British Gas Smart Export Guarantee rates: Export Premium, Export Extra and Export SEG

What British Gas pays for the electricity your panels send back, who is allowed each rate, and how British Gas says you apply. Read from its own page, with how it compares to every other supplier we track. Nobody is going to ring you.

Figures on this page last checked 24 October 2026. Each carries its own receipt with its own date.

British Gas has three export tariffs for homes: Export Premium for its electricity customers with systems up to 15kW, Export Extra for customers with bigger systems, and Export SEG for everyone else. Export Premium and Export Extra are variable and free to switch or cancel at any time. Its page carries the date it was last updated, which is rarer than it should be. It also prints its rates as £12p and £8p, which we have taken to mean pence.

British Gas's export tariffs

• Export SEG. British Gas's rate for people who buy their electricity elsewhere.
• Export Premium. British Gas's customer rate for ordinary home systems.
• Export Extra. For systems over 15 kW, which is bigger than almost any house roof. Most homes want the Export Premium row instead.

How British Gas compares with every other supplier

We keep every supplier's export rates in one table, each read from that supplier's own page. Here is where British Gas's rates sit in it, group by group, because a rate only means something against the others you could actually have.

• Export SEG, 3p/kWh. Joint 9th of 14 single rates in the tier “Open to anyone”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 10p/kWh more: Fuse Energy's Single Rate Variable Export.
• Export Premium, 12p/kWh. Joint 3rd of 10 single rates in the tier “For that supplier's electricity customers”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 1p/kWh more: E.ON Next's Next Export Exclusive v3 and EDF's Export 12m V2.
• Export Extra, 8p/kWh. Joint 8th of 10 single rates in the tier “For that supplier's electricity customers”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 5p/kWh more: E.ON Next's Next Export Exclusive v3 and EDF's Export 12m V2.

The ranks and the differences in pence are our comparison from the table as we last read it, not figures British Gas publishes. Rows paying the same rate share a place. Time-of-use and wholesale-linked tariffs anywhere in the table are left out of the ranking, because they have no single rate to rank. The rate open to anyone runs from 2p/kWh to 13p/kWh across the whole table.

What a rate is worth in years depends on the rest of the sum. The payback period page shows how far the export rate alone moves it for one example house, with every input linked.

What you need before you apply

As British Gas's own pages put it, in our words:

• One of the eligible systems, solar included, up to 5MW, or 50kW for micro-CHP.
• An MCS certificate, Flexi-Orb certificate or accreditation certificate, and proof of grid connection: the G98 or G99 paperwork from your network operator.
• A home in England, Scotland or Wales with a smart meter that records export every 30 minutes. British Gas says it fits one free for its customers.
• Your bank details, because payment goes to your bank account.
• For Export Premium (systems up to 15kW) or Export Extra (over 15kW), British Gas must supply the property's electricity. Its legal note excludes developers and anyone in a rent-a-roof agreement from those two.
• No Feed-in Tariff export payments at the same time. You can opt out of FiT export to join, but British Gas notes you can only opt out once every 12 months, and once you move from deemed to metered export you cannot go back.

How to apply, as British Gas describes it

1. Apply through British Gas's online form, which walks you through it step by step.
2. British Gas emails to confirm it is working on the application, and asks if it needs anything more.
3. Setting up the account can take up to 4 weeks. If you are new to SEG, British Gas creates and registers your export MPAN, the meter number for exported electricity. If you are moving from another provider, it gets the MPAN from them.
4. Payment then comes every 3 months by bank transfer, within 28 days of British Gas receiving your export reading. With a working smart meter the reading usually sends itself.

You apply on British Gas's own site. We do not take applications, we do not ask for your details, and nobody pays us for sending you there.

Is British Gas obliged to offer this?

Ofgem lists British Gas Trading Limited as a mandatory SEG licensee for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. Ofgem publishes which suppliers have told it they are taking part in the Smart Export Guarantee each year. The big ones have no choice: a supplier with enough household customers must offer a tariff. Smaller ones can volunteer.

Ofgem's rule is that your export payments, your electricity supply and your gas supply can each be with a different company. So you can take an open-to-anyone export tariff from one supplier and keep buying your electricity from another. The catch is in the table: the higher rates are mostly reserved for that supplier's own customers, so switching your export alone gets you the open tier.

The same page for other suppliers: Octopus, ScottishPower, EDF and E.ON Next.

Questions people actually ask

Where to go next

• Export rates: what each supplier pays for your exported power.
• Payback: how long the panels take to pay for themselves.
• Solar panel cost: what a solar system costs.
• All the figures Hearthsum keeps: the hub, with every page on it.