Tariff 93 Tasmania: 31, 93, 97

Going solar in Tasmania starts with understanding the tariffs you’re choosing between — because the tariff you pick shapes what solar actually saves you. For most Tasmanian homes, the honest headline is this: solar still stacks up, but the money is in using your own power (self-consumption), not selling it back to the grid. Here’s how Tasmania’s residential tariffs — 31, 41, 93 and 97 — actually work, and what they mean for a solar decision in 2026.

Which tariff am I actually on?

Since 1 July 2024, Tariff 93 is the default residential tariff in Tasmania. Every new or upgraded home connection is assigned to it, and it is what most households moving into a new build, or getting a new meter, will be on.

Tariffs 31 and 41 are the older arrangement. They were closed to new installations on 30 June 2024, but plenty of Tasmanian homes are still on them and are entitled to stay there. Tariff 97 is the newest option — an opt-in tariff built for homes with solar, a battery or an EV, and the only one with a genuine super off-peak rate.

So the honest starting point is: check your bill. The tariff number is printed on it, and which one you’re on changes what solar and a battery are worth to you.

What are Tariff 31 and Tariff 41?

These are the legacy pair, and they work together on the one bill:

Tariff 31 — light and power. One flat rate, day and night, for your general household circuits: lights, power points, appliances.
Tariff 41 — heating and hot water. A separately metered, lower flat rate for hard-wired heating and hot water circuits.

That split is why older Tasmanian bills show two different rates. Neither is a time-of-use tariff — the time of day you use power makes no difference to what you pay on either.

If you’re on 31/41 with solar, your panels offset the flat Tariff 31 rate whenever the house is drawing, which is simple and predictable. The catch is that a hot water or heating circuit on Tariff 41 is wired separately, so daytime solar doesn’t automatically flow into it.

What is Tariff 93?

Tariff 93 is the default time-of-use tariff — the standard for Tasmanian homes today. The whole house runs on the one tariff, with a higher rate at peak times and a lower rate the rest of the time.

Peak times are weekdays only:

7am–10am and 4pm–9pm during standard time (AEST)
8am–11am and 5pm–10pm during daylight saving (ADST)

Everything else — weekday middle-of-the-day, nights, and all weekend — is off-peak. That’s off-peak for roughly three-quarters of the week.

This suits solar well, because the middle of the day, when your panels are producing hardest, sits in the off-peak window. It rewards shifting the dishwasher, washing machine and EV charging out of the two weekday peaks.

What is Tariff 97, and what makes it different?

Tariff 97 is the newest residential tariff, designed specifically for homes with consumer energy resources — solar, a home battery, or an electric vehicle. It’s opt-in, not automatic. Its defining feature is a third rate:

Super off-peak: midnight–4am, every day of the week, including weekends
Peak: 7am–10am and 4pm–10pm on weekdays
Off-peak: all remaining times

The super off-peak window exists because network demand is at its lowest overnight, so it’s the ideal time to fill a battery or charge a car. That’s the whole point of the tariff.

But note the trade-off, because it’s a real one: Tariff 97’s evening peak runs an hour longer than Tariff 93’s, finishing at 10pm rather than 9pm. Tariff 97 also carries an excess demand charge if your household draws more than 8.5 kW at any one time — TasNetworks’ own analysis puts about 97% of homes under that, but it’s worth knowing if you might run an EV charger, an oven and heating simultaneously.

Tariff 97 is a network tariff, so whether you can actually get it depends on your retailer offering a plan built on it. Not all do. Our electricity plans guide covers who currently offers a super off-peak rate in Tasmania.

Which tariff pairs best with solar and a battery?

Tariff	Status	Best suits
31 & 41 (flat)	Legacy — closed to new connections, existing homes may stay	Solar-only homes with steady all-day usage and simple billing
93 (time-of-use)	Default for all new connections	Most homes; solar sits in the off-peak window, and shiftable loads avoid the two weekday peaks
97 (CER time-of-use)	Newest, opt-in	Homes with a battery or EV that can charge in the midnight–4am super off-peak window

The pattern to notice: a battery or EV is what makes Tariff 97 pay. Without something that can soak up cheap overnight power, the longer evening peak costs you more than the super off-peak window saves. With a battery, the logic flips — you fill overnight at the cheapest rate on offer, add free solar during the day, and run the house off stored power right through the expensive evening.

Why does self-consumption matter more than the feed-in tariff?

Because the gap between what you pay to import power and what you’re paid to export it is large. Tasmania’s regulated solar feed-in tariff sits at 9.276 cents per kWh from 1 July 2026 (up from about 8.8 cents), while the power you buy costs roughly three times that.

That means every kilowatt-hour of solar you use in the home is worth roughly three times more than the same kilowatt-hour exported. Practical implications:

Size your system around your usage, not around export income.
Shift flexible loads (dishwasher, washing, hot water, EV charging) into daylight hours.
This is also the core argument for a battery: it converts daytime surplus into evening self-consumption instead of a low-value export.

What size solar system should a Tasmanian home get in 2026?

For most homes planning to electrify — an EV, a heat pump, induction cooking — a system around 13 kW of panels on a 10 kW inverter is the sensible modern default, where roof space allows. That panel-to-inverter ratio uses the standard oversizing rule, and TasNetworks permits a 10 kW inverter on a normal single-phase connection in Tasmania, so most homes don’t need a three-phase upgrade.

The old 6.6 kW default is increasingly undersized once you add an electric car or heating load. That said, honesty matters: a low-use household with no battery, EV or electrification plans may be better served by a smaller system matched to daytime usage. Bigger is only better if you’ll actually use the power.

What rebates are available for solar and batteries in Tasmania?

Two federal programs do the heavy lifting:

STC rebate (SRES): an upfront discount on the cost of an eligible solar system. Tasmania sits in STC Zone 4, so the rebate per kW is somewhat lower than sunnier mainland zones — but it’s still a substantial chunk off the sticker price, usually handled as a point-of-sale discount by your installer.
Cheaper Home Batteries Program: from 1 July 2025, roughly 30% off an eligible battery — in 2026 around $250 per usable kWh at the full rate for the first 14 kWh, stepping down for larger batteries (capped at 50 kWh), and tapering each year to 2030. The battery must be paired with solar.

There is currently no separate Tasmanian state battery rebate. Eligibility rules apply to both programs, so treat any figures as indicative rather than guaranteed, and confirm current settings before committing.

Is a home battery worth it in Tasmania?

Honestly — more slowly than on the mainland. Tasmania’s relatively cheap power and fair feed-in tariff mean the gap a battery exploits is smaller here. Payback periods for solar alone are often quoted in the rough range of four to six years, while the battery portion commonly takes longer — think seven to twelve years — depending heavily on your usage, tariff, and the rebates you qualify for. Those are broad indicative ranges, not promises.

The value case in Tasmania typically rests on three things:

Self-consumption: storing daytime solar for the evening peak.
Outage backup: real resilience if your area sees blackouts.
Smart control (for some): households on wholesale spot-passthrough retailing can charge when prices crash — even negative — and avoid peak imports. There’s no vendor-run VPP operating in Tasmania, but automated battery control of this kind is real: Solar Generation runs exactly this on its own systems. For a typical household on a standard Aurora tariff, though, the battery case is self-consumption plus backup.

What’s the one thing to do before deciding?

Get your last 12 months of usage data and look at when you use power, not just how much. That single step answers most of the tariff, sizing and battery questions above — because solar economics in Tasmania reward matching generation to your own consumption, not chasing exports.

This guide is written by the Tasmanian solar team at Solar Generation Tasmania — locals who are always happy to answer questions and help you make sense of your own numbers.

#solargentas #solargen #solargenerationtasmania

Corrected 23 September 2026: an earlier version of this guide described Tariff 31 as the default Tasmanian tariff and Tariff 97 as a controlled-load hot water tariff. Both were wrong. Tariff 93 has been the default since 1 July 2024, Tariffs 31 and 41 are the legacy light-and-power / heating-and-hot-water pair, and Tariff 97 is the new opt-in tariff with a midnight–4am super off-peak rate. We have corrected the article and apologise for the error.

Published by Solar Generation Tasmania. General information current as at publication — rebates, tariffs and prices change, so confirm current figures before deciding.