One of the biggest events in Australian home solar will formally kick off tomorrow, but the federal government battery rebate has already made some major changes to the local market.
In early April, Labor announced it would roll out a national battery rebate should it win the election, and since doing so has been scrambling to get its ducks lined up for the launch on July 1 — tomorrow. Last week, the Albanese Government finalised necessary amendments to regulations needed to the get the $2.3bn Cheaper Home Batteries Program in place.
But even prior to this, Australian solar power system owners were getting quotes and having batteries installed after the industry was reassured they could do so and still get the rebate as long as the battery wasn’t switched on prior to July 1. This allowance was to help avoid a “valley of death” for the industry whereby sales enquiries would have dried up between Labor’s election victory and the official start of the program.
The road to this point hasn’t been smooth and given all the moving parts involved, it would have been a surprise if it was. For example, the aim was to make the national government battery rebate “stackable” with state schemes; but various programs ended or were changed. Along with some tweaks to the federal scheme, this led to some battery rebate backlash and disappointed buyers seeking cancellations and deposit refunds.
But even given the hiccups and confusion — not to mention some poor behaviour from a minority of solar businesses and buyers alike — to say there has been great interest in the scheme would be an understatement. Here at SolarQuotes, we’ve processed tens of thousands of home battery quotes in the past few months; matching prospective buyers to trusted pre-vetted installers.
Battery Buyer Economic Priorities
One of the questions SolarQuotes asks on its quoting form is:
“Economically speaking, which battery feature is most important to you?”
It’s a tick-and-flick question with one of three possible responses:
- Lowest bills.
- Quickest payback time.
- Blackout protection.
A battery that will result in the lowest electricity bills isn’t necessarily the one that will give you the fastest payback, and vice versa. For example, a bigger battery to cover a worst-case night-time consumption scenario can push out payback time.
The results have been very interesting. Based on submissions from May 5 to June 28, 2025:
- 39% said lowest bills was most important.
- 17% chose quickest payback time.
- 43% selected blackout protection.
Blackouts can mean big financial loss for some — for example, for businesses in terms of perished goods or downtime. But obviously many prospective home battery buyers put significant dollar value on this aspect as well, even though the mains grid in Australia is (generally speaking) very reliable1.
Battery Installs Eclipses Solar-Only
On most days in the past few months, SolarQuotes has seen the number of quote submissions for battery upgrades and solar + battery installs bypass the total of solar-only submissions for the day. A recent report from solar energy consultants SunWiz indicates our experience hasn’t been an isolated one.
SunWiz says last month saw more battery than PV systems sold in a single month in Australia for the first time. There were 1.4 battery systems for every solar system, and all states and territories have seen major spikes in attachment rates with the exception of Tasmania.
State/territory battery attachment rates
Also:
- The average battery size (capacity) jumped to 15 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in May, which was well above the typical 10kWh.
- Brands that are easy to retrofit into existing PV systems are being favoured.
“Retailers will eventually pivot back to outbound PV+ESS sales — but today’s inbound demand is dominated by retrofit buyers,” says SunWiz founder Warwick Johnston.
And that’s not surprising given more than 4 million solar systems have been installed across Australia to date. While these systems are saving their owners a bundle of cash during the day, during the evening and overnight are a different story without a battery — particularly with the increase in prevalence of Time of Use (ToU) electricity plans that have much higher consumption rates during peak pricing periods.
If you’re still mulling over whether residential energy storage is right for you, check out our comprehensive home battery guide. And you can stay up-to-date with all the latest developments related to the battery rebate by subscribing to the SolarQuotes weekly newsletter, delivered to your inbox each Tuesday.
Footnotes
- The National Electricity Market reliability standard requires at least 99.998 per cent of forecast customer demand to be met each year – (added) but see the note from commenter Alex in the thread below. ↩
About Michael Bloch
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The grid reliability standard has very little relevance to the number, frequency and duration of power outages experienced by homes and businesses.
The standard *excludes* supply interruptions on the power distribution network due to storms, falling trees/branches, errant vehicles etc bringing down power lines/poles or failure of local transformers etc. These are responsible for ~ 98% of all local power outages.
Anyone in regional/rural Australia will be used to the greater incidence of power outages as the distribution network is far more vulnerable to such issues.
Thanks for your comment Alex, I’ll flag it in the related footnote.
Agreed I live in the nsw illawarra and have experienced 5 blackouts since late 2024.
Having only tank water that means no water also no lights, fridge etc.
No more Having doubled my pvc now 13kw and 20kwh Sungrow battery. Seamless change over. Since then didn’t notice 2 short blackouts.
Will get another 5kwh Sungrow added hopefully soon.
This amuses me greatly.
Historically, whenever there were COALition scare campaigns about electricity prices, solar sales would take off.
Their scare campaigns about BLACKOUTS! seem to be driving a lot of battery sales.
My prediction was/is that this scheme will be oversubscribed well before 2030. Maybe the COALition could run a scare campaign about that.
Is it a scare campaign when electricity prices actually went up?
Would it be a scare campaign about the scheme being oversubscribed when you expect that it will be oversubscribed?
Yes. I have yet to see Politicians or the Billionaire media get so excited about the price of KFC. How about explaining to consumers why prices are rising instead of blaming the source of electrons?
Would it be a scare campaign pointing out the scheme will be oversubscribed?
Yes. I actually want consumers to install batteries faster.
We had crazy winter and peak summer usage. This is significantly as a result over having a largish 1980’s Mcmansion with thin leaky windows and dried out shrunken seals and no shade.
Have spent the last 7 yrs working through a tonne of upgrades to reduce our energy intensity.
First up 6.6 pv only system. Then replace gas storage hot water with reclaim heat pump, then roof repairs, solar king vents and painting it arctic white. These changes halved our energy use but it was still really high +$15/day
In following years have spent a lot of time installing patio + removable shade sails to maximise winter gains and summer shade.
These changes have allowed us to set our thermoststs higher in summer (now at 24-25 not 16 degrees) and lower in winter. However still spending ~$10/day on power as stay at home partner likes a warm or cool house
This April to avoid another winter mega bill upgraded solar PV up to 22kw and 16kw battery. Now using just $2day in winter and never been warmer
Being only allowed to export a maximum of 5kW to the grid on single phase here in FNQ is an incentive for those of us with larger solar systems to install a battery to store the excess power which otherwise is simply discarded.
Also our lengthy periods of heavily overcast weather mixed with several grid outages a year means a bigger battery is better.