Is solar worth it in Victoria?
Julian, owner of Bright HelpLast checked 27 October 2026
It depends more on how you use power than it used to, because selling solar to the grid hardly pays any more. The panels on our roof earned us $538 for what they sent to the grid in 2022–23, and $43 in 2025–26, as the credit fell from about 10c a kWh to 1c.
So solar pays through the power your house uses while the sun is up, and on a plan with free power from 11am to 2pm, through the mornings and afternoons either side of it. If someone’s home in the day, or an EV, a pool or the hot water can run then, it usually does. If the house sits empty until the evening, look at the plan and the timers before you count on panels.
What decides it at your house
- How much you use while the sun is up. Power you use as the panels make it saves what you’d have paid for it: about 25c a kWh outside the free hours on our plan, and 45c or more at peak times on some plans. Power you send to the grid earns whatever your retailer credits, which is 1c on ours. Victoria stopped setting a minimum credit from 1 July 2025, and a retailer can now credit as little as nothing.
- Your plan. On a plan with free power from 11am to 2pm, like the Midday Power Saver, what the panels make in those hours is worth little to you, because you could have had it for free. The mornings and afternoons are what count.
- What’s coming. An EV, a hot water heat pump, split systems or a pool heater can all be set to run in daylight, and each one makes the panels worth more. Size the system for the house you’ll have, and ask whether the inverter can take a battery later.
- The roof. Which way each face points, the angle the panels would sit at, and shade from a tree or the house next door all change what a system makes. You can see most of it on a satellite view of your roof.
What ours shows
We moved in with solar already on the roof, in July 2022, so we never had to decide. What it earns from the grid has all but gone. It sent a little less to the grid in 2025–26 than in 2022–23, about 4,300 kWh against 5,100, but each kWh earned a tenth of what it did.
In the middle of the day our plan gives us power for free, so we buy almost all our electricity then, and it costs us 0.3c a kWh on average, against 24c in 2022. The rest of what changed is on our house’s page.
The panels still matter. On winter and shoulder-season mornings, when the battery has run down overnight, they supply the house until the free hours. In the afternoon they keep the battery full for longer, so there’s more in it for the evening and the next morning, and the EV’s smart charger fills it from solar we’d otherwise send to the grid. Our battery holds 25 kWh, and on most winter days that can’t carry the whole house on its own.
Solar panels are our insurance, too. If we can’t fill the battery in the free hours one day, or plans like ours go away, the panels can still charge it. And if the grid went down for days, the panels and the battery could keep the house going on their own. On most systems the panels switch off when the grid does, unless the battery is set up as a backup.
The rebates
Two can come off the price. The federal one, which the installer usually takes off the price and claims back as certificates, gets smaller every 1 January until it ends in 2030: a system installed in 2027 gets a fifth fewer certificates than the same system in 2026 (the Clean Energy Regulator’s table).
Solar Victoria’s is up to $1,400, and from 1 July 2026 it’s for households earning under $150,000 a year between them. Solar Victoria has the other conditions.
When the answer is no
If nobody’s home during the day and nothing in the house can run in daylight, most of what the panels make goes to the grid for very little. A shaded roof makes less of it to begin with. Either way, the plan and the hours things run are worth sorting first, and they cost nothing: a plan with free midday power can get you part of the way without any panels at all.
Where I come in
I read your bills and how your house uses power through the day, check the roof, and tell you whether panels are worth it at yours, what size, and what to run on them. If you already have a quote, I’ll read it before I come, as part of the consult. Nobody pays me a commission, so I’ll tell you either way.