A new report confirms that Australian households with rooftop solar are paying around one third less for their electricity than homes without solar.

And this is not necessarily due to lower grid power use!

The latest Inquiry into the National Electricity Market from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that solar homes on the NEM paid the lowest effective prices for their power in 2020, even while using slightly more power from the grid than non-solar homes.

The report discovered that in a year where families spent more time at home due to Covid-19 restrictions and impacts, NEM electricity consumption increased across the board for households, both solar and non-solar (an 11% increase, year-on-year, vs 9%, respectively).

Across the four National Electricity Market regions, customers with solar installed paid a lower average price than non-solar customers for the year.

Importantly, the report notes that for residential customers, this saving was not driven by differences in grid usage, but rather came from feed-in tariff payments for excess generation sent to the grid.

The average residential solar customer with premium FiT rates, which covers 23 per cent of all solar NEM households, earned $858 annually from solar sent back to the grid, while the average residential customer with a negotiated tariff rate earned $307 annually.

The report suggests that Residential solar customers continued to pay much lower bills than non-solar customers despite using more grid electricity.

This is because of the benefit of rebates … In 2020 solar customers had a median quarterly bill of $253 in 2020, while non-solar customers had a bill of $347.

That's a $94 difference.

Residential solar customers in 2020 with negotiated feed-in tariff supplied 716 kWh electricity to the grid, while premium rate customers supplied 341 kWh, a difference of 375 kWh.