Solar panels in Casula

As an estimate, a 6.6kW system comes to about $3,990, a 10kW to about $5,490 and a 13.2kW to about $7,990, with the STC discount for postcode 2170 already taken off. Those are typical figures for a straightforward install, not a fixed price. Worth knowing before you compare quotes: the meter change is not ours to charge for and should not appear in a solar quote as a line item. If one does, ask what it is actually for.

Casula is in STC Zone 3, rating 1.382. In 2026 a 6.6kW system creates 45 certificates, worth roughly $1,710 off the price, and a 10kW system 69 certificates, roughly $2,622. It is a discount applied at the point of sale, not a grant you apply for afterwards — so if anyone describes it as a government payment you need to claim, be careful with the rest of what they tell you.

Almost always the meter, and almost never the system. A solar system starts generating the day it is commissioned, and everything it makes that your house uses is already saving you money from that moment. What has not started is the crediting of what you send out, because an export credit requires a meter that measures import and export separately. Until that is done, your exports are going to the grid uncounted. Check your bill for a solar export line with a number of kilowatt-hours beside it — if there is no such line, the meter has not been configured yet, and that is a call to your retailer rather than to your installer.

Your retailer. The meter belongs to the retail side of the arrangement, and your retailer appoints whoever installs or reconfigures it. We cannot do it, and the network does not do it directly either. What we do is commission the system, lodge the grid-connection application and send the compliance paperwork through, which is what lets the retailer start. It is a genuine handover between two businesses, which is exactly why it is the step that gets dropped — so chase your retailer rather than waiting to be contacted.

If you already have a smart meter it usually only needs reconfiguring, often remotely. An older basic meter has to be physically replaced. Either way, where you and the retailer cannot agree a date, the replacement is required within 20 business days — and your feed-in tariff applies from the date that work is completed, not from the day the panels went up. If you are past that and nothing has happened, say the words 'twenty business days' on the phone, and if that gets you nowhere the Energy and Water Ombudsman NSW is free and exists for exactly this.

No, and do not plan around it. An old accumulation meter has no way to tell imported energy from exported energy, so what looks like a windfall is a metering fault rather than a feed-in tariff. It will be corrected when the meter is replaced, and until then you have no record of what you exported and no credit for it. The sooner the meter is changed, the sooner you are actually being paid.

It can be the moment a retailer proposes it, and that changes the arithmetic of everything else on this page — so treat it as a decision rather than paperwork. For a smart meter installed from 1 December 2025, a retailer cannot change your tariff structure without your consent for two years; a meter that was already installed before that date does not carry the same protection. You are not obliged to be on time-of-use, and flat-rate plans still exist. Whether it suits you depends on when you actually use power, and the time to work that out is before you agree, not after a quarter of bills.

Before, if you are going to. Changing retailer in the middle of a meter configuration tends to restart the paperwork, and it is a tedious way to add weeks. It is also the right moment to look at the feed-in rate you are being offered, because that is the number this whole process is delivering to you — and a high advertised feed-in rate sitting on top of high usage rates is usually a worse deal than it looks.

The distribution network that owns the poles and wires in your street approves it — not your retailer — and we lodge the application for you. That network also decides how much your system may export: on a flexible export connection, eligible customers can send up to 10kW per phase back to the grid most of the time, while a fixed export limit caps exports at 1.5kW. Approval to export and a meter that can measure it are two separate things, and you need both before a credit appears.