The right solar export tariff for your business

Layer 1 – Wholesale electricity value: Substantial but falling fast

Wholesale value is the main component of any export tariff.

The wholesale market is where most UK electricity is traded. Whatever a supplier pays you for an exported kWh, that supplier eventually resells it on wholesale or to one of its own customers. Wholesale is therefore the ceiling on what any sustainable UK business electricity tariff can pay.

In 2025, the average kWh of UK rooftop solar was worth 6.73 p/kWh on the day-ahead market. This is based on multiplying a typical production profile for a UK rooftop solar installation with market prices across each half-hourly period. This is substantially below the average wholesale price, as PV increasingly cannibalises itself.

The 2022 spike was the gas crisis. Look past it and the trend is clearly downward. From 9.90 p/kWh in 2021, the PV-weighted value has fallen to 8.59, 6.50 and 6.73 p/kWh in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Over the same period UK solar capacity grew from around 14 to 22 GW, and each new GW deepens the midday trough.

In 2025 the cannibalisation effect went further: Solar often produces when wholesale prices were negative. There were 305 negative-price half-hours across the year, of which 64% landed while the sun was up. This means that about 4% of all PV exported in 2025 was sold at negative wholesale prices. We expect this proportion to rise significantly in the upcoming years.

In several other countries, midday solar already gets penalised rather than rewarded. Under Germany's Solarspitzengesetz, in force since February 2025, new rooftop PV gets no feed-in payment during any 15-minute interval of negative spot prices. The Netherlands is ending net metering from January 2027, and several major suppliers (Eneco, Vandebron, Vattenfall) already charge customers a per-kWh terugleverkosten fee for solar exports today. Western Australia's residential export scheme pays just 2 cents per kWh during the day, against 10 cents in the 3pm to 9pm evening window. The UK has not gone there yet, but as PV buildout continues, expect the direction of travel to be the same.

Layer 2 – DUoS credits: Useful but barely on commercial PV export

The distribution grid needs constant balancing. To incentivise the right behaviour, every Distribution Network Operator divides the day into three time bands: Red, Amber and Green.

For imports these are charges. For exports they are credits paid automatically to any half-hour metered MPAN. Most tariffs bake DUoS into the headline rate, so the credit passes through to you.

In SEPD, the southern licence area, the Red band runs 16:30 to 19:30 on weekdays and pays 7.5 p/kWh on exports. Amber pays 1.0 p/kWh. Green pays 0.05 p/kWh. The picture is similar in most of Britain, with Red bands typically falling between 4pm and 7pm. Areas like UKPN's London network have a "double red" with a second window during the day, but they are the exception.

The catch is timing. Only 9.4% of 2025 UK solar generation lands inside the Red band. The bulk (88.4%) generates during Amber hours where the credit is just 1.0 p/kWh. Across the full year, the PV-weighted DUoS credit averages 1.60 p/kWh on UK solar. Useful, not transformational.

Layer 3 – Supply charge avoidance: The cherry on top of your export payment

The third layer is very lucrative but not accessible to most businesses.

When electricity is bought from the public grid, the bill includes supply-side levies: Contracts for Difference, Capacity Market, Renewables Obligation and supplier margin. Together these add up to around 5 p/kWh on a delivered kWh.

If a generator sells its output directly to a nearby business through a time-matched peer-to-peer arrangement, the buyer can avoid those levies. The mechanism that cleans this up is BSC Modification P442, which went live in February 2025 and strips licence-exempt volumes out of the levy base.

The value created is then split between the generator, the buyer and whoever facilitates the match. In reality, this can add another 2 p/kWh for generators.

The catch is access. Today, most schemes require generators above roughly 1 MW. Eligibility is expected to broaden as the regime matures. For now the third layer is real but out of reach for most rooftop sites. Capture will start bringing P442 value to its customers from this summer.

A battery storage system gold-plates your commercial solar PV

As a rule of thumb, electrons are far more valuable in hours when the sun is not shining. Battery storage for solar is what gives access to those hours.

A battery does two things at once for a business with solar. First, it can store midday production and export it at the most expensive hours of the day, capturing the upper layers of value we just walked through. Second, it can keep that energy on site and use it to avoid paying for grid imports during those same expensive hours, when peak business tariffs routinely sit above 25 p/kWh.

The two streams are additive, and a smart optimiser (such as Capture AI) switches between them half-hour by half-hour depending on which is worth more. A kWh that avoids a 25 p/kWh peak import is worth more than one exported for 14 p/kWh. A kWh that exports at 14 p/kWh is worth more than one displacing a 7 p/kWh off-peak import.

In 2025, a kWh of solar exported at 1pm was worth less than 7 p/kWh on the export side. The same kWh, stored and discharged at 5:30pm, was worth around 15 p/kWh exported, or 20 to 35 p/kWh in avoided peak import.

Battery costs have dropped by about 60% in the past 5 years. On a “per cycle” basis, this means commercial and industrial battery energy storage systems can go for as little as 3 to 5 p/kWh per cycle today.

This makes them a real “no-brainer” for businesses with solar. The DUoS spread between Red and Amber alone (around 6.5 p/kWh) covers the cycle cost before counting any wholesale uplift or import avoidance.

But batteries need to be “smart”. The numbers mentioned above are just averages. In reality, wholesale prices are highly variable and no two half-hours are alike. On a very sunny day, solar exported at 1pm might be worth zero or a negative price – but could be exported at more than 15 p/kWh in the evening. On a gloomy day without much solar and wind, this export value can rise beyond 30 p/kWh.

This is why a battery is only valuable if it continuously predicts your consumption and production, takes into account market prices, and then derives a charging schedule that maximises the value of your PV. Capture AI does exactly that for you.

Importantly, the numbers we just mentioned represent the “value” of your solar on the market. In reality, your supplier also needs to make money and therefore will never pass through all of this value directly to your business. But as the next section illustrates, wholesale-linked and smart tariffs can give you almost direct access to the market.

The devil is in the detail when it comes to export tariffs

Six archetypes of solar export tariffs for businesses exist on the UK market in 2026:

1. Feed-in tariffs

FiTs are no longer accessible but if your system was installed before April 2019, you may still be on a 20-year UK Feed-in Tariff (FIT) contract. The often-overlooked detail is that FITs have two independent components, a generation payment (up to 71 p/kWh, accounting for the vast majority of FIT income) and an export payment (typically 5 to 7 p/kWh). You can keep the generation payment and swap just the export portion for a higher-paying wholesale-linked tariff or premium SEG.

2. Fixed business SEG

SEG stands for “Smart Export Guarantee”, even though there is nothing “smart” about these tariffs. They offer a single flat rate (typically 3-5 p/kWh), often locked for 12 to 24 months, accessible to any business. Importantly, these tariffs do not require a change in import supplier: you can still have your import tariff from a different supplier than your export tariff.

3. Fixed promo tariffs

Some suppliers, such as Octopus with Panel Power, offer export tariffs at significantly higher rates than the actual value of the solar (up to 12p / kWh). They do so to attract new import customers. The catch is that they require import and export tariff from the same supplier. Beware of the import rates offered with such tariffs, which may be much higher than what you would get elsewhere.

4. Wholesale-linked tariffs

This is a relatively new category of export tariffs, in which the export payment is linked to the prevailing wholesale price in each half-hourly period, unlocking higher rates than SEG tariffs. Octopus Shape Shifters Agile Export is a version of such a tariff but only works for businesses on Octopus import tariffs. Capture will also launch a version this summer, including for customers who are not on Capture import supply. If you can’t wait, you can get started on Octopus Shape Shifters Export with Capture AI, our advanced battery optimisation platform.

5. Smart tariffs

This is the “holy grail” of tariffs for businesses with both solar and batteries. It combines solar optimisation, grid trading and supply into one product. CapturePower is the first product of this kind in the UK, launching in summer 2026. Capture AI continuously forecasts your site consumption and market prices to set a charging schedule that ensures you always import at the lowest rates and export when rates are highest.

6. P442 arrangements

Long-term sleeved or private-wire deals, typically 1 MW and above on 10 to 25 year terms. This is the only mainstream route to P442 supply-charge avoidance today. As ESNA processes mature, Capture plans to bring P442 value to CaptureExport customers from this summer, opening the third value layer to sites that fall well below the utility PPA floor.

The right answer for you

The right answer for you depends on the size of your PV installation, whether you have a battery, and your import tariff. But as the value of electrons depends on location and time, the highest-value answer is rarely a flat rate.

Even the best battery is wasted on a flat export tariff. For businesses without the flat SEG wins on simplicity and wholesale linkers on average rate. With a battery wholesale-linked export tariffs are a good first step - but smart tariffs are the real game changer to unlock the full value of your setup.

Get in touch, with or without a battery

The next 18 months will be the most interesting period for UK business solar exports since SEG launched. Smart and wholesale-linked tariffs will displace flat rates for sites with batteries. P442 will broaden access to peer-to-peer value. Capture is built to give your business each layer as it becomes accessible.

Where Capture fits depends on where you start. Three products cover the most common cases:

• If you have a battery on your current supply contract: Capture AI bolts onto your existing setup. It boosts your solar savings and earns you grid-flexibility rewards. No tariff switch needed.
• If you want a wholesale-linked export tariff without switching import supplier: CaptureExport is the only wholesale-linked export tariff on the UK market that works independently of your import contract. With or without a battery.
• If you have (or are sizing) a battery and want every layer unlocked: CapturePower bundles solar optimisation, grid trading and supply into one tariff, and adds P442 value as eligibility broadens.

If you do nothing, you keep selling at the average and missing the peak.

If you want to understand what your kWh is actually worth today, get in touch. We will model your site against the right path and show you which value layers are within reach. Use the Get Started form below.