Ask ten solar owners in Kent what happens to the electricity their panels generate while they’re out at work, and you’ll get ten different answers. The honest one is simple: it flows out into the grid — and if you’ve set things up properly, you get paid for every unit. That payment comes through the Smart Export Guarantee, and because the rates on offer vary enormously between suppliers, it’s worth understanding how it really works.
What is the Smart Export Guarantee?
The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) is a government-backed scheme that has been running since 1 January 2020. It requires larger electricity suppliers to pay small-scale generators — which, for our purposes, mostly means households with solar panels — for renewable electricity they export to the grid.
Under Ofgem’s rules, any supplier with 150,000 or more domestic electricity customers must offer at least one export tariff. For the current SEG year (April 2026 to March 2027), that mandatory list includes British Gas, EDF, E.ON Next, Octopus, OVO, ScottishPower, So Energy, Utilita and Utility Warehouse, among others.
The only pricing rule is that the rate must always be above zero. Beyond that, suppliers set whatever they like — which is exactly why rates range from a token few pence to genuinely worthwhile sums.
To qualify, you need:
- An eligible installation in England, Scotland or Wales — the scheme covers solar PV up to 5MW, which comfortably takes in any home system
- Certification for the system, normally the MCS certificate issued by your installer (some suppliers also accept Flexi-Orb)
- A smart meter capable of recording your exports every half hour
Unlike the old Feed-in Tariff, which simply assumed you exported half of what you generated, the SEG pays only for what your meter actually records leaving the house.
How export tariffs work
A few things surprise people about the mechanics.
Your export supplier doesn’t have to be your import supplier. You can buy your electricity from one company and sell your surplus to another. That said, most suppliers reserve their best export rates for their own customers, so the sums often favour keeping both in one place. You can only receive SEG payments from one supplier at a time.
Payments are based on half-hourly meter readings. Your smart meter records what you export in each half-hour period, and the supplier pays you per kilowatt-hour, typically monthly or quarterly.
Tariffs come in three flavours. Fixed tariffs pay the same rate around the clock. Variable tariffs can move, with notice. Time-of-use tariffs pay different rates at different times of day — which becomes very interesting once a battery is involved, as we’ll come to.
What are suppliers actually paying?
The rates below were checked on the suppliers’ own websites in August 2026. They change regularly, so always confirm the current figure before you sign anything.
Octopus Energy
Outgoing Octopus pays a flat 12p per kWh. Their Prime Outgoing tariff pays 16p per kWh between 4pm and 7pm and 9p the rest of the day, while Agile Outgoing tracks day-ahead wholesale prices with no cap. All require you to be an Octopus customer with a smart meter providing half-hourly export data.
British Gas
Export Premium pays 12p per kWh for British Gas electricity customers with systems up to 15kW. If British Gas doesn’t supply your electricity, their open SEG rate is 3p per kWh — a fourfold difference for the same sunshine.
EDF
Export 12m pays 15p per kWh for existing EDF electricity customers, and their Export Exclusive tariff pays 18p per kWh — though that one is only for customers who bought their solar or battery system through EDF. Their open variable SEG rate, available to anyone, is 3p per kWh.
The pattern is hard to miss: this is a two-tier market. Open-to-anyone SEG rates sit around 3p, while customer and bundled rates run from 12p to 18p. Choosing well matters — on the same roof, the difference compounds year after year.
How a battery changes the sums
We fit a lot of battery storage alongside solar here in east Kent, and the interaction with the SEG comes up in almost every conversation.
Use it first, sell the rest
On almost every tariff pairing, you buy electricity at a higher price than you can sell it. So a unit your panels generate is usually worth more used at home than exported — and a battery lets you do exactly that, storing the afternoon’s surplus for the evening. Export payments then apply to what’s genuinely left over.
Selling at the right time
Time-of-use export tariffs turn that logic partly on its head. Take Octopus’s Prime Outgoing rate of 16p between 4pm and 7pm: a battery charged by your panels through the day can discharge into that evening window, earning the peak rate rather than the off-peak one. The battery stops being purely a savings device and starts behaving like a small trading asset.
Will my battery exports qualify?
The Energy Saving Trust’s guidance is that electricity generated by an eligible renewable installation and stored in a battery before export remains eligible for SEG payments — but payments can’t exceed what your system could actually have generated. Electricity imported cheaply from the grid and re-exported is a different matter, and suppliers treat it differently, so read the tariff terms if you plan to charge from the grid overnight.
Getting signed up
The paperwork is straightforward if your installation was done properly. You’ll need your MCS certificate, proof of ownership and your meter details; you then apply directly to your chosen SEG supplier. As an MCS- and NAPIT-accredited installer, we hand over the certificate and commissioning documents with every system we fit, precisely so this step takes minutes rather than weeks.
However your panels came to be on the roof — whether you’re in Dover, Deal, Canterbury or one of the villages between — don’t give your surplus away for nothing. Five minutes comparing export tariffs is some of the best-paid admin in home energy.
