If you’ve ever wondered what difference a home battery actually makes to the way your home interacts with the grid, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has some new real-world data.
Buried in the latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics report is a comparison of 20,000 Australian homes that examines how households with rooftop solar and those with both solar and a battery imported and exported electricity during the second quarter of 2026.
The comparison reveals just how dramatically a battery can reduce a home’s reliance on the grid during the busy evening period, when electricity demand is typically highest.
How Did AEMO Compare Homes?
AEMO analysed two groups of 10,000 detached homes connected to the National Electricity Market.
One group had rooftop solar systems under 20 kW but no battery. The other had similar-sized solar systems paired with batteries that had been installed between July and December 2025. By comparing how the two groups imported and exported electricity over an entire quarter, AEMO could see what difference the batteries made in everyday operation.
The daily electricity profile of homes with batteries looked noticeably different.
Rather than exporting most of their excess solar around the middle of the day, battery homes held more of that energy back. As a result, they remained net exporters later into the afternoon and didn’t become significant grid importers until much later in the evening than homes with solar alone.
This shift in timing changes both when households use their own solar generation and when they rely on the grid.
Average household electricity imports and exports for homes with rooftop solar plus a battery and homes with rooftop solar only. Source: AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q2 2026.
A 73% Reduction In Evening Grid Imports
The biggest difference came during the evening peak between 4 pm and 9 pm.
Across the sample, homes with batteries imported an average of just 0.3 kW from the grid during those hours, compared with around 1.0 kW for homes with solar alone.
Don’t confuse these average power figures (kW) with energy consumption (kWh). They’re a measure of how much grid power the average home was drawing at any given moment during the evening peak.
In other words, homes with batteries drew 73% less power from the grid during the evening peak than similar homes with solar alone.
That’s an impressive figure, but it’s worth understanding exactly what it means.
It doesn’t mean battery owners reduced their total electricity use by 73%, or cut their bills by that amount. Instead, it shows how much less electricity they needed to draw from the grid during the period when demand is usually highest.
For the electricity system, that’s significant. When more households rely less on the grid during the evening peak, it helps reduce pressure on the network when it’s needed most.
Small Changes At Home Add Up Across The Grid
The study also helps explain some of the broader trends AEMO observed across the National Electricity Market during the quarter.
Wholesale electricity prices fell sharply, gas generation reached its lowest Q2 level in more than two decades, and grid-scale batteries increasingly set market prices during the evening.
While many factors contributed to those changes, AEMO says growing numbers of home batteries are reshaping demand by charging during the day and reducing grid imports during peak demand.
Real-World Evidence
There’s no shortage of modelling showing what home batteries are expected to do.
What’s different here is that AEMO wasn’t modelling future behaviour. It was measuring what thousands of Australian households actually did.
For anyone curious about how batteries change the way a home interacts with the grid, this comparison provides one of the clearest real-world snapshots yet.
If you’d like to see what those findings could mean for your own home, our home battery guide explains battery types, costs, rebates and the key things to consider before buying.
About Kim Wainwright
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