When Your 20-Year FIT Ends: What You Keep, What You Lose, What to Switch To
When Your 20-Year FIT Ends: What You Keep, What You Lose, What to Switch To
Figures checked 25/09/2026 against Ofgem, DESNZ and current supplier tariff tables
FIT paid early adopters up to 76.9p per kWh, index-linked, for 20 or 25 years. When your term ends — from August 2032 for the first 20-year contracts — that income stops outright. You keep the panels, the wiring and the MCS certificate. You lose the generation tariff and the deemed export payments. The switch that works for most homes: a decent SEG tariff plus a battery, so your own solar covers the evening peak instead of escaping cheaply.
I’ve been writing about the Feed-in Tariff since before it closed to new applicants in 2019, and the emails I get have changed tone. They used to ask how to get on the scheme. Now they ask something quieter and more worrying: my letter says my payments stop in 2032, so what on earth do I do? Around 829,000 UK homes still draw FIT payments on domestic solar, and every one of those contracts has an end date stamped on it. Nobody’s is indefinite.
So here’s the whole picture in one place: what dies with the tariff, what survives it, and the three switches worth making before your last payment lands. Some of it is genuinely good news, particularly if you installed late.
When your FIT actually ends
The Feed-in Tariff never had one universal length. Solar PV systems accredited before 1 August 2012 got 25 years of payments. Everything accredited from that date until the scheme closed on 31 March 2019 got 20 years. Your end date is simply your eligibility date plus one of those two numbers — which produces a slightly counter-intuitive result: the first households to lose FIT income won’t be the original 2010 pioneers on 25-year deals. They’ll be the 20-year cohort accredited from August 2012, whose payments stop from August 2032 onwards.
To pin down your own date, dig out the accreditation letter or your original MCS certificate — the eligibility date is on both — then add 20 or 25 years depending on which side of August 2012 you fall. Ofgem publishes the full FIT tariff table every year, which is also where you’ll find your exact current rate rather than the rounded figure on your statement.
What you keep when payments stop
More than people expect, honestly. The tariff ending is a financial event, not a physical one. Nothing on your roof switches off.
- The panels, still working hard. A 20-year-old monocrystalline array is typically still producing 85–90% of its original output, because quality panels degrade at only 0.3–0.5% a year. Our guide to how long solar panels last in the UK has the degradation data by panel type if you want the detail.
- The mounting, cabling and roof penetrations. Properly installed, these outlast the panels themselves.
- Your MCS certificate. This is the golden ticket. It’s what makes your system eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee, and it stays valid for the life of the installation. Find it, photocopy it, store it somewhere you’ll remember in 2032.
- The export capability. Your system can still push power to the grid; only the payment arrangement changes.
- Outright ownership — assuming you bought the system rather than leasing the roof space. Rent-a-roof and leased arrays are a different conversation with different paperwork, and a different buyout price depending on your lease terms.
- 0% VAT on new work. Battery retrofits and array extensions qualify for the 0% rate until 31 March 2027, which is a genuine reason not to sit on a decision for another three years.
What you lose, in real numbers
Two income streams die on your end date, and they’re very uneven in size.
The big one is the generation tariff — paid on every unit your panels produce, whether you use it, store it or export it. The small one is the export tariff, which under FIT was paid on a deemed 50% of your generation regardless of what actually left the house. Both were index-linked every year, and both stop completely. There’s no taper, no grace year, no automatic transfer to anything else.
| Cohort (4 kWp, ~3,400 kWh/yr) | Generation rate 2026/27 | Generation income | Deemed export (1,700 kWh) | Total per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accredited Apr 2010 – Apr 2011 (25-yr) | ~76.9p/kWh | ~£2,615 | 1,700 × 5.43p = £92 | ~£2,707 |
| Accredited Apr 2018 – Mar 2019 (20-yr) | ~5.84p/kWh | ~£199 | 1,700 × 7.64p = £130 | ~£329 |
Look at the spread. The FIT was never one scheme; it was a ladder that stepped down hard as panel prices fell, and your rung decides everything about what the end date means. For an early-2010s household, losing ~£2,700 a year is a genuine income cliff — no combination of export tariffs and batteries replaces it unit for unit. For someone who installed in 2018, the FIT is worth about £329 a year, and as we’ll see, the post-FIT world can actually pay them better.
During FIT, your system was an income stream that happened to be on your roof. After FIT, it becomes a bill-avoidance machine that happens to sell some surplus. Every unit you use yourself is now worth the full import price — 26.32p under the October to December 2026 price cap — while every unit you export is worth whatever your SEG tariff pays. That single reframe drives every decision below.
The cut that already landed: RPI to CPI
While you’re planning for the end date, worth knowing that the payments shrank slightly in the meantime. From 1 April 2026, FIT uplifts are calculated with CPI instead of RPI. This year that meant 3.4% rather than the ~4.2% RPI would have given, and because the gap compounds every April for the rest of your contract, the earlier you signed up the more it costs you over time.
For the record, the sequence was: DESNZ opened the consultation on 31 October 2025 with two options (the CPI switch, or an outright freeze), closed it on 12 December 2025 with around 2,800 responses — most of them from solar households — confirmed the CPI option and dropped the freeze on 28 January 2026, and Ofgem published the revised table on 23 March 2026. Your base rate and contract length were untouched. I’ve written the full breakdown in our piece on the 2026 tariff cut, and what the RPI-to-CPI switch costs you has the year-by-year compounding maths.
Option 1: Move your export to a SEG tariff
The Smart Export Guarantee is the scheme that replaced FIT for new applicants, and it’s where your export income lives afterwards. Two rules shape the timing.
First, you can’t be paid FIT export and SEG on the same units. Second — and this is the bit most guides miss — you don’t have to wait for your term to end to move only the export leg. Households can switch the export portion to SEG once a year while keeping the FIT generation tariff running. With FIT export deemed at 5.43p or 7.64p and open SEG tariffs paying around 16p, that swap can be worth doing years before your end date, particularly if you’re out of the house all day and export well over the deemed 50%. Check the switch mechanics with your FIT licensee first, but ask the question.
When the term does end, you apply for SEG in full. You’ll need your MCS certificate, a smart meter capable of half-hourly export readings, and an export MPAN — the latter can take weeks to arrange, so start the process a couple of months before your final FIT payment rather than the week after. Then shop hard, because the ladder is wide:
| Tariff (Sept 2026) | Rate | Type | The strings attached |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecotricity Smart Export | 16p/kWh | Fixed | None — open to all, no import switch |
| ScottishPower SmartGen | 6p/kWh | Fixed | Open to all, but why settle for it? |
| E.ON Next Export Exclusive | 16.5p/kWh | Fixed | E.ON Next import supply required |
| British Gas Export & Earn Plus | 15.1p/kWh | Fixed | British Gas import supply required |
| Good Energy Solar Savings | 15p/kWh | Fixed | Good Energy import supply required |
| Octopus Outgoing Fixed | 12p/kWh | Fixed | Octopus import supply required; cut from 15p on 1 March 2026 |
| Octopus Intelligent Flux | Up to 32p/kWh | Time-of-use | Octopus import plus a compatible battery; closed to new sign-ups since March 2026 |
| Install-exclusive deals (Good Energy, EDF, OVO) | 20–25p/kWh | Fixed | Only if you buy the solar and battery from them — not available to legacy FIT systems |
Ignore the 20–25p headline rates; they’re for new installs through the supplier’s own network and don’t apply to you. Your realistic ceiling without a battery is 15–16.5p if you’re happy to move your import supply, or 16p if you’re not, now that Ecotricity has overtaken the old “no-switch” leaders. With a battery, time-of-use export changes the game entirely, though Intelligent Flux itself is presently closed to new customers — worth checking whether that’s reopened by the time you need it. Our full SEG tariff comparison for 2026 tracks the live ladder, and the SEG income estimator will model your own export profile in a couple of minutes.
Option 2: Add a battery before the music stops
This is the switch that converts your system from an export business into a bill-avoidance one. A typical UK solar home without storage uses around 40% of what its panels generate; the rest leaves at export prices. Add a battery and self-consumption jumps to roughly 70–80%, and higher still on a time-of-use tariff that also charges the battery cheaply overnight.
The 2026 prices, from our retrofit guide: a 5 kWh battery installs for £3,500–£4,500 including 0% VAT, a 7–8 kWh unit for £5,000–£6,500, and annual savings run £200–£550 depending on tariff and household. Payback is honestly 8–12 years on a flat tariff and 6–9 years on a time-of-use one — so be wary of anyone promising five. The full cost table and the AC-coupled versus DC-coupled question (your existing inverter decides) are in our guide to adding a battery to existing solar panels.
The 0% VAT rate on battery retrofits runs out on 31 March 2027, worth roughly £700–£800 on a 5 kWh job. And if your original string inverter is nearing its 10–15 year life expectancy — likely, on a FIT-era system — bundling a hybrid inverter swap with the battery usually beats doing them as separate jobs years apart. One more caution: with GivEnergy Ltd having entered administration on 9 April 2026, check the financial health of any battery brand before paying a deposit — our full breakdown of what the GivEnergy administration means for owners covers warranty and support implications if you already have one fitted. A 10-year warranty is only as good as the company behind it.
Option 3: Re-power or extend the array
Your 20-year-old panels are fine, but they’re 20-year-old panels: roughly 85–90% of their original output, and from an era when a “big” panel was 250 W. Modern modules run well over 400 W at better low-light performance, so the same roof area can generate markedly more than it did in 2012.
Two honest rules apply to FIT-era systems. Extra panels earn no FIT payments — the tariff only ever covered the originally accredited capacity, and modifying the array doesn’t revive it. And any extension or re-power must be MCS-certified, both because it’s good practice and because uncertified modifications can jeopardise your SEG eligibility later. Within those rules, though, extending makes more sense after FIT than during it: every extra unit from new panels is yours to self-consume at 26.32p or export at your SEG rate, with no deemed-export complications at all.
If your inverter is due for replacement anyway, this is the moment to size for the future — hybrid inverter, battery-ready, room for the extra string. Our panel lifespan guide covers what to expect from old versus new modules side by side.
What each path earns on a typical home
Enough theory. Here’s one 4 kWp system, generating 3,400 kWh a year, run through five futures at today’s prices:
Assumptions: 4 kWp generating 3,400 kWh/yr; self-consumption 40% without storage and 78% with; import price 26.32p/kWh (Ofgem cap, Oct–Dec 2026); export at the rates shown; battery export priced at the open 16p rate, so a time-of-use export tariff with a battery could sit higher still on the hours it captures. Your numbers will differ — that’s what the estimator is for.
Read the amber bar as the thing early adopters are losing, and the blue bars as the recovery ladder. No combination gets you back to £2,700; that contract was a product of its time and nothing current matches it. But £358 of passive bill-saving becoming £818 of active management is a real £460 a year, and the steps between the rungs are all ordinary, purchasable decisions.
Now the good news I promised. Run the same chart for a 2018 cohort home and the story inverts: their FIT was worth about £329 a year, while the “after FIT + open SEG” column alone pays around £684 — because metered export at 16p beats deemed export at 7.64p for any household that exports more than a modest share of its generation. If you installed late, your FIT ending isn’t a cliff. It’s a promotion.
The scam calls that circle end dates
Every scheme deadline breeds vultures, and “your FIT is ending” is becoming one of the most common openers in cold-call solar fraud. The pattern is usually a “free upgrade” or “government refund” tied to your end date, urgent pricing that expires today, or a fake MCS inspection call. MCS does not cold call, full stop. Genuine quotes don’t expire at midnight, and anyone quoting a battery payback under six years should be asked to show their working in writing.
Our rundown of the seven red flags of solar scams in the UK covers the current scripts, including the leasing deals that quietly take ownership of your roof space. The three-minute check — MCS register, RECC or HIES membership, Companies House — catches almost all of them.
FAQs
Can I switch to SEG before my 20-year FIT ends?
Partly. You can’t claim a SEG export payment and FIT export on the same units, but you can move just the export leg across once a year while keeping your FIT generation tariff — handy when SEG’s 16–16.5p beats FIT’s deemed 5.43p or 7.64p. Giving up the generation tariff itself early is irreversible and almost never worth it, so most households simply wait for the term to end and then apply for SEG in full.
Do I need new panels or a new MCS certificate to join SEG after FIT?
No. Your original MCS certificate is the key document and it stays valid for the life of the system. You’ll need a smart meter capable of half-hourly export readings and an export MPAN from your supplier, which can take a few weeks to arrange — start before your final FIT payment, not after. If you extend or re-power the array, the new work must be MCS-certified or you risk your SEG eligibility.
Does all my export income really stop on the day FIT ends?
The deemed payment stops, yes — FIT paid export on an assumed 50% of generation whether it left the house or not. SEG pays only on metered export, but at a much higher rate: 16p to 16.5p against FIT’s 5.43p or 7.64p. Most UK homes export 60–70% of what they generate, so plenty of late-cohort households will actually earn more export income after FIT than during it. The generation tariff is the part that truly disappears.
The Feed-in Tariff did what it was designed to do: it made the first 800,000-odd solar roofs in this country possible, and it paid its early backers handsomely for taking the risk. Your panels don’t retire when the tariff does. They’ll keep turning daylight into electricity for another decade or two, and the households that plan the handover — export tariff sorted, battery considered, inverter timed right — will barely feel the seam. The ones who wait for the final letter before thinking about it are the ones who end up exporting all summer at 6p. Don’t be that house.
