In short: a commercial solar feed-in tariff (FiT) is what your retailer pays for each kilowatt-hour your system exports to the grid. In 2026 most commercial offers sit around 3 to 8 c/kWh, and larger C&I sites are often paid a negotiated or wholesale-linked rate that can be lower still. Compare that with the 25 to 35 c/kWh a business avoids by using solar energy on site, and the design rule writes itself: self-consumption drives the business case; the FiT is a bonus on the leftovers. Networks also cap how much you can export, so an oversized system may not even be allowed to earn the low rate on everything it spills.
What a Feed-in Tariff Is (and Who Sets It)
When your solar system generates more than the site is using, the surplus flows through the meter into the grid, and your electricity retailer credits you for it on the bill. That credit rate is the feed-in tariff. For most Australian businesses it is set by the retailer, not the government: the premium 40–60 c schemes of the early 2010s closed to new entrants long ago, and what remains is a market rate that tracks the value of midday wholesale electricity.
That last point explains the trend. Solar is now so abundant in the middle of the day that wholesale prices in those hours are routinely the lowest of the day, sometimes negative. A retailer buying your export at noon is buying the cheapest electricity of the day, and feed-in tariffs have drifted down accordingly, year after year. Any payback model that assumes the FiT holds its value for 20 years is quietly optimistic.
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Commercial Feed-in Tariffs by State
Exact rates change with every retailer offer, so treat the table below as an indicative 2026 map of how each state works rather than a price list. Check your current retail offer (or your electricity contract, for larger sites) for the number that applies to you.
| State | How it works | Indicative range |
|---|---|---|
| NSW | Retailer-set; IPART publishes a voluntary benchmark, not a mandated rate | ~3–8 c/kWh |
| VIC | Regulated minimum, but it fell to effectively zero (0.04 c/kWh) from 1 July 2025; market offers sit above it | ~0–5 c/kWh |
| QLD | Retailer-set in the south-east; a regulated rate applies in regional Queensland | ~3–8 c/kWh |
| SA | Retailer-set, no minimum | ~2–8 c/kWh |
| WA | Synergy buyback pays time-varying rates: a few cents for daytime export, more in the evening peak | ~2–10 c/kWh by time of day |
One more wrinkle for larger systems: many published FiT offers only apply up to a system-size or export cap (commonly around 100 kW, sometimes much lower). Above that, export payment is a contract negotiation, and it is not unusual for a large C&I site to be paid a wholesale pass-through, or nothing, for spill. If you are quoting or buying a big system, the export rate is a term to negotiate, not a number to look up.
Why Self-Consumption Beats Export, With Numbers
Using a solar kilowatt-hour on site means not buying that kilowatt-hour from the grid, which avoids the full retail stack: energy, network charges, and levies. For a business on a commercial tariff that is typically 25 to 35 c/kWh during the day. Exporting the same kilowatt-hour earns the feed-in tariff, roughly 3 to 8 c. Every unit you shift from export to on-site use is therefore worth four to seven times more, which is why two identical systems on identical roofs can have very different paybacks depending on the load underneath them.
This is also the honest way to read a quote. If a proposal shows a big chunk of year-one value coming from export revenue rather than avoided purchases, the system is probably oversized for the site’s daytime load: the marginal panels are earning 5 c instead of saving 30 c, and they lengthen the payback of the whole system. The sizing rule that follows: match the system to your daytime baseload, and let export be the safety margin, not the plan. We cover the tariff mechanics behind this in TOU tariffs and solar and the sizing side in the system sizing guide.
Network Export Limits: The Cap on the Whole Question
Before any of the economics apply, your local distribution network (DNSP) decides how much you are allowed to export at all. Commercial connections are assessed site by site, and the outcome can be a fixed export limit well below the system’s capacity, or a zero-export condition where the system must be controlled so nothing flows to the grid. Networks in several states are also rolling out flexible export arrangements, where the allowed export varies with network conditions instead of being a fixed cap.
Two-way network pricing has arrived as well: some networks now charge for energy exported in the middle of the day, while others credit exports in the evening peak. So the rate a kilowatt-hour of export actually earns can be the retail FiT plus a network credit, or the retail FiT minus a network charge, depending on where the site is and when the export happens. For a zero-export site the question disappears entirely, and with it any export revenue in the model: the system must be sized so that generation lands on load.
How Amperage Models the FiT vs Avoided-Cost Split
A single blended “solar savings” number hides exactly the distinction this article is about, so Amperage never uses one. The model simulates the site hour by hour from its actual interval data: in each hour, solar generation first offsets the site’s consumption (valued at the retail rate that applies in that hour, including time-of-use windows), and only the true surplus is exported (valued at the effective export rate, which is the retail FiT plus or minus any signed network export tariff). Bill savings and export revenue are then reported as separate lines, so you can see how much of a scenario’s value depends on the low-value export stream. Run the same site across a range of system sizes and the crossover is visible: the point where each extra kilowatt stops saving 30 c purchases and starts earning 5 c exports.
The export rate is one input; the certificate schemes are the other half of the revenue picture. Current STC, LGC, and VEEC values live on the solar incentives hub.
The Short Version
Commercial feed-in tariffs are low (roughly 3 to 8 c/kWh, less or negotiated for big sites), trending down, and capped by network export limits. None of that hurts a well-designed system, because the business case was never export: it is displacing 25–35 c daytime purchases with your own generation. Size to the load, treat the FiT as the bonus on the margin, and model the split explicitly before anyone signs anything.
Solar payback calculator — test your rate, FiT, and self-consumption →
Commercial solar payback by state — live figures on current prices →