Queensland Conservation Council Energy Engineer Clare Silcock says that solar panels in the sunshine state are subsidising power companies, with retailers saving millions of dollars in costs a month.

The subsidies can be attributed to feed-in tariffs that are paid to households that export electricity back to the grid. These are well below wholesale prices, with some Queensland homeowners earning 7 cents per kilowatt hour despite the average spot price being 40 cents.

"Because the prices have been so high, we see a massive subsidy," Silcock tells the ABC.

"It's a bit of a turnaround from what we hear historically — that the feed-in tariff has been middle-class welfare and funnelling subsidies to people who can afford to put solar panels on the roof."

Those who applied for rooftop solar panels between 2008 and 2012 receive tariffs of 44 cents a kilowatt hour, with that rate locked in for those who remain at their property. For everyone else, the feed-in tariff sits at 9.3 cents per kilowatt hour, which is a 40 percent increase on last year’s tariff, which points to the rise in energy costs.

Australia Energy Council CEO Sarah McNamara believes the tariffs are high enough and should not be increased despite electricity cost pressures on Australian households.

"They are paid a fair price based on the actual value of that electricity at that time of day. And each retailer makes a judgement on what that electricity is worth," she says.

"Naturally, if you are generating excess electricity in the middle of the day, you will be competing with a lot of other solar PV units, so the price will likely be less than at other times in the day. There is a lot of solar and wind that's going to be generated at times when it's sunny and windy, and that tends to ensure that the value of it is somewhat reduced because we have plenty of supply."

McNamara says raising the tariffs further would hurt homeowners without solar power.

"In years gone by, governments had excessively high feed-in tariff rates that were way above the actual value of the electricity that was being fed back to the grid," she said.

"State governments were particularly keen to encourage the take-up of solar. Unfortunately that created heightened expectations from householders about what the value of that electricity they were pushing back into the grid was worth.

The QCC estimates that $30 million worth of free electricity was generated from Queensland rooftop solar, something McNamara disagrees with.

"The idea of feed-in tariffs is to replicate the actual value of that electricity where retailers otherwise purchase it on the wholesale market.”