The short answer: the median payback on a solar only system in New Zealand right now is 6.9 years. Add a battery and it stretches out to 9.0 years.

That’s based on 279 residential solar quotes New Zealanders received in 2026.

Which, to be honest, is a pretty good result.

But of course there’s a longer answer, because solar payback can move around quite a bit depending on your roof, your power bill, where you live and what you’re actually being quoted.

Why everyone asks this question first

One of the first questions people ask me when they start looking into solar is, “what’s the payback?”

Fair enough.

Solar is a fairly big up front cost. And for most people knowing how long it’ll take to pay itself off is one of the big things standing between thinking about solar and actually going ahead with it.

The best way to get a number that's actually about your house is to use our solar calculator. It works out estimated annual savings and payback together.

You can use our generic solar prices, but it's even better if you've already got a quote sitting in front of you.

In the meantime though, it’s interesting to see what everyone else is actually being quoted.

And now we've got enough data to do that properly.

The payback numbers for 2026

Through the anonymised data we collect at the back end of our quote comparison tool, we can pull out some pretty useful medians.

Not marketing numbers.

Not Australian solar figures with a Kiwi flag stuck on them.

These are actual quotes being given to actual New Zealand homeowners this year.

For solar only systems, no battery, the median payback is currently 6.9 years.

That’s really good.

In fact, we've never seen solar payback this low in New Zealand.

The data below comes from 279 residential quotes collected during 2026.

Median basically means half the quotes came in below this figure and half above. I've used median rather than average because a handful of really expensive systems can make averages look a bit silly.

Now look at that top row for a second.

Because it's the one I think people will be surprised by.

Small solar systems are actually the worst value on the board.

A 3-5 kW system costs around 25% more per watt than a 9-12 kW system, and the median quoted payback is more than four years longer.

The reason is fairly simple. A lot of the cost of installing solar has nothing to do with the number of panels.

You've still got an electrician turning up. You've still got an inverter, paperwork, travel, design, switchboard work and possibly scaffolding.

Most of those costs are there whether you're installing six panels or twenty.

Going really small just to save money upfront is one of the more common mistakes I see people make. But hey, if 4kW is all the roof space or budget allows, it's still worthwhile.

Why solar payback has come down

A few years ago a seven year solar payback in New Zealand would have been a stretch.

Now it's pretty normal.

There's really two big things going on.

Solar panel prices have fallen a long way.

Our own pricing research has installed solar sitting near $2 per watt, and the quote data here backs that up with a median of $2.14 per watt for solar only systems.

Go back ten years and you would've paid several times that.

Power prices have obviously gone the other way.

Every increase in your electricity unit rate makes the electricity coming off your roof worth more.

And yeah, nobody likes rising power prices. But if you already own solar, higher retail electricity prices improve the economics of your system.

Put cheaper solar equipment and more expensive grid electricity together and payback keeps getting better.

It's probably one of the only ways to push against the cost of living crisis, you can't do much about food prices going up, but you can go solar to massively reduce your power bill.

What a battery does to your payback
Now this bit I found really interesting.

56% of the residential quotes we looked at included a battery.

And I don't mean the battery was sitting there as an optional extra.

It was quoted as part of the system.

Three years ago that would've been a much smaller percentage.

Batteries have gone from being a nice-to-have to something installers now expect a lot of customers will want.

And let's face it, there's now this general assumption that if you're getting solar you should also get a battery.

You don't need one.

But yeah, they're a great addition to solar panels if they suit what you're trying to achieve.

Here's what the numbers look like.

So adding a battery roughly doubles the total price and adds about two years to the payback.

This also solved something we'd been scratching our heads about here at My Solar Quotes.

When we previously pulled stats from our customer reviews, bigger solar systems seemed to have worse payback periods... which made no sense.

Normally bigger solar systems get cheaper per watt, so if anything you'd expect the opposite.

Turns out bigger systems are disproportionately systems with batteries.

So it wasn't really the extra solar panels dragging the payback out. It was the battery sitting alongside them.

Is a battery worth it if the payback is longer?  I think so, because adding a battery isn't just about reducing power bills, because what you are also paying for is the ability to have power in a power outage, which is a massive benefit, but that doesn't show up in the payback.

But if you're buying purely for financial return, go into it knowing the current median is around a nine year proposition rather than seven years.

What actually moves your solar payback

The medians above are useful, but your house isn't the median house. A few things can move your payback quite a bit.

How much solar you use yourself.

This is probably the biggest one. Solar you use in the house is worth the full retail electricity price. Export it to the grid and you're only getting the buy-back rate, which is usually a lot less.

So if you're home during the day, charging an EV, running a pool pump or heating hot water off solar, you'll generally do better. A house that's empty all day won't use as much directly - unless you've got a battery.

Your solar buy-back rate.

These vary a lot, so it's worth checking current solar buy-back rates.

A good rate versus a poor one can move your payback, but mind you, not by a lot.

For example, our solar system at home is 8.2 kW with a 13.5 kWh battery. Last year we exported around 2,100 kWh - roughly half of what our solar generated. At Contact Energy's 8c buy-back rate, that earned us just $168.

On one of the more generous 16c plans, we'd have earned $336 instead. So yeah, an extra $168 is a decent chunk of change, but it's not exactly bringing forward retirement.

Your power bill.

Generally, the higher cost per unit you pay for electrcity, the more opportunity solar has to save you money.  For example Wellingtonians pay on average 37 cents per kWh, on the other end you have people in Balclutha and Kerikeri paying over 50 cents per kWh.  The higher your cost per unit of electricity the higher you solar payback.

Where you live and your roof.

A system in Nelson or Blenheim will generally produce more than the same system in Southland, but the difference isn't as dramatic as people sometimes think.

Your roof matters too. North-facing and unshaded is ideal, east and west can still work really well, but shading is the thing to watch. One badly placed tree or chimney can reduce generation significantly.

What I'd actually do with this

If you're getting solar quotes right now, this is what I'd be looking at.

Don't automatically go really small just to save money.

The under-5 kW systems in our dataset are costing $2.54 per watt and showing an 11.1 year median payback.

Once you get into roughly the 5-12 kW range, the economics look considerably better.

Obviously don't fill your roof with panels you have absolutely no use for either. But if you're tossing up between say 4 kW and 6 kW purely because the 4 kW quote is cheaper, have a proper look at the numbers first.

Compare solar with solar.

A $31,000 solar and battery system sitting next to a $17,000 solar-only quote isn't really a price comparison.

They're two different products.

If one installer has included a battery and another hasn't, separate the solar component out before deciding who's expensive.

Ask how the payback was calculated.

Power price. Buy-back rate. Self-consumption. Expected generation.

You don't need to understand a huge spreadsheet. You just need to know the assumptions are sensible - and that's where getting 3 quotes for the same sized system helps.  If you notice one company assumes a 40% self-consumption rate and the other a 70% self-consumption rate that's a good cue for digging in a bit further.

And get more than one quote.

This one probably sounds self-serving considering I run a solar quote comparison website. Fair enough.

But prices for essentially the same system can vary by thousands of dollars.

It's worth knowing what else is out there before spending $15,000, $20,000 or $30,000 on your house.

Where these solar payback numbers come from

These figures come from anonymised, non-personal quote data collected through My Solar Quotes during 2026.

No names, addresses or customer contact details are involved.

The sample includes 279 residential solar quotes, covering both solar-only and solar-plus-battery systems.

Commercial solar systems and incomplete quotes were excluded.

One other important point.

The payback periods are the payback figures stated on the quotes themselves.

So this data tells us what New Zealand solar installers are currently projecting for customers.

It doesn't mean we've waited seven years and checked every one of these houses to see exactly what happened.

For real world experiences from New Zealanders who've actually had solar sitting on their roofs for years, have a read through our customer reviews.

That's always a really useful reality check.

One thing that should help even more with all of this is Solassure, the new quality certification programme from SEANZ.

To become Solassure certified, solar companies need to be transparent with pricing and clear about expected system performance. Which should mean even more confidence that payback estimates are based on sensible assumptions and properly explained.

My Solar Quotes already only works with SEANZ members, so I do feel confident in the numbers being provided. But as more of those companies become Solassure certified, I'll feel even more confident that the payback figures customers are being shown really stack up.

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