Guide · South East Queensland · reviewed July 2026
No. You keep it. The Queensland 44c Solar Bonus feed-in tariff is tied to your premises and account, not your retailer — so switching electricity plans or retailers does not forfeit it. It continues until 1 July 2028 whoever you're with.
This is one of the most expensive myths in Queensland energy. A large number of solar households believe that if they switch retailers, they'll lose their generous 44c feed-in tariff — so they never shop around, and quietly overpay on their usage rate for years while protecting a feed-in rate that was never actually at risk.
The 44c rate comes from the Queensland Government's Solar Bonus Scheme, closed to new entrants since 2012. The key fact people miss is who the entitlement belongs to. It is attached to:
Your retailer simply administers the credit and is reimbursed for it. Change the retailer and the entitlement doesn't move — the new retailer picks up administering exactly the same 44c credit. That's why it's often described as portable.
Notice what's not on that list: choosing a new retailer, or moving to a cheaper plan with your current one. Neither touches the feed-in tariff.
Here's the trap. Because the 44c credit is valuable, households guard it — and in guarding it, they stop comparing. But your bill has two moving parts:
A solar household that hasn't switched in five years is very often sitting on an uncompetitive usage rate — the exact thing a comparison would fix — while wrongly believing they can't move without losing the 44c. In many cases the saving on the usage rate is worth several hundred dollars a year, and the 44c comes along for the ride.
The mistake a naive comparison makes is crediting a new plan's ordinary feed-in tariff (often 1–5c) in place of your 44c — which makes switching look like it destroys value, and scares you off. The correct approach holds your 44c constant across every plan, because that's what actually happens, and compares only the parts that really change: the usage rate and supply charge.
That's exactly how BillCheck prices it. Upload your bill and it reads your real usage and your real feed-in rate, keeps a legacy tariff like the 44c fixed across every plan, and shows the genuine saving available from a better usage rate — no false "you'll lose your solar" scare, no confident wrong number.
Check your solar bill →Related: The loyalty tax on your bill · Plans you're not allowed to take · All questions
General information about the Queensland Solar Bonus Scheme as at July 2026, not personal advice. Scheme rules are set by the Queensland Government; confirm your own entitlement with your retailer or at qld.gov.au before making changes.