Are Older Solar Companies Better — or Just Older?

You wouldn’t ask your grandpa to help you buy a computer. He might be brilliant, he might have built the family’s first PC from a kit — but you’d still want to know whether he’s kept up with what’s on the shelves today. Solar is the same. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years” tells you a company survived. It doesn’t tell you whether its advice matches the panels, inverters, batteries and tariffs of 2026.

Does being older mean a solar company is better?

Not automatically. Longevity proves survival and usually some hard-won install experience, which is worth something real — a company that’s still around can still honour its workmanship warranty. But it doesn’t prove currency. Some long-running Tasmanian companies are excellent and completely up to date; others are selling 2015 thinking. Age is a question to ask, not an answer.

What has actually changed since the early days of Tasmanian solar?

Almost everything about the economics. Tasmania’s generous era is long gone, and systems designed for it don’t suit today.

Aurora Energy’s one-for-one transitional feed-in tariff closed to new installations at midnight on 30 August 2013. Existing customers kept it until 1 January 2019, then received a 5 c/kWh bonus for 12 months to 1 January 2020. OTTER’s 2019 investigation report puts that transitional residential rate at 28.283 c/kWh — roughly what power cost to buy.

The standard feed-in rate has been a very different story, per OTTER:

6.671 c/kWh in 2016-17
6.501 c/kWh in 2021-22
10.869 c/kWh in 2023-24
8.935 c/kWh in 2024-25
8.782 c/kWh in 2025-26
9.276 c/kWh from 1 July 2026

Against a retail import price of roughly 28-30 c/kWh, the lesson is blunt: self-consumption, not export, is where the value sits now. A design philosophy built around exporting everything at a one-for-one rate is a museum piece. If a salesperson still talks mainly about “selling power back to the grid,” that’s a 2013 pitch.

Have panels and inverters really changed that much?

Yes — dramatically on panels, less so on lifespan.

	Early 2010s	Today
Typical panel rating	~250 W	~475 W (most sold now ~440 W)
Average panel efficiency	14-16%	commonly 23%+, best around 25%
Battery on the quote	essentially unheard of	routine consideration
Default tariff thinking	flat rate	time-of-use

Those panel figures come from SolarQuotes (2026): panel ratings have roughly doubled in a decade. Practically, that means more capacity fits on a Tasmanian roof than most people assume — including awkward Hobart hillside roofs with limited north-facing area.

Inverters are the hardest-working part of a system and the one most likely to fail first. SolarQuotes puts typical expectations in the first 10-15 years. A Bern University of Applied Sciences study of 2,121 inverters found 65% had no yield-relevant fault by year 15 — meaning about a third did. Micro-inverter and optimiser designs convert at panel level, so one failure takes out one panel rather than the whole system. That trade-off (cost and complexity versus fault isolation and shade tolerance) is a current design conversation. An installer who has never had it with you may not be having it with themselves either.

Why do home batteries catch older companies out?

Because batteries are genuinely new, so there is no such thing as decades of battery experience. Australia’s home-battery market went from fewer than 500 installations in 2015 to more than 5,000 in 2016 (IHS, via Energy Matters). The first Australian Tesla Powerwall was installed in January 2016. A company founded in 2008 spent most of its life without batteries existing as a mainstream option.

The ground has shifted again. The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program, running since 1 July 2025, takes roughly 30% off an eligible battery — around $250 per usable kWh in 2026 at the full rate for the first 14 kWh, then 60% for 14-28 kWh and 15% for 28-50 kWh, capped at 50 kWh. It tapers each year to 2030, and the battery must be paired with solar; eligibility depends on the equipment, the installer and program rules at the time, so treat any discount as subject to those conditions rather than assured. ABC reporting notes more than 530,000 home batteries installed nationally since the program began. There is no separate Tasmanian state battery rebate.

Now the honest part. Tasmania’s relatively cheap power and comparatively fair feed-in tariff mean a battery generally pays back more slowly here than on the mainland — the solar portion tends to make its case faster than the battery portion, and both depend heavily on your own usage, so no one can quote you a payback with confidence. No vendor or retail VPP program operates in Tasmania. Wholesale-price exposure does exist through spot-passthrough retailing, and automated battery control can charge when spot prices go negative and avoid peak imports — Solar Generation runs exactly that on its own systems. For a typical Aurora-tariff household without spot exposure, the value is self-consumption plus outage backup. Anyone promising VPP income in Tasmania isn’t current.

Which Tasmanian tariff am I on, and will my installer know?

Ask them to name it. The answer reveals how current they are faster than any question about years in business.

Tariff 93 (residential time-of-use) is the default. Since 1 July 2024 every new or upgraded residential connection is assigned to it. Whole-of-home; peak is weekdays 7-10am and 4-9pm (8-11am and 5-10pm during daylight saving); everything else, including all weekend, is off-peak.
Tariff 31 (flat general light and power) and Tariff 41 (separately metered lower flat rate for hard-wired heating and hot water) are the legacy pair, closed to new installations on 30 June 2024. Existing homes may stay on them. Neither is time-of-use.
Tariff 97 is the new opt-in CER tariff for homes with solar, a battery or an EV. It’s the only one with a super off-peak rate (midnight-4am every day, weekends included). Peak is weekdays 7-10am and 4-10pm — an hour longer in the evening than Tariff 93 — all other times off-peak, plus an excess demand charge above 8.5 kW. It is not a hot-water or controlled-load tariff; that’s Tariff 41. Whether a Tariff 97 plan is available to you depends on your retailer.

What size system suits a Tasmanian home now?

For most households that will electrify — EV, heat pump, induction cooktop — around 13 kW of panels on a 10 kW inverter is the sensible, future-proof default, using the 133% inverter oversizing rule. TasNetworks allows a 10 kW single-phase inverter in Tasmania, so most homes do not need three-phase.

That’s a real step up from the old 6.6 kW standard, and an installer still quoting 6.6 kW by reflex is quoting the past. The federal STC rebate (SRES) discounts the up-front cost, with Tasmania in STC Zone 4 — subject to the usual accreditation and compliance requirements.

Equally honest: a very low-use home with no battery, no EV and no electrification plans may be better served by something smaller. Bigger isn’t automatically better either.

What should I ask instead of “how long have you been in business?”

Ask questions that test currency, not vintage:

What panels and inverters do you install now, and why those?
Which Tasmanian tariff are you designing around, and have you modelled my actual usage against it?
What training and accreditation do the people doing my job hold? (Note: SAA accredits individuals, not companies — so ask who, not just whether.)
How will this handle an EV charger or a battery added in three years?
What happens if the inverter faults in year 12 — who comes, and under what warranty terms?
Can you show me a self-consumption estimate rather than an export figure?

The practical takeaway: write those six questions on your phone before you take any appointment. A current company will answer all of them without flinching; an out-of-date one will keep steering back to how long they’ve been around. Ask about age — then ask about today, and weigh the second answer more heavily. You’re also entitled to your consumer guarantees under Australian Consumer Law regardless of how old the business is.

This free guide is written by the Tasmanian solar team at Solar Generation Tasmania. We’re locals who like talking about this stuff, and we’re always happy to answer a question — no strings.

#solargentas #solargen #solargenerationtasmania

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