Bills
Electricity prices fell in spring: what lower prices do to solar payback
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published Quarterly Energy Prices on 29 September 2026, covering April to June 2026. Its summary says the price paid for domestic electricity, in real terms and including VAT, was 8.2% lower than in the same quarter of 2025. One passage in the body words the same 8.2% as a fall against the previous quarter, so we take the year-on-year reading from the summary and flag the difference.
The release also gives some market facts. At the end of June 2026, 38% of customers on standard electricity were on fixed tariffs, 2 percentage points more than a year earlier. Direct Debit was the most common way to pay, used by 73% of standard electricity customers. Those are national figures for Great Britain, not for Herne Bay.
Lower prices cut both ways for a household thinking about panels. Each unit your solar supplies and you use is a unit you do not buy, so its value is the unit price. In our model a 4 kWp system uses about 1,260 kWh a year directly, so every 1p off the unit price takes about £13 off the yearly saving. That is our arithmetic. Ofgem's cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026 is 26.32p per kWh, and the cap page says there is no VAT on electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, which our estimator already allows for.
So cheaper power stretches payback a little, and dearer power shortens it. We do not think anyone should buy solar on a forecast of prices. The better test is whether the sum still works at a lower price. Our cost page shows paybacks at 26.32p, and you can drop the figure in the estimator to see what a lower rate does.
A fixed tariff is a hedge you can use alongside panels. If you lock a rate for a year, your bill is more predictable while you learn how much of your own power you really use. Then you can size a battery from real figures instead of guesses.
Read the source: DESNZ: Quarterly Energy Prices, September 2026 (statistical release for April to June 2026, published 29 September 2026). Figures come from that page. Where we do our own sums we say so. The commentary is our own view, not advice.
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