The Smart Export Guarantee is the scheme that means you get paid for solar electricity you don't use. When your panels make more than your home needs, the surplus flows out to the grid, and your energy supplier pays you for each unit. Simple in principle — but the details matter, because the gap between a good SEG tariff and a bad one is enormous, and because exporting is usually the least valuable thing you can do with a unit of your own solar. Here's the honest picture.
What the SEG actually is
Since 2020, larger energy suppliers in Great Britain have been required to offer at least one tariff that pays small generators — that's you, with panels on your roof — for electricity exported to the grid. It replaced the old feed-in tariff scheme, which closed to new applicants in 2019.
The crucial difference from the old scheme: the government doesn't set the rate. Suppliers set their own, and the only rule is that it has to be above zero. That's why rates vary so widely — and why choosing your export tariff is a genuine decision, not a formality.
How much do you get paid?
We're deliberately not quoting current rates here, because they change often and any number we print would go stale. What we can tell you is the shape of the market: since the scheme launched, rates have ranged from literal pennies per unit at the bottom to a 15p-plus era at the top, depending on the supplier and the tariff. At any given moment the gap between the worst and best deals on offer tends to be several-fold, not a few per cent.
A few patterns hold fairly reliably:
- The best rates usually come with strings. Suppliers tend to reserve their top export rates for customers who also buy their electricity from them, or who bought their solar system through them.
- Anyone-can-join rates are lower. If you want to keep your existing import tariff and just add export elsewhere, expect a more modest rate.
- Rates move. Suppliers reprice, launch and withdraw tariffs regularly. Check a current comparison table when you're actually signing up, and glance at it again once a year or so.
What you'll need to qualify
Three things, typically:
- An MCS certificate (or equivalent) for your installation. Most SEG tariffs require it, which is one of several good reasons to only use an MCS-certified installer — it's the standard we insist on for solar and battery work anyway.
- A smart meter that can record what you export half-hourly. If you don't have one, your supplier will usually fit one.
- An application. Payments aren't automatic — you apply to the supplier of your choice with your certificate and meter details. It's paperwork, not a hurdle, but it doesn't happen by itself.
Why using your own power beats selling it
Here's the arithmetic that should drive every decision about your solar. Electricity you buy from the grid costs whatever the unit rate on your bill says. Electricity you export earns whatever your SEG rate is — and even a good SEG rate normally sits well below what you pay to import. For most households, most of the time, a unit used at home is worth several times a unit sold to the grid.
So every unit of your own solar you manage to use is worth roughly what you'd have paid for it. Every unit you export is worth whatever a supplier feels like paying. Same electron, very different value.
| What you do with a spare solar unit | Roughly what it's worth |
|---|---|
| Use it yourself, as it's generated | Your full import rate — what you'd otherwise pay |
| Store it in a battery, use it tonight | Almost the same, minus small storage losses |
| Export it under the SEG | Varies by supplier — usually much less |
This is why a home battery changes the economics so much. Without one, a household typically uses only somewhere around half of what its panels generate — the rest exports at the low rate. With a battery, most of your generation gets used at home instead, which means far more of it is valued at your full import price. We've run the numbers properly in is battery storage worth it in the UK?, and the short version is: the SEG is nice, but the battery is where the money is.
So is the SEG worth bothering with?
Yes — just don't build the sums around it. Even with a battery, you'll export something (sunny spring days when the battery's full by lunchtime), and you should absolutely be paid for it. Signing up costs nothing beyond the paperwork, and picking a decent rate over a poor one is free money.
But when you're deciding whether solar stacks up, treat SEG income as the icing, not the cake. However many years your payback works out at, it's driven overwhelmingly by the electricity you stop buying, not the electricity you sell. If a salesperson leans heavily on export income to make their quote look good, treat that as a warning sign.
One timing note while we're being practical: solar and battery installations are currently zero-VAT, with the relief scheduled to end in spring 2027, after which a higher rate is due to apply. We've covered what that means in the solar zero-VAT deadline guide.
The bottom line
The SEG means you get paid something for exported solar, from a supplier you choose, at a rate that varies wildly and changes often. Check a current comparison table when you sign up, expect the best rates to come bundled with the same supplier's import tariff, and make sure your installer is MCS-certified so you qualify at all.
Then design your system to export as little as possible — because using your own power will almost always beat selling it. If you're weighing up solar and battery together, we'll match you with one vetted MCS-certified installer — one, not a call barrage — or you can get a rough figure first with our estimate tool.