#Net Metering: Export Tariffs and What Solar Is Worth

Net metering is the rule that decides what a roof's surplus is worth, and it changes solar economics more than any hardware choice available to a buyer.

Under full retail net metering, a kilowatt-hour exported at noon offsets one imported at eight in the evening at the same price. The grid effectively acts as a free, lossless battery, and self-consumption timing stops mattering. Under an export tariff paying a fraction of the retail rate, the same kilowatt-hour is worth a fraction as much, and every unit the household can consume at the moment it is produced is suddenly worth chasing. Same panels, same roof, entirely different payback.

That distinction is why generic payback calculators mislead. A figure computed under one metering regime does not transfer to another, and schemes have been moving in one direction: away from full retail crediting and toward time-of-export pricing (EIA).

The practical consequence is that self-consumption becomes an economic lever rather than a technical curiosity. Shifting a dishwasher, a heat pump cycle or an EV charge into the generation window converts export-rate energy into retail-rate savings. On a poor export tariff that shift can be worth more per year than adding panels.

Overnight behaviour belongs to this topic too, because it is where the grid relationship is most visible. A system generating nothing, drawing a small standby load, and importing at the evening rate is the exact scenario a battery or a tariff change is meant to address.

These articles cover what happens with no sun, what the array does after dark, how each economic assumption moves the payback figure, and how to store output without buying storage.