Your self-consumption is worth more than your export
Every kilowatt-hour your panels produce and you use on the spot avoids a retail rate of roughly 25–45c/kWh, depending on your state and plan. Every kilowatt-hour you export instead earns a feed-in tariff that in most of Australia now sits between 0c and 10c/kWh. That gap is the single biggest driver of solar payback — using your own power is often 4–8 times more valuable than selling it.
That is why the shape of your day matters more than the size of your system. EnergySorted reads your real usage pattern from an uploaded bill, so it can estimate how much generation you will genuinely soak up versus spill to the grid — and cost the system on that split rather than a one-size-fits-all assumption.
Feed-in tariffs have fallen — so the plan matters more
A decade ago generous feed-in tariffs did the heavy lifting. Today they are modest and still shrinking, because the grid is flooded with cheap midday solar. The payback maths has shifted from "sell high" to "buy low and use your own" — which means the retail plan underneath your panels now decides a large slice of your return.
EnergySorted compares 16,000+ plans across every AER-listed retailer with no retailer commissions, so it can weigh a headline feed-in rate against the daily supply charge, usage rates and any export caps that quietly claw the value back. A big feed-in number on an expensive plan often loses to a smaller one on a genuinely cheap plan.
The evening buy-back is where money leaks
Your panels generate hardest at midday when power is cheapest and export is worth least, then go quiet exactly when the household ramps up — cooking, heating, screens — and you buy that power back at peak retail rates. On a time-of-use plan the evening peak can be double or triple the midday value of what you exported.
EnergySorted values that gap explicitly. It looks at when you actually use energy and models tariff types side by side, so you can see whether a flat rate, a time-of-use plan or a solar-sponge plan leaves you better off once your own generation is in the mix.
A right-sized battery, not an oversized one
A home battery stores cheap or self-generated daytime power for that expensive evening peak, which is the most valuable time to have it. But an oversized battery you never fully cycle just lengthens payback, and with the federal battery rebate now in play the sizing decision has real money attached.
EnergySorted uses your generation and consumption profile to right-size storage — enough to cover your evening load without paying for capacity that sits idle — and factors the current rebate into the numbers so the payback you see reflects what you would actually pay.
Payback on your bill, not a national average
Sunshine, roof orientation, usage habits and state feed-in rules mean two identical systems can have very different returns. Typical residential payback in Australia lands somewhere around 3–7 years, but a north-facing roof on a daytime-heavy household lands very differently from a shaded east roof on an all-evening household.
Because EnergySorted starts from your uploaded bill rather than a template, the payback and savings it shows are grounded in your real consumption, your state and the specific plans available to you — for around $39 a year, well under a single month of the savings a good solar plan can unlock.