Last updated 10 September 2026
Quick answer: If your NSW agency has 100 or more staff, the Net Zero Government Operations Policy requires you to publish three solar numbers every year: installed capacity in MW, annual generation in MWh, and annual bill savings. Electricity data arrives automatically through Contract 3062. Solar generation does not, so each agency has to produce it themselves.
The NSW Net Zero Government Operations Policy came into effect in December 2024 and runs from 2024-25 to 2029-30. Most of the attention has gone to the headline targets, like electrifying buildings and fleets. Buried in the reporting section is a smaller requirement that lands on whoever looks after the agency’s buildings: you now have to report how much your rooftop solar actually generated. For a lot of agencies that turns out to be harder than it sounds.
Who does the policy apply to?
The policy applies to all general government sector agencies with 100 or more staff. General government sector means the agencies listed in the Classification of Agencies appendix to NSW Budget Paper 1: departments, health districts, TAFE, the police, and so on. Agencies with fewer than 100 staff can report voluntarily.
It does not apply to local government. Councils are a separate sphere and are not in the Budget’s classification, so no NSW council has a solar reporting obligation under this policy. I’ve written separately about what councils actually have to show, because it’s a different and weaker set of obligations.
What has to be reported on solar?
Action 24 says agencies will publicly report on the policy every year, using the key performance indicators in Table 4. The first reporting period was 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Under the Energy use KPI, Table 4 asks for:
- installed solar PV capacity, measured in MW
- annual solar generation, measured in MWh
- annual bill savings from that solar.
Each agency also has to submit an annual compliance statement attesting that the policy requirements have been met, or explaining why not. DCCEEW collates the data and publishes it on the NSW Climate and Energy Action website, so the numbers are public.
The Monitoring and Reporting Framework that sits under the policy goes further. Its Table 3 wants the solar data per installation: a list of systems installed in the reporting year, installed capacity and annual generation in MWh for each one, electricity consumption savings from self consumption if available, expenditure savings in dollars for each one, the portfolio totals, and the LGCs created and surrendered in the year. In the “data source” column, every one of those rows says Agency.
Why generation is the hard number
The policy sets up centralised data collection for most of what it asks for. Electricity consumption and spend flow through Contract 3062 (Retail Supply of Electricity) and are loaded straight into the government’s Sustainable Government Data Platform, also called CASPER. Gas comes through Contract 4000, LPG through Contract 349, waste through Contract 9698, fleet fuel through Contract 300. An agency mostly checks that data rather than collecting it.
Solar generation has no contract like that. It happens behind the meter, so the electricity retailer never sees it. The policy’s answer is one sentence: agencies “must provide DCCEEW with data where they do not use standard contracts”. In practice that means the facilities or sustainability team has to log into every inverter portal, across every brand installed over the years, pull a year of generation for each system, and add it up.
The framework knows this is a problem, because it offers a fallback. Where generation data or reliable calculations are unavailable, an agency can estimate using the Sydney average of 1.4244 MWh per kWp per year. A 50 kWp system becomes 71.22 MWh on paper. If you use a different method, you have to explain it in the report.
That fallback is convenient and I’d be careful with it. A system that tripped in August and sat dead until March still reports as 71.22 MWh if you estimate. The number goes into a published dataset and sits behind a compliance statement someone at executive director level signs off. Estimating is allowed. Estimating when you could have known the system was broken is a harder position to defend.
How are bill savings supposed to be calculated?
The framework gives the formula directly: annual solar generation in kWh multiplied by the electricity rate in dollars per kWh. It notes that the result is simple on a flat tariff and less so on a time of use tariff, where the value of the solar depends on when it was used. Either way, the generation figure is the input. If that’s wrong, the savings figure is wrong too.
The transition plan deadline
There is a second reason to get this data sorted now. Action 2 requires every in scope agency to have a long term net zero transition plan in place. The original deadline was 1 January 2026; a footnote in the policy records that the Minister has extended it to 1 January 2027. Each plan must include, among other things, cost effective solar PV opportunities including targets for solar generation, and a greenhouse gas emissions monitoring plan.
It’s hard to set a credible generation target for new solar if you can’t say what the existing arrays produced last year. And a monitoring plan that relies on someone remembering to export CSVs from six portals every June isn’t really a plan.
Where PV Fleet fits
This is the number PV Fleet produces as a matter of course. It connects to the inverter monitoring each system already has, whatever the brand, and records generation for every system every day. The monthly report for each site states the generation, and it shows where the data has gaps rather than quietly averaging over them, so you know what you’re attesting to. Savings are worked out the same way the framework describes, generation multiplied by a tariff you set. And because it watches for faults, the system that tripped in August gets flagged within hours, not discovered when someone opens the portal to do the annual report.
If you’re the person who has to produce the Table 4 solar figures for your agency, book a 15 minute demo and we’ll show you what the reporting looks like across a real portfolio.
And if you are planning a new system rather than reporting on an existing one, the free solar tools will give you roof azimuth, pitch, panel count and expected yield for any address before you talk to an installer.