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Most people who consider solar panels are thinking about cutting their electricity bills. And rightly so, as the savings can be substantial.

But there’s a bigger picture that often gets overlooked: a well-set-up solar system doesn’t just reduce your bills, it can actively earn you money. Here, we’ll show you how to make money from solar panels and battery storage – rather than just save it.

Solar panels = free electricity

But before we launch into how you can earn extra money from solar, let’s be clear about the savings side of things.

When your solar panels generate electricity, your home uses it first. Every kilowatt you consume directly from your panels is a kilowatt you don’t have to buy from your energy supplier. At current rates, that’s worth around 25p per unit – so over the course of a year, it all adds up.

A typical domestic solar system can save you up to £1000 on your bills annually. Solar panels have warranties of 25 years and ‘real world’ lifespans of 30+ years – so once you’ve passed the payback point, you’re getting free electricity. Over the course of your system’s lifetime, you could save more than £50,000.

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG)

Under the Smart Export Guarantee, your energy supplier is required to pay you for any surplus electricity you send back to the National Grid. Here’s how it works… 

Your solar panels will often generate more electricity than your home uses – on a sunny afternoon when everyone’s out, for example. Through the Smart Export scheme, you’ll earn a minimum of 12p for every kilowatt you export, and this is added as a credit on your energy bill.

The credits you build up from your summer exports go a long way towards covering your winter energy costs. A well-designed system means your summer generation should ultimately pay for your winter usage.

To qualify for the SEG, you need two things:

• Your installer must be MCS-accredited and issue you with an MCS certificate
• The District Network Operator (DNO) must approve your system, so they know how much electricity is being exported to the grid

Here at Sopoco, we handle both of these things for you as standard. So, if you’re installing with us, you’ll be set up for SEG payments from day one. Find out more on our SEG page.

Saver Sessions

Saver Sessions are a scheme run by certain energy suppliers (Octopus Energy being the most well-known) where they ask customers to reduce their electricity usage during specific high-demand periods. If you have solar and battery storage, you’re ideally placed to take advantage.

How Saver Sessions work:

1. During a Saver Session, instead of drawing power from the grid, you run your home from your stored battery. And for every kilowatt you use below your normal consumption, you get paid.

2. But you can go further. You can also export your stored battery power back to the grid during a Saver Session, which increases your payment further still. Not only are you using fewer kilowatts from the grid, you’re actively pushing kilowatts back into it.

3. The rate paid during Saver Sessions is higher than the standard Smart Export Guarantee, and it varies session by session.

Saver Sessions usually happen once or twice a month, at times announced in advance. You’ll receive an email from your supplier asking if you want to take part. Opt in, and your credits are calculated and added to your account automatically. Some equipment integrates directly with your supplier’s system and handles the whole thing for you, but in most cases, you’ll sign up manually each time.

• Tip: Make sure your battery is fully charged before a Saver Session to maximise both your self-consumption saving and your export payment.

Variable-rate tariffs

This is where battery storage becomes a financial asset. Using variable-rate tariffs allows you to buy energy from the grid when it’s cheap, charge your battery, then sell your stored energy back to the grid when it’s expensive.

Tariffs like Octopus Flux have three rates: a super-low overnight rate, a standard daytime rate, and a super-high peak rate in the late afternoon and evening. So, in practice, it works like this:

• Overnight (roughly 2am-5am), you charge your battery from the grid at around 15p per kilowatt
• During the day, you use grid power at the standard rate (or your own solar generation, for free)
• During peak times (late afternoon and evening), you export what’s in your battery back to the grid at around 29p per kilowatt

The difference between what you pay and what you sell for is your margin. Done consistently, this can add up to six or seven pounds a day – which makes a significant difference over a full year. Though do bear in mind that this figure will vary seasonally and with your battery capacity

You don’t need to manage this manually. Depending on your equipment, some systems integrate directly with Octopus and have AI energy management modes that optimise this automatically. Ask us about the equipment we’d recommend if you’re interested in variable-rate tariffs.

Grid-balancing through third-party platforms

This is the newest income stream available to solar and battery owners, and it offers the highest rate of return per kilowatt by a fair margin.

Platforms like Axle work by combining thousands of individual home battery systems into a single coordinated network – what’s known as a Virtual Power Plant (VPP). When there are sudden spikes or crashes in national electricity demand, the grid operators can call on this network to help balance things out.

When your battery is called on during one of these events, you earn £1 for every kilowatt used. That’s significantly more than any other export rate available.

These events don’t happen all the time; it’s typically three or four times a month. But the earnings per event can be meaningful. If you have a 10kW battery and Axle uses half of it during an event, that’s £5 for an hour or so of your battery doing something it was going to do anyway.

Platforms like Axle give you full visibility and control over when and how your system participates, and you can opt out of any session if you want to.

To participate, you sign up to Axle and give them controlled access to your system. It currently works with a growing list of compatible inverters and equipment, and your installer can confirm whether your set-up qualifies.

What does it all add up to?

Let’s bring it together. For a homeowner with a medium-large solar and battery system, here’s what’s realistically achievable across the different income streams:

Some of these income streams are fully automated, while others need occasional management: a quick opt-in email, a check on your app. But with a well-configured set-up (which we help you with), your bill combined savings and extra income from solar could land in the region of £1,200-2000 per year. That’s a pretty convincing return on an investment in solar and battery storage.

Want to know what your home could earn?

Every home is different; the right system size, battery capacity and tariff setup depends on your usage, your roof and your goals. That’s exactly what our home surveys are designed to figure out. We’ll give you realistic projections for your home, and tailor your system to meet your needs.

Note: Figures referenced are intended to provide a guide and are based on typical UK domestic systems as at mid-2026. Actual earnings will depend on your system size, tariff, location and usage patterns.