is instead running a Residential Two-Way Tariff Trial through 2026–27. It’s a smaller-scale, opt-in test rather than a full rollout.
Feed-in tariffs there remain deregulated and retailer-set in the meantime. Regional Queensland, served by Ergon, operates under a separate regulated feed-in tariff model rather than a two-way export charge.
What This Means for Feed-in Tariffs
Feed-in tariffs (FiTs), the payments retailers make for the solar energy you export, have also moved considerably since 2024, largely for reasons that go beyond the sun tax itself. As rooftop solar uptake has grown, midday wholesale electricity prices have fallen, sometimes into negative territory on sunny, low-demand days, which has pulled feed-in tariffs down across the country regardless of network export charges.
In NSW, IPART’s benchmark feed-in tariff range for 2026–27 sits at 3.4 to 6.5 cents/kWh, down from 4.8 - 7.3 cents the year before. Other states have seen similar movement. Victoria removed its mandatory minimum feed-in tariff from July 2025 and the average minimum FiT there has since fallen to around 1.1 cents/kWh.
The upshot is one this article’s original version anticipated correctly: exporting solar to the grid is worth less than it used to be, on top of any export tariff, which makes self-consuming your own solar–or storing it in a battery for evening use–more valuable than ever.
Is the Sun Tax Good or Bad, in Hindsight?
What’s worked in its favour:
- It hasn’t caused the widespread bill shock that some early coverage predicted for most households.
- It coincided with–and arguably helped accelerate–a genuine boom in home battery uptake, supported heavily by federal rebates.
- Networks have used the revenue to fund the grid upgrades needed to keep accepting rising volumes of rooftop solar, rather than capping or restricting new solar connections outright.
What remains a fair criticism:
- The financial benefit still depends heavily on how your retailer structures the charge, which makes it harder for the average homeowner to know exactly where they stand without checking their bill closely.
- It adds another layer of complexity to an electricity market that many households already find difficult to navigate.
- Households without a battery, flexible daytime usage, or the ability to shift consumption still see comparatively less benefit than those who can adapt.
Ready to Go Solar?
More than a year on, the sun tax has settled into something closer to background noise than the crisis some predicted. It’s a modest cost for households that keep exporting heavily at midday, and largely a non-issue for those who self-consume or store heir solar in a battery.
Solar remains a strong long-term investment for most Australian homes and businesses, and pairing your system with a battery, especially with federal battery rebates still available, is now one of the clearest ways to get ahead of export tariffs altogether, wherever you’re located.
If you’re ready to explore your options, get a free quote today and our team at VoltX Energy can help you find the right setup for your situation.
