Scottish Power SmartGen rates: SmartGen, SmartGen Premium and Premium Plus

What ScottishPower pays for the electricity your panels send back, on each of its three SmartGen tariffs, who is allowed each one, and how ScottishPower 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.

ScottishPower calls its export tariffs SmartGen, and there are three: SmartGen for anyone, SmartGen Premium for its own electricity customers, and SmartGen Premium Plus for customers whose panels or battery it also installed. All three are variable. Its page is one of the few that tells you plainly that the readings are your job, and that you will not be paid without them.

ScottishPower's export tariffs

• SmartGen. ScottishPower's rate for anyone, whoever supplies their electricity. Its page dates its rates to August 2025.
• SmartGen Premium. ScottishPower's customer rate.
• SmartGen Premium Plus. For systems ScottishPower fitted, on ScottishPower supply.

How ScottishPower 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 ScottishPower's rates sit in it, group by group, because a rate only means something against the others you could actually have.

• SmartGen, 6p/kWh. Joint 2nd of 14 single rates in the tier “Open to anyone”. The top of that tier pays 13p/kWh, 7p/kWh more: Fuse Energy's Single Rate Variable Export.
• SmartGen 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.
• SmartGen Premium Plus, 15p/kWh. 5th of 5 single rates in the tier “Where that supplier installed the system”. The top of that tier pays 25p/kWh, 10p/kWh more: Good Energy's Solar Savings Exclusive.

The ranks and the differences in pence are our comparison from the table as we last read it, not figures ScottishPower 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 ScottishPower's own pages put it, in our words:

• You must own the system. Tenants can apply with written permission from the landlord or council, proof of who owns the panels, and the system's certificate.
• A system no bigger than 5MW, or 50kW for micro-CHP.
• A meter that records export every half hour: smart, AMR or similar.
• A certificate from a certified installer: MCS, Flexi-Orb, NICEIC, NAPIT or similar.
• Preferably a letter or email from your network operator confirming the system is connected to the grid.
• If you have a Feed-in Tariff export agreement, you must opt out of it before joining.
• For SmartGen Premium and Premium Plus, ScottishPower must supply your electricity at the same address as the installation. Premium Plus also needs ScottishPower to have installed the panels, the battery or both.
• SmartGen itself does not need you to buy your electricity from ScottishPower, and the page says so in writing.

How to apply, as ScottishPower describes it

1. Apply online from ScottishPower's page, uploading the installer's certificate, proof that you own the system, and photos of your meters. Your installer will not do this for you: ScottishPower says the application is yours to make.
2. ScottishPower validates the application and checks that your meter can record half-hourly readings. It puts this at up to 14 days.
3. Your network operator creates the export MPAN, the meter number for exported electricity. ScottishPower puts this at 1 to 2 weeks.
4. You register your payment details, which it puts at another 1 to 2 weeks. It says the whole process can take up to 6 weeks, and that a new application is paid from the date you applied.
5. Payment then comes every 90 days, the first about 90 days after your contract starts. You have to submit your export reading online every 6 months, or ScottishPower says it cannot pay you.
6. You have 14 calendar days from applying to change your mind and cancel.

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

Is ScottishPower obliged to offer this?

Ofgem lists ScottishPower Energy Retail 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, British Gas, 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.