Contact Energy vs Genesis Energy Solar Buy-Back

Bottom line up front: Both Contact Energy and Genesis Energy are big traditional gentailers that offer simple, flat solar buy-back rates rather than the time-of-use cleverness you get from Octopus or Ecotricity. As a rough guide, they currently sit in similar territory (usually somewhere between 8c and 13c per kWh exported, depending on plan and region), but the more important question is not the buy-back rate by itself; it is the combined picture of buy-back, daily fixed charge, anytime usage rate, and any plan-specific terms. For most solar households, Genesis tends to win on simplicity and a slightly cleaner solar product, while Contact can be competitive if you bundle gas and broadband. For the live, current cents-per-kWh figure, always check our Dynamic Tariff & Buy-Back Engine rather than trusting a number written in any article (including this one).

This guide is for Kiwi homeowners who either already have solar or are about to install it, and are trying to decide between the two largest legacy retailers in the country. We will compare the actual plan structures, the daily charges, the export caps, the small print, and the situations where one wins over the other. We will not crown a single winner, because the right answer depends on your usage pattern and your roof.

What "Buy-Back" Actually Means for NZ Homeowners

When your solar panels generate more electricity than your home uses at that moment, the surplus flows out to the grid. Your retailer pays you for those exported kilowatt-hours at the buy-back rate (sometimes called the export rate).

In New Zealand, buy-back rates are set by retailers individually, not regulated by the Electricity Authority. That means each retailer competes (or, in some cases, doesn't really compete) on the rate they pay you. The big gentailers, Contact, Genesis, Mercury, and Meridian, have historically offered flat buy-back rates that are simple but not the highest in the market.

If you want to see how the gentailers compare against the more dynamic players, our pillar guide on NZ solar tariffs and retailers lays out the full landscape.

Why the buy-back rate is only half the story

Here is the trap a lot of solar households fall into: they pick the retailer with the highest buy-back number and ignore the rest of the plan. That can cost you hundreds of dollars a year.

The four things that actually matter for a solar household are:

• Buy-back rate (cents per kWh exported)
• Anytime usage rate (cents per kWh you import from the grid, mostly at night and on cloudy days)
• Daily fixed charge (the daily line/network charge, in cents per day)
• Plan terms (export caps, contract length, bundling discounts, prompt-payment discounts)

A 14c buy-back on a plan with high usage rates and a high daily charge will lose to a 10c buy-back on a plan with low daily charges every time, especially in winter when your import is high and export is low.

Contact Energy: The Bundler's Choice

Contact Energy is one of the four major gentailers. It generates electricity (a lot of it geothermal), retails electricity and gas, and increasingly sells broadband. Its solar buy-back offer sits inside its standard residential plans rather than being a separate "solar plan" with bells and whistles.

How Contact handles solar

If you have solar and you're on a Contact residential plan, your exported energy is credited at their standard buy-back rate against your bill. The rate is flat (same cents per kWh regardless of time of day), and it applies to all exported units.

Contact's strength is bundling. If you have:

• Electricity
• Natural gas or LPG
• Broadband

...all on one Contact account, you typically pick up bundle discounts, prompt-payment credits, and a single bill. For a household with mains gas (hot water, cooking, heating) sitting in Auckland, Wellington, or Christchurch, that simplicity has real value beyond the cents-per-kWh number.

Where Contact falls short for solar households

Contact does not currently offer a time-of-use solar plan that lets a sharp household play the arbitrage game (charging a battery from low-priced grid power and exporting at peak). If you have a battery and you're keen to actively optimise, Contact is unlikely to be your best home.

The other watch-point is the daily fixed charge. Contact's residential daily charges in some regions are on the higher end of the market, particularly in Vector-supplied Auckland where lines charges are already significant. A high daily charge punishes low-import households (which is exactly what a well-sized solar home becomes).

Genesis Energy: The Solar-Friendly Legacy Player

Genesis is the largest electricity retailer in New Zealand by customer numbers and has made a more visible effort to court solar customers than some of its peers. Genesis offers a dedicated solar product (their solar buy-back plan), and they have historically advertised solar buy-back as part of their consumer messaging.

How Genesis handles solar

Genesis pays a flat buy-back rate on exported energy on its solar plan. The plan sits alongside their standard electricity plan, and you opt into it once your system is commissioned and registered with your lines company.

Genesis is generally seen as a touch more solar-friendly on the legacy side, in that:

• Their solar plan is clearly badged and easy to find
• Customer service is generally aware of solar customers
• The administration of getting connected as a solar exporter is reasonably smooth

Genesis also has a multi-product story (gas, LPG, electricity), so if you've already got gas with them, staying for solar can be the simplest move.

Where Genesis falls short for solar households

Like Contact, Genesis does not run a true dynamic time-of-use solar export plan. If you're a battery owner who wants to charge at low rates and export at peak (the kind of thing the Ecotricity Resi-Flex plan is built around, or the time-of-use arbitrage available on Octopus's solar plans), Genesis is not the tool for the job.

Their buy-back rate, while reasonable, has historically not been the highest in the market either. Smaller and more agile retailers have routinely beaten the big gentailers on the headline cents-per-kWh number.

The Key Numbers Side-by-Side

Rather than quote specific cents here that will go out of date the moment we publish, here's how to read the comparison structurally:

• Buy-back rate: Contact and Genesis are usually within 1-2c of each other. Neither leads the market.
• Daily fixed charge: Varies significantly by region (Vector, Orion, Wellington Electricity, Powerco, Aurora, etc.). Both retailers pass these through, but their retail margins on top can differ.
• Anytime usage rate: Generally similar between the two; both are mid-pack rather than aggressive.
• Export caps: Neither retailer typically caps household-scale solar exports (sub-10 kW inverter), but check the small print on your specific plan.
• Bundle discounts: Contact has historically pushed bundling harder; Genesis tends to lead with single-product simplicity.

For the live, current figures, please use our Dynamic Tariff & Buy-Back Engine. We update it as retailers move their rates.

The daily fixed charge trap

This deserves its own subsection because it catches solar households out repeatedly. New Zealand has two daily-charge regimes: standard (higher daily fixed charge, lower per-kWh rate) and low-user (lower daily charge, higher per-kWh rate).

The Electricity Authority has been progressively phasing out the low-user fixed charge regulation, with the transition continuing through to 2027. That has real consequences for solar households, because a well-sized solar home imports very little energy from the grid, which historically made the low-user option the obvious pick.

As the low-user regime winds down, daily fixed charges are rising across the board, and the relative attractiveness of a high-export solar home against a high-daily-charge retailer is shifting. Both Contact and Genesis are passing these regulatory changes through, and you should expect your bill structure to look different in 2026 than it did in 2023.

What This Means for You

If you're an ROI Pragmatist

You want the lowest total annual cost, full stop. Neither Contact nor Genesis is likely to be the lowest-cost option in the market for a typical solar household. The smaller retailers and the more agile players (Octopus, Ecotricity, Frank, Electric Kiwi) often beat them on either the buy-back rate, the daily charge, or both.

That said, if you value billing simplicity and you're already on Contact or Genesis for gas, the switching effort might not be worth the 1-2c per kWh difference. Run the maths on your actual annual export volume. If you export, say, 3,000 kWh per year, 2c per kWh is $60. That's real money, but it's not life-changing money, and a cleaner billing relationship may be worth more to you than that.

If you're a Tech-Savvy Optimiser

Neither of these retailers is your home. You want time-of-use arbitrage, dynamic export pricing, and ideally an API or app that lets you schedule your battery against half-hourly wholesale prices. Octopus and Ecotricity are built for you; the big gentailers are not.

The exception: if you have solar without a battery and your export is mostly midday (when wholesale prices are usually low anyway), the simplicity of a flat buy-back at Genesis or Contact may net out similar to a dynamic plan. Run the numbers before assuming dynamic always wins.

If you're an Eco-Conscious Family

Both Contact and Genesis have substantial generation portfolios. Contact leans heavily on geothermal and hydro; Genesis has a more mixed portfolio that still includes some thermal (gas/coal) generation, although they have been progressively decarbonising. If generation mix matters to your household, you may prefer to look at Meridian (100% renewable) or Ecotricity (carbonzero certified) instead. Our Meridian solar buy-back guide covers the Meridian side in detail.

What Installers and Retailers Won't Always Tell You

A few honest things worth knowing before you sign up to anyone:

• The buy-back rate can change. Most NZ retailer plans allow them to adjust buy-back rates with notice. The rate you sign up on is not guaranteed for the life of your system.
• Switching retailers is free and easy. Under Electricity Authority rules, switching takes about 5-10 business days and there are no penalties on standard residential plans. If your retailer drops your buy-back rate, you can move.
• Your installer's "preferred retailer" might not be best for you. Some installers have referral arrangements with retailers. Always check the maths yourself rather than taking the installer's word.
• Buy-back is paid as a credit, not cash. Both Contact and Genesis credit your exports against your bill. If you generate more than you consume in a billing period, the credit rolls forward, it does not get paid out as cash.
• GST and your export credits. For residential solar, GST treatment of buy-back credits is generally not something you need to worry about. For commercial or rural installations, it's a different conversation and worth getting accountant advice on.

The Honest Verdict: Which Should You Pick?

If we had to call it for the average NZ solar household choosing strictly between these two:

• Pick Genesis if you want a clearly badged solar plan, slightly easier solar-specific customer service, and you don't already have a Contact bundle. Genesis tends to be the more solar-aware of the two on the legacy side.
• Pick Contact if you're bundling electricity with gas and broadband, value a single bill, and your bundle discount more than makes up for any small buy-back rate gap.

But honestly, for most solar households, neither is the best-value option in 2025. The dynamic-tariff players are paying more per exported kWh and giving you the tools to optimise. The big gentailers are convenient and familiar, but you usually pay for that convenience.

If you're still in the install-shopping stage, lock in your hardware decisions first; the retailer is the easy switch later. Get three free quotes from vetted installers and worry about the retailer after the panels are on the roof.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I have solar with Contact or Genesis without changing my plan?

You'll need to notify your retailer once your solar system is commissioned and your lines company has approved the export. Both Contact and Genesis will move you onto their solar-compatible plan structure, which is essentially their standard residential plan with the buy-back credit applied.

Is the Genesis buy-back rate higher than Contact's?

It varies. Historically the two have traded the lead by a cent or two and stayed close. Check our Dynamic Tariff & Buy-Back Engine for the current figures rather than relying on a static article.

Do Contact and Genesis offer time-of-use buy-back for solar?

Not in the way Octopus or Ecotricity do. Both Contact and Genesis pay a flat rate on exports regardless of time of day. If you want to play the peak-export arbitrage game, you need a dynamic-tariff retailer.

What happens to my buy-back rate when low-user fixed charges are phased out?

The phase-out (through to 2027) affects daily fixed charges more than buy-back rates directly. But it means your overall bill structure will shift: daily charges up, per-kWh rates relatively down. Solar households that export a lot benefit less from low-user pricing than they used to. Watch your total annual cost, not just the cents-per-kWh number.

Will Contact or Genesis cap my solar exports?

For standard residential systems (typically sub-10 kW inverter), neither retailer applies a household-level export cap on their standard plans. Your lines company, however, may apply a technical export limit at the meter (commonly 5 kW or 10 kW depending on the region and the network). Always check with your lines company before sizing up.

Can I run a battery on a Contact or Genesis plan?

Yes, but you won't get any time-of-use advantage from the retailer side. Your battery would primarily be used for self-consumption (storing midday solar for evening use) rather than grid arbitrage. If you've invested in a battery specifically to play time-of-use, neither of these retailers will let you extract that value.

How often can buy-back rates change?

Retailers can change buy-back rates with notice as per their terms of service, typically 30 days. There is no regulated floor. If your retailer drops your buy-back rate, you can switch retailers freely without penalty.

Are Contact and Genesis really worse than Octopus or Ecotricity for solar?

For a household that actively wants to optimise (battery, EV, smart load shifting), yes, the dynamic players generally win. For a household that just wants simple billing and is happy to take a flat rate, the gap is much smaller and might be worth less than the convenience of staying with a familiar provider.

Does Contact's gas bundling actually save money?

It can, particularly if you're a mains-gas household in Auckland or Wellington. The bundle discount is real, but you should still compare the total annual cost against running electricity-only with a different retailer plus standalone gas, especially if your hot water and heating could feasibly switch to heat pump electric over the next few years.

Where can I see the live buy-back rates for both retailers?

Our Dynamic Tariff & Buy-Back Engine tracks current rates across all major NZ retailers, updated as they change. It's the single source of truth we keep current.

Where to Go From Here

If you're still weighing the gentailers against the dynamic players, our pillar guide on NZ solar tariffs and retailers lays out the full landscape. If you specifically want to understand what the dynamic-tariff alternatives look like, read our deep dives on Octopus OctopusPeaker and OctopusFlexi and Ecotricity Resi-Flex. For a comparison with the fourth major gentailer, our Meridian Energy solar buy-back guide covers the renewable-generation angle.

The most important thing: do not pick a retailer before you've sorted your hardware. The system on your roof will be there for 25 years; the retailer can change every month if you want.