The Smart Export Guarantee for schools

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) is the scheme that pays you for solar electricity you generate but do not use on site. Larger licensed electricity suppliers are obliged to offer an export tariff, and the units you send back to the grid are measured by a smart or export meter and paid at a rate that typically sits in the 4 to 15p per kWh range. For most commercial buildings SEG is a useful extra. For a school it is unusually important — because of the way a school uses electricity.

Why the school load profile makes SEG matter

A school’s demand curve is unlike almost any other building. It is busy from roughly 8am to 4pm on weekdays for about 190 days a year — a genuinely good match for daytime solar while term is running. But the panels generate most in July and August, during the summer holidays, when the building is nearly empty, and again at weekends all year round. The result is that a non-boarding school typically self-consumes only a portion of what it generates, and exports the rest. That is not a flaw in the panels — it is simply the timetable. SEG matters because it pays for exactly that exported generation, so the electricity a term-time school cannot use itself still earns money instead of being handed to the grid for nothing.

Which suppliers and tariffs to look at

SEG rates are set individually by each supplier, so there is no single national figure — they move around within the 4 to 15p per kWh range, and some tariffs are fixed while others track the wholesale price. For a larger, non-domestic school array the export tariffs commonly considered include Octopus Outgoing and E.ON Next Export, among others. We deliberately avoid quoting a specific pence figure here, because export rates change and a stale number would mislead your governors. What we do instead is compare the current non-domestic export tariffs at the point you commission, and fold the realistic export income into your cost and payback model so the numbers hold up.

SEG or a battery? Two ways to fix the same problem

The holiday-and-weekend over-generation can be handled two ways. SEG monetises the export at the export rate — simple, no extra kit beyond the metering. A battery instead keeps that generation, storing summer and weekend output so the school can use it in term-time, displacing grid electricity bought at the much higher import rate. Because import is usually several times the export rate, a battery frequently leaves the school better off overall — but it adds capital. In practice the strongest economics often come from a small battery (typically 50 to 150 kWh) plus SEG on whatever is still exported. We model both against your actual half-hourly meter data, including a holiday period, rather than guessing.

Eligibility — is your school’s array covered?

SEG eligibility is straightforward for a properly installed school system. The installation must be MCS-certified — both the equipment and the installer — and rated up to 5 MW, which covers every school project including the largest MAT-wide programmes. You also need a meter capable of measuring export, normally a smart meter or a dedicated export meter, which we fit as standard. Once the system is commissioned we help you register with an SEG supplier so the export income starts flowing. Term-time schools stand to gain the most, which is why we build SEG into every proposal — see the numbers for a typical primary school install.