Getting paid for the generation you cannot use

Exported electricity is sold, not saved, and it is worth considerably less than the electricity you avoid importing. Export is typically worth a small fraction of what you pay to import, and that gap is the single most important fact about export.

Commercial export is contracted through a power purchase agreement or an export arrangement with a licensed supplier. Rates may be fixed, indexed, or linked to wholesale prices, and the shape of the deal matters as much as the headline number because solar exports when prices are often at their lowest.

The practical conclusion is that export income should be treated as a way to improve an already sound self consumption case, not as the case itself.

Export needs to be measured separately from import. On a half hourly settled site that generally means an export meter or a meter configured to record both directions, registered with the correct market participants so the volumes are settled and paid.

Get the metering and registration sorted before energisation. Generation that flows out of an unregistered connection earns nothing, and retro fitting the arrangements is slower than putting them in place at commissioning.

Your supplier or the offtaker will specify what they require. The installer implements it, and NRG Solar checks that it is in the proposal rather than left as an assumption.

The Smart Export Guarantee obliges larger licensed suppliers to offer an export tariff, and it sets the floor rather than the ceiling. Rates offered under it vary widely between suppliers, and the eligibility conditions and metering requirements need checking for your installation.

Smart Export Guarantee eligibility depends on the installation being MCS certified, and MCS certification of an installation applies to systems up to 50kW. This is the one place where MCS is exactly the right thing to ask about: a smaller array on a shop, office or unit can route its export through the Smart Export Guarantee, while a several hundred kWp array sits outside that scheme and needs a commercial export arrangement instead.

Above that scale, a power purchase agreement with an offtaker is common. These agreements run for a defined term, may include indexation, and can be shaped around a volume profile rather than a flat rate.

Sleeved or private wire arrangements, where power goes directly to a neighbouring consumer, can beat both, because the buyer is comparing your price with their import rate rather than with wholesale. They need the right geography and a willing counterparty.

Your distribution network operator may accept the connection only up to a stated export figure. An export limitation scheme then holds the system within that figure by curtailing output when necessary, which is usually preferable to waiting for or paying for network reinforcement.

For a system sized to on site consumption, an export cap often costs very little in practice, because the hours when the array would exceed the cap are limited. The modelling should show how much energy is actually lost rather than treating the cap as fatal.

If export income is central to your plans, the connection position needs establishing before the array is sized, not after.

Every unit exported is a unit not used, so the first question is whether more of the generation could be consumed on site through storage, charging or shifting a process. At the indicative rates above, self consumption is worth several times more than export.

There are sites where export is unavoidable and welcome: large roofs with small loads, seasonal operations, and buildings that are simply empty at midday. There the export contract becomes a real commercial negotiation rather than an afterthought.

We model both paths and show the difference. The output is an indicative comparison based on the published assumptions, not a guaranteed income figure.