SA Power Networks (SAPN) has been given the green light to continue its Market Active Solar initiative for another year; a project seeking to support and reward solar owners to better manage exports and self-consumption for the benefit of the wider grid.
What Is The SAPN Market Active Solar (MAS) Trial?
The Market Active Solar initiative is assisting in refining SAPN’s approach to integrating rooftop solar with the grid by offering innovative new retail electricity plans rewarding solar customers for being more responsive to wholesale energy market pricing and helping them to maximise the value from their solar investment.
The trial was to initially run from late 2024 for 12 months, but the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has granted SAPN an interim ring-fencing waiver1 that will allow it to continue to conduct the MAS trial from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026.
“The scope of interim waiver is limited to 100 existing Engie MAS trial customers and is granted with waiver conditions that provide transparency on total costs incurred by SAPN, data on registered customers, flexible export capacity allocations and customer consent arrangements,” said an AER announcement published last week.
The trial is being supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of the Agency’s Advancing Renewables Program.
Why The MAS Trial?
Solar energy exports are reaching levels at times that they are becoming difficult for grid operators to manage and can potentially pose a threat to network stability. One of the ways to tackle this is with export charges during such periods to signal system owners to self-consume more of the energy they generate.
Getting rooftop solar owners on board responding to market price signals by voluntarily reducing output when needed through the use of automated processes is a key step in the evolution of Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) to support very high levels of renewables, and will facilitate continued growth in the solar market says SAPN.
But the general idea of export charges (a so-called ‘sun tax’) understandably don’t sit too well with many solar customers; even though there would be a reward aspect under most related schemes.
The SAPN difference is the MAS trial has a greater focus on carrots rather than sticks.
How Does The Market Active Solar Trial Work?
This trial combines SAPN’s pioneering flexible solar exports infrastructure with Engie’s2 Solar Advantage plan in South Australia, rewarding participants with incentives rather than penalising them.
Participants receive $10 a month rolling trial credit in addition to a $100 sign up credit and $50 from a survey that will be completed at the end. The terms and conditions for the Engie Solar Advantage plan can be found here; but note those were last updated in November 2024.
“MAS is an industry-first solution demonstrating how shared digital infrastructure and collaboration between network operators and retailers can create a platform for dynamic solar curtailment, benefiting customers, retailers, and the grid,” states SAPN.
While the trial hasn’t been without its hiccups, it is revealing important information about system design, customer experience and understanding for potentially informing a more formal program in the time ahead. This knowledge won’t just benefit SAPN, but also operators in other states.
If you have an hour to kill, you can get the latest insights in the following SAPN video discussing MAS progress as at October 2025.
On a related note, in recognition of its efforts and innovative nature of the project, SA Power Networks was recently named a winner in the Premier’s Award for Productivity Improvement (Energy) for the Market Active Solar project.
“This award reflects our commitment to innovation, sustainability, and putting customers at the centre of South Australia’s energy transition,” said SAPN.
About Michael Bloch
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I have to say, the whole “solar glut problem” thing has me confused.
If you were an electricity retailer selling power to your customers at 30c plus a kwh in the evening, but paying your customers less than 1/10th of that for power in the middle of the day, wouldn’t you be installing batteries all over the suburbs to suck up that dirt cheap power to sell back 5 or 6 hours later for an eye watering profit?
All well and good, but the carrots are not very tempting! So $100 + ($10 x 12) + $50 = $270 for the year. I’m with Engie (but not on the trial) and this last month alone, as of yesterday, had a nett FIT credit of $220. So it looks like the stick will have to be wielded.
Once you have the hardware installed, as I have, and expect to self consume 100% during winter, how can you self consume in Summer? Air con will do some of that but not all, and again we tend not to use the electric oven in summer, but do in winter.
Until a month or so ago I was in the AGL / SAPN / Arena “Solar Grid Savers” trial, virtually the same thing, started last May.
Households with good solar exports and no battery invited to join the trial.
1 year period, 200hrs curtailment at their choosing, $250 up front credit, another $250 credit paid in 4 quarterly credits to the bill.
In SA 200 hours of curtailment, say worst case peak summer exports of say 60kwh a day / by say 6 good productive hours = 2000 kwh, at the 2c standard FIT was going to cost us about $40 max, so yeah a great deal.
We removed ourselves from the trial about 4 months early, because the ramping up curtailment was a MESS.
We found when it ramped up in Nov, the curtailment was not 1.5kwh min export as it was supposed to be, but 0 kwh, and the lack of some buffer was costing us between the zero exports and our solar covering our usage.
It might have been a matter of 10c, 20c etc during the change over, but it was making enough difference to warrant leaving !!