Battery Rebate Backflips Trigger Petitions & Mass Refunds

Hundreds of homeowners and installers expecting to stack the federal battery rebate with cancelled state schemes have been left in the lurch, launching petitions and scrambling to get their deposits back as they ask the question: is it still worth getting a battery with the federal incentive alone?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Energy Minister Chris Bowen first unveiled the Cheaper Home Batteries Program in April during the federal election campaign, he told an industry briefing that he’d consulted with his WA and NSW government counterparts about their respective state rebates.

“The [WA and NSW energy ministers] basically agreed that we’ll do collectively whatever it takes to make it stackable. My understanding this requires a small tweak to NSW legislation. But basically you’ll get both rebates,” he said at the time.

So Much For Stacking Rebates

Just a few months later, Bowen’s assurance is up in smoke before the federal rebate has even begun. WA has watered down its battery incentive scheme dramatically, and added a significant new requirement of mandatory participation in a Virtual Power Plant (VPP).

NSW went even further, effectively ditching its state rebate entirely. Similarly, the Northern Territory quietly ended its rebate and Solar Victoria halted its battery loan program, supposedly because both schemes had met their targets — the fact a new federal rebate was about to arrive in a matter of weeks was of course just a complete coincidence.

Installers across the country have subsequently been locked into phone call marathons with customers who had paid deposits based on quotes that relied on stacking both federal and state rebates.

Amidst the industry chaos, there’s been reports of homeowners facing long delays on replies to refund requests, while some installers have tried to offer unhappy clients additional battery capacity to dissuade them from cancelling the job.

Petition Calls For Battery Rebate Reinstatement

Some of the comments left on a petition calling for the reinstatement of the NSW battery rebate.

The epicentre of anger seems to be NSW, where hundreds of people have signed a petition launched by RenewCo Solar founder Matthew Summerville calling for the reinstatement of the scheme.

The petition claims that “industry stakeholders have expressed that the sudden policy shift was implemented without adequate consultation, leading to operational and financial challenges for small businesses in the solar and battery installation sector.”

One of the signatories, Sonny, left the following comment:

“My decision had always been not to have a solar battery due to cost but the combined federal and state rebates offered as a combined deal made it a financial possibility, as I’m sure it did for many people. To pull the rug from under existing contracts that can’t be installed before a sudden deadline etc is very unfair.”

Another, Philip, wrote:

Paid for 15KW + 24Kw battery install AFTER the federal rebate announced, in good faith … as I received the NSW grant – (and recent govt update NOW they are not stackable) I am no longer eligible for the federal rebate – a loss of over $10K. What a govt screw up!”

Battery Installers Warned In WA

WA authorities report that letters have been sent to around 1,300 retailers, promoters and installers to make sure that promotion of the state rebate is “consistent with official government information and do not mislead consumers”.

In one case, a trader has been accused of unlawfully using the State Government logo and falsely claiming that registrations were open, subsequently using questionnaires to gather personal information.

Plenty of people in WA have been unhappy with quotes secured before the state launches its rebate on July 1, but most of the ire is directed at the state government rather than installers.

In response to SolarQuotes coverage of the WA rebate changes, commenter Carilyn Bee wrote:

“We were promised a $5,000 rebate — now it’s $1,300. That’s not support, it’s a token gesture. And to make it worse, we’re forced into a VPP just to access it? This watered-down rebate is an insult to the people who planned in good faith.”

Another commenter, Rob Gregory, wrote of the WA scheme:

“We’re reclaiming our deposit in the basis that it’s completely different from what the provider was offering (and in fairness to them, expecting) making it no longer economical to expand our system even with the rebate, especially with compulsory VPP rolled in.”

Are You Entitled To A Refund On A Battery Deposit?

If you have paid a deposit on a quote that was conditional on state and federal rebates being in place, you should be able to secure a refund. If the installer didn’t actually specify that the quote was conditional on state and federal rebates, then you might even have a case to get the install done at the original quoted price, according to SolarQuotes’ resident-fact checker Ronald Brakels, who emphasises that he isn’t a lawyer and his advice isn’t to be taken as legal advice.

“If a person can’t get a rebate that was included in the quoted price, they should be able to get out of it without penalty. It’s the installer who’s more at risk of having to install at a low price if they only mentioned that the quoted price was conditional on rebates being received in small print,” Ronald says.

Are Batteries Still Worth It Without State Rebates?

Cities in states or territories where battery rebates/loans have recently changed are highlighted in yellow.

What does the loss or watering down of state schemes do to the payback period of batteries over the long term?

In Sydney, a 10kWh battery that relies on only the federal rebate has a simple payback period of  8.3 years, while in Perth it is 7.6 years. That doesn’t factor in the additional savings from the reduced WA state rebate, which further drops the payback period to 6.4 years.

This is all based on an overnight electricity consumption of 7kW – someone with higher energy use would see a shorter payback time.

Joining a VPP, as is required to get the WA rebate, improves the payback period further still.

In both NSW and WA, the payback period for batteries is within a reputable battery brand’s warranty period of 10 years or longer even without a VPP.

The same can’t be said of battery installs in the other states and territories that have dropped their rebates or loans. In Victoria, a battery’s payback period is 13.9 years, while in the NT, it is 13.7 years.

Whether or not a battery is still worth the investment in Victoria and the NT depends on how much value one puts on blackout protection or the environmental benefits of displacing fossil fuels with batteries.

Read our dedicated explainer page for more on battery payback. We also have a page summarising federal and state battery incentives.