Daytime solar exports earn far less than they used to — some plans now pay just a few cents, and the trend is downward. That shift is exactly why home batteries and VPPs have become the centre of the conversation. Here’s what’s happening and what it means for you.
Why feed-in tariffs have dropped
Australia has the highest rooftop-solar penetration in the world. In the middle of a sunny day, so much solar floods the grid that wholesale prices fall — sometimes below zero. Retailers can’t pay you a premium to export energy that’s worth little (or nothing) at that moment, so generous feed-in tariffs of years past have shrunk to a few cents on many plans.
The "duck curve"
Plot grid demand across a day and you get a duck-shaped dip: a deep trough at midday (when solar does the work) and a sharp peak in the early evening (when the sun sets but everyone gets home). Energy is cheap and abundant at the belly, scarce and expensive at the neck. The whole game now is moving energy from midday to evening.
Where the battery comes in
A home battery lets you store your cheap (or free) midday solar and use it during the expensive evening peak instead of buying from the grid. That "self-consumption" saving is usually the biggest financial benefit of a battery — bigger than any export reward — precisely because the gap between midday and evening prices has widened.
Where the VPP comes in
A VPP adds a second layer: instead of just avoiding evening grid purchases, your battery can export stored energy at the moment it’s most valuable — the evening peak or a price spike — and be paid for it. In a world of near-zero daytime feed-in, the value has moved from "exporting whenever" to "exporting at the right time", and that timing is what a VPP monetises.
What it means for a solar-only home
If you have solar but no battery, falling feed-in tariffs mean exports are worth less each year, so the value tilts toward using more of your solar as it’s generated (running appliances at midday) — and, for many, toward adding storage. A battery plus a VPP is increasingly the way households recover the earnings that disappearing feed-in tariffs used to provide.
The catch
None of this is free money. A battery is a large up-front cost that the federal discount only partly offsets, and VPP rewards are a bonus, not a payback plan on their own. The sensible order is: size the battery to your own evening usage first, treat self-consumption savings as the core benefit, and treat VPP income as the extra layer on top.