The Smart Export Guarantee for business

What the Smart Export Guarantee is

Since 2020 the Smart Export Guarantee has required larger electricity suppliers to offer at least one tariff that pays for electricity exported to the grid. Some smaller suppliers offer one voluntarily. Eligible technologies are solar photovoltaic, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion and micro combined heat and power, with an installed capacity limit of 5MW, or lower for micro-CHP. Installations need to be in Great Britain, and the scheme does not extend to Northern Ireland.

What the rules deliberately don’t do is set the price. Each supplier decides its own rate, contract length and terms, subject to the rate being above zero. That’s why the market varies so widely, and why the supplier who bills you for import isn’t necessarily the one you’d choose for export. Ofgem publishes the current position on its Smart Export Guarantee pages.

Whether your business qualifies

The tests are practical rather than difficult. The installation sits in England, Scotland or Wales, uses an eligible technology, and falls within the capacity limit. It needs appropriate certification, which for smaller systems means MCS or an equivalent scheme, and for larger commercial installations, where MCS certification doesn’t apply, suppliers will consider commissioning and electrical documentation instead at their discretion.

Then two practical requirements. Export has to be measured, so the meter needs to be capable of recording what leaves the site, and there must be an export MPAN, which is a separate identifier from the import MPAN that appears on your electricity bill. Sites still receiving Feed-in Tariff payments choose between the deemed export element of that scheme and a metered export tariff rather than holding both.

Installed solar but never registered

Export registration has never happened automatically, and it’s the step that most often gets missed. The installer finishes, the certificates go into a drawer, everyone is pleased with the lower bills, and the export side quietly never gets dealt with. Nothing looks wrong, because the savings on imported electricity are real and visible. The missing income isn’t visible at all.

The consequence is worth understanding clearly. Export payments run from the point of registration, and they aren’t backdated to installation. Every month that passes without a tariff in place is export given to the grid for nothing, and that isn’t recoverable afterwards. The fix is administrative rather than technical, and it works the same way whether the system was commissioned recently or years back.

How to set up an export tariff

Six steps, and most of them are gathering things that already exist.

1. Find the installation paperwork. Certification for the installation and the confirmation from your district network operator. Where certificates have been lost, the original installer can usually reissue them, and the certification body can provide a copy of its own certificates directly when the installer is no longer trading.
2. Check the meter. Export needs to be measured, so establish whether your existing metering records it. Where it doesn’t, a meter exchange comes before anything else.
3. Get an export MPAN. This is separate from the import MPAN on your bill, and the supplier arranges it with the network operator as part of registration.
4. Check any Feed-in Tariff position. Older installations receiving deemed export payments under the Feed-in Tariff need to compare that against a metered export tariff before moving, because deemed payments sometimes work out better depending on how much you actually export.
5. Compare what suppliers offer. This is where the money is. Rates, contract lengths and terms differ substantially, some suppliers reserve their better export terms for their own import customers, and the comparison is worth doing properly rather than defaulting to whoever bills you now.
6. Apply and confirm. Submit the application with the documentation, get written confirmation of the contract, and provide an opening export reading. Payments run from there.

What usually holds it up

Missing certification is the most common, and it’s generally solvable through the installer or the certification body. Metering is the next, where an older meter simply can’t record export and needs exchanging first.

Ownership and tenure cause their share of delays too. Where the building is leased or the system was funded by a third party, the question of who is entitled to the export income needs answering before an application, not during one. And where a business has changed hands since installation, the paperwork may sit with a previous owner or a dissolved entity, which takes longer to unpick.

None of these are dead ends. They’re just reasons to start earlier than feels necessary.

When an export tariff is not the right route

The Smart Export Guarantee is capped at 5MW, and above that a generator needs a commercial route to market, typically an export power purchase agreement negotiated with a buyer. Some larger sites below the cap also find a negotiated agreement suits them better, since it can offer longer terms and different pricing structures in exchange for more contractual complexity.

For most commercial rooftop installations the export tariff is the sensible answer. It’s simple, it’s quick to arrange once the paperwork exists, and switching later is straightforward.

Where we come in

This is paperwork with money attached, which is familiar territory. We locate or replace the certification, deal with the export MPAN, run the Feed-in Tariff comparison where one applies, compare what suppliers are offering on export alongside your import contract so the two make sense together, and handle the application through to confirmation.

If your panels have been exporting unpaid for a while, the useful thing to know is that the clock only starts when registration completes. There’s a certain satisfaction in switching on income from an asset the business already owns.