Solar & battery systems are a proven money-saver in the UK. 

They reduce how much electricity you buy from the grid, and you can sell any excess via an export tariff. 

But in recent years, things have become a little more complicated. 

There are now also ‘time-of-use’ import tariffs which charge a cheaper rate overnight, allowing households to save significantly more — if they’re smart about things. 



This means someone switching to solar needs to sign up for an export tariff and an import tariff in order to make the most of their system.

Finding the right combination of tariffs is well worth it

In our rundown of the best import/export tariff pairings, the difference between the top and bottom options is over £300 per year for a typical household. 

However, there’s a dizzying range of tariffs to choose from, the signup processes can be confusing, and any delays ultimately lead to missed savings. In fact, this is one of the top sources of frustration when we survey our customers.

This means the route to maximum savings can be a little thorny if there’s nobody to help – which is where we come in. 

At Sunsave, we look after our customers for the full 20 years of their subscription, which includes finding them the right tariffs and guiding them through the signup process.

Today’s tariff market is very complicated and changes often

Back in the 2010s, solar systems were much simpler.

The government paid you for all the energy you generated via the Feed-in Tariff (FiT), as well as all the excess you exported. 

But the tariff market today is dramatically different. 

The FiT is long gone, and the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) has triggered a wide range of export tariffs from almost a dozen energy suppliers, each with their own unique rates, behaviours and requirements.

In fact, there were 50 different tariffs on the market between April 2024 and March 2025 "Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), Annual Report, SEG Year 5", Ofgem, 2025, p. 6, up from just 20 in the scheme’s first year. "Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), Annual Report, 2020-2021", Ofgem, 2021, p. 8

Many tariff providers now reserve their most generous export rates for households who choose them as their energy supplier, meaning solar homes often need to switch providers to ensure they’re maximising their earnings. 

These ‘tied’ tariffs have soared in popularity, and now make up 58% of the market. 

There’s also a growing number of aforementioned time-of-use import tariffs with ‘peak’ and ‘off-peak’ windows, including ones that specifically cater to homes with electric vehicles or heat pumps. 

According to Ofgem, the domestic uptake of smart time-of-use tariffs increased by 75% between April 2024 and April 2025. “State of the market report”, Ofgem, 2026, p. 3

The tariff market is also constantly changing. Providers regularly increase and decrease their rates, tweak their requirements, and launch new offerings.

We keep track of the market and tailor our recommendations

All these relentless changes are constantly affecting the ideal setup for a solar home, so we monitor the market’s every move. 

When it comes to designing a system for a customer and putting together their proposal, the tariffs we choose have a big influence on estimated savings.

Several factors influence our recommendation for each customer, including the proportion of solar energy we expect them to export, and whether they have an EV or heat pump. 

<center><em>Time-of-use tariffs have made switching to solar much more lucrative</em></center>

Getting on the right tariffs as soon as possible is important

Once we’ve installed a solar & battery system, speed is of the essence. 

Every day that a customer isn’t signed up to the best tariffs, they’re missing out on savings.

And unfortunately we can’t ask our customers to sign up before installation day, because they need certain certificates that can only be obtained once a system is up and running. 

We need each of our customers to be ready to start the tariff sign-up process the moment they get those certificates, so that they can hit the ground running.

Our tariff guides give customers a headstart

We’ve crafted detailed guides to all the best tariffs, designed to make the sign-up process as clear as possible for our customers. 

These prompt the customer to get started on the steps that can happen pre-install, such as changing energy suppliers, getting a smart meter, and switching to a variable direct debit (which means they only pay for what they actually owe, and won’t have credit piling up in their account each month). 

Each guide also prepares our customers for what they need to do once their system is live, and indicates how long it could take. 

Once someone has requested to sign up for a specific tariff, it’s all in the hands of the provider - and some take longer than others. 

We always make sure our customers are aware of this, to manage expectations. 

After we’ve received all the necessary documents from the relevant third parties (which usually takes about two weeks after installation), we send them to the customer. 

But this doesn’t come as a surprise to them, because they know exactly what these are and exactly what to do. 

Our customers save more, sooner

By being proactive, we make sure our customers don’t waste any time once they’ve got their system. 

We know that savings is the number one reason that people switch to solar in the UK, so we do everything we can to get them on the best possible tariffs as quickly as possible.

The tariff market is constantly evolving, but we’ll keep our ear to the ground and make sure our customers always have the most up-to-date recommendations. 

And if a super new tariff emerges, we’ll be onto it!

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How we help our customers get set up with the best tariffs

We’re on a mission to make the power of solar accessible to all UK households, and we know that maintenance concerns are a huge obstacle for people.

Everyone wants cheaper energy bills, but nobody wants to have to deal with the hassle of finding an engineer when things go wrong, or forking out for expensive hardware replacements.

And only a limited number of solar installers offer substantial aftercare, maintenance, or support packages.

To solve this problem, we created the Sunsave Guarantee. It’s a unique, 20-year support package for all of our Sunsave Plus customers, designed to provide complete peace of mind. And as part of this, we’ve built a shiny new monitoring tool. 

The tool helps us keep track of our solar and battery systems, and it automatically alerts us if anything’s amiss. 

Here’s a deep dive into why we built the tool and how it makes a difference for our customers.

Solar and battery monitoring is important

We always use robust kit from some of the world’s best manufacturers, but even with top-tier hardware and expert installers, issues can still arise as the years go by. 

Going solar can save you tens of thousands of pounds, but only if your system is properly maintained through its lifetime – and to know when it’s having issues, someone needs to keep an eye on it.

If problems are spotted quickly, they can usually be resolved remotely and nipped in the bud. 

But if they’re not caught early, they can result in missed savings and in-person visits from an engineer.

It's part of our Sunsave Guarantee

The current standard of maintenance available to solar homes in the UK is disappointing, and we’re here to do something about it. 

Every Sunsave Plus customer benefits from the Sunsave Guarantee, which means that if anything stops working – or even drops below an acceptable level of performance – we’ll be there to fix the issue.

Of course, your solar panel app will tell you how your system is performing, but we don’t expect you to be checking this every day – that’s our job.

We built an automated monitoring tool

Our in-house product and engineering team makes us different from most solar installers, as it means we can build cutting-edge, helpful tools for the benefit of our customers. 

To create our monitoring platform, we needed to source live performance data from every Sunsave Plus system, visualise it, and set up automatic alerts.

This data is already available on our manufacturers’ portals, and these programs all have APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which let their software talk to ours – which meant we just needed to find a way to transfer the data.

These types of data conduits, known as Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) pipelines are common in technology companies – but among solar installers, what we've built was truly unique.

<center><em>Our monitoring tool automatically alerts us if something isn't working</em></center>

It spots problems rapidly so we can fix them

Our tool monitors the performance of every single Sunsave Plus installation every hour, 24/7.

When one of these systems isn’t working properly – whether it’s an issue with the battery, inverter, or panels – we’re automatically alerted.

Then we’ll take a look at that system in more detail to assess what’s happening.

We can then start debugging, to get the system back to its best.

Usually the first step is to contact the customer and suggest a few simple actions, such as checking the switches on their solar fuse box, and looking for any warning lights or messages on their inverter and battery screens.

We can fix many issues remotely, but if we can’t, we’ll send a technician to deal with the problem.

It's already helping our customers

We’ve seen our monitoring tool catch issues that would have otherwise been noticed much later. 

For instance, we recently spotted that a system had gone offline, so we contacted the customer. It turns out they’d switched broadband providers and their inverter had lost connection. 

After receiving a heads up from us, the customer reconnected their inverter and got their system working again.

On another occasion, we notified a customer that their battery had stopped discharging. They realised that their inverter’s circuit breaker had tripped, so they switched it back on, and the battery returned to normal. 

By catching and troubleshooting issues as soon as possible, we’re helping our customers avoid prolonged periods of system downtime and missed energy bill savings.

We're going to keep improving it

Our monitoring tool is already helping us catch problems rapidly, but our work isn’t done.

We’ll add new types of issues as we discover them, and develop new rules and alerts that let us keep track of things even more efficiently.

That’s all part of how we make sure the Sunsave Guarantee means our customers don’t have to worry, and can just sit back and enjoy the savings from clean, green energy.

Alfie Ireland

Posts from Alfie Ireland

How we help our customers get set up with the best tariffs

How our monitoring tool looks after our customers