Solar panels in Moss Vale

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 2577 already taken off. Those are typical figures for a straightforward install on a house. On a property with sheds, pumps or a second dwelling the variable is distance — a cable run sized properly for voltage drop is real money and belongs in the quote as its own line, not absorbed into a round number.

Moss Vale is in STC Zone 3, rating 1.382 — the same zone and rating as Sydney, which surprises people out here. 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, calculated from capacity and postcode only.

Because on a property the annual total is close to the least informative number available. Two places using identical kilowatt-hours in a year can need quite different systems: one of them uses a smooth domestic baseline, the other has a bore pump that runs hard for two hours, a cool room that runs continuously, and a workshop that spikes whenever someone is in it. Solar only ever meets a load that is happening at the same moment as the sunshine, so the shape is the whole question and an annual figure deletes it.

Interval data, which your retailer must provide on request if you have a smart meter. It shows consumption in half-hour blocks, so the lumps and their timing are visible rather than averaged away — and a year of it also captures the seasonal pattern, which on an agricultural property is usually the dominant feature. Failing that, a full year of bills plus an honest account of what runs, for how long, and when.

Usually a very good one, and better than a house — because the big loads are often the most shiftable loads anyone has. A household's peak is the evening and cannot move much; a pump, an irrigation run or a cool room's hardest work frequently does not care what time of day it happens. That turns a property into the rare case where generation and consumption can be deliberately lined up. The condition is that the timing is actually controlled rather than assumed, which usually means a timer or a controller and a decision, not a hope.

Not on a grid connection, in most cases — the grid absorbs the surge. It is worth understanding anyway, because a motor draws several times its running current for a moment as it starts, and that matters enormously the day the conversation turns to batteries or backup. A system that comfortably runs a pump will not necessarily start one from storage. If backup is part of what you want, say so at the assessment, because it changes the hardware rather than just the size.

It changes what a system can serve, so it is settled first rather than discovered later. Power generated behind one meter offsets consumption behind that meter; a shed, a second dwelling or a separate business supply on its own meter is effectively a different customer to the network and is not helped by a system connected elsewhere. Sometimes the right answer is a system on the supply with the biggest daytime load rather than the one on the house. Sometimes it is two. We work it out before quoting.

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. On a rural property the other thing worth settling early is which buildings are on which supply, since that determines what a single application actually covers.