Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has any plans for regulation by Ofgem of energy providers' purchase price from private solar export systems under the Smart Export Guarantee scheme.

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), introduced in January 2020, ensures that small-scale generators have a guaranteed access to the market while enabling electricity suppliers and other market participants to innovate in this area. To provide space for this small-scale export market to develop and to promote innovation, the legislation sets out no specified minimum tariff rate, other than that a supplier must provide payment greater than zero at all times of export.

The SEG has been successful in bringing forward a range of competitive and innovative offerings to the market, with small-scale renewable generators having several tariffs to choose from, including several that are higher than the fixed export rate mandated by the previous Feed-in Tariffs scheme.

Ofgem are to publish their first report on the provisions made by suppliers for smaller scale exports in the summer. We will review this to monitor whether the market is delivering an effective, competitive and innovative range of options.