Fact Check: No, The Battery Rebate Isn’t Ending

Across the country, installers are bending over backward to get systems in before the federal battery rebate reduces on May 1. Note I wrote “reduces”. The rebate is declining, not disappearing.

When Does The Federal Battery Rebate End?

While the Cheaper Home Batteries Program incentive will fall in May, it’s not scheduled to end until December 31, 2030. If you don’t have an installation lined up prior to the end of April, you haven’t missed out.  For a battery size suitable for a typical household, the rise in the installed cost will often be under 10%.  It may not even be that much, thanks to falling battery prices.

But according to some solar installation companies, the federal battery rebate is ending.  While I don’t believe they think this themselves, it is what their online advertising says.

Whacky Adverts

This error-ridden advertisement from SolarRun is enough to give me the runs:

The ad starts with:

Except it’s not.  But this doesn’t stop them from going on to say…

But people aren’t going to miss out.  The rebate isn’t going to end for nearly 5 years.  From May through December 2026, it will still be possible to get nearly $7,000 in rebate – provided the installed battery is really big.

Neither this month nor the next is your last chance to save thousands.  If you get a 14kWh battery after April, the rebate will be over $3,700.  If you get a 28kWh battery, it will be over $6,000.  And with a 50kWh battery, the total rebate is close to $7,000.  As for your carbon footprint, you can still get a battery and reduce that after the end of April.  No one’s going to stop you.  The rebate just won’t be as high.

Perhaps they included the above line above because they’re aiming at the sort of homeowner who’s into sustainability involving composting cow pats with various grades of bull shit.  If you get a battery after the end of April, the amount you pay may change, but nothing about its sustainability will alter overnight.

Here’s that $7,000 figure again, and I don’t know where it came from. If you get a 20.9 kWh battery installed now, the maximum possible rebate would be exactly $7,000.  But it’s really weird to assume that’s what people are going to be missing out on.  I kind of doubt they only install 20.9 kWh batteries, and after April that battery will still receive $4,920 in rebate.

Even More Whack

Here’s another ad heralding the end of the battery rebate.  This one is from ElectrifyHome:

This one came as part of a social media post containing additional information that explained that what’s written above isn’t correct.  But that doesn’t stop what’s up there from being BS.  You can’t scrub away perfidy using small print.  What’s perfidy? Well, here’s an example:

That’s not true.  Not only is it not true, there has never been any reason to even think it might be true.  At no point has the government suggested the rebate might end then.  While the government has already overhauled the scheme once and could do it again, to expect them to announce a surprise ending on April 30 is completely bonkers.  Even if Richard Head down at the pub swore blue that it was ending on April 30, and for some reason you believed him, you still have a responsibility to check how likely that is before basing an advertising campaign on it.

Because 4 years, 9 months, and 3 and a half weeks isn’t long enough?  Because that’s the amount of time before it ends.

Is that April 30, 2030?  If it is, that’s still a bit early, as it’s a whole nine months before the rebate ends.  Talk about needing a long time to get your ducks in a row.

It Didn’t Have To Be This Way

Most installers are bust to bits and struggling to get systems in before the rebate drop at the end of April.  You’re going to have a hard time finding anyone who’ll commit to installing a battery before May, so instead of plastering dodgy advertisements on the internet, all these companies had to do was advertise that they can get a battery in before the rebate is reduced, and they would have got plenty of interest.  But instead, they went for advertising that makes them seem either…

(a) Wildly incompetent, or…

(b) Dishonest.

Or in my opinion, both.

Rebate Reduction Depends On Battery Size

The end of April rebate cut will hurt, but by how much depends on the size of the battery. If you’re getting one from 12-16 kWh, which is an acceptable size for most households, it will be unpleasant, but not unbearable.  But if you’re planning to get a big battery from 30-50kWh, then the cut will sting so bad it’ll feel like it came with free lemon juice.

Right now, the battery rebate is straightforward $333 – or very close to it – for every kilowatt-hour of usable capacity for the first 50 kWh.  So if you get a 14 kWh battery, the rebate would be $4,662, and for a 50 kWh battery, it would be $16,650.  There are administration costs that have to come out of this, which make the rebate smaller in practice, because they have to be paid whether or not your quote says you’re getting the full rebate.  But I’m not going to worry about them, and you shouldn’t either, as there’s nothing you can do about them.  Just keep in mind they reduce the actual size rebate by around 3-10%.

From May 1, the rebate becomes much more complicated, switching to a tiered system, with the rebate amount depending on battery size.  The rebate per kWh will drop to $270 – a 19% decrease from what it is now.  But only the first 14 kWh of usable storage capacity will receive that much.  That’s the first tier.  There are three of them, and they work like this:

• Usable capacity from 1-14 kWh (5kWh minimum): $270 per kWh
• Usable capacity from 15-28 kWh:  60% of $270 = $162 per kWh
• Usable capacity from 29-50 kWh:  15% of $270 = $41 per kWh

Rounding issues mean the rebate may not work out to those amounts on the dot, but they will be close.

When put into a graph, it looks like this:

It starts off as a moderate cut for up to 14kWh, then grows to a much larger cut by the time  28 kWh is reached, and by the time it hits 50 kWh it’s enormous.  By battery size, the rebate reductions on May 1st will be:

• 14 kWh battery = $880 rebate cut
• 20 kWh battery = $1,960 rebate cut
• 28 kWh battery = $3,320 rebate cut
• 50 kWh battery = $6,960 rebate cut

Even if you’re only planning to get 14 kWh or less, that’s enough of a drop to hurt.  But, as a percentage of the installed price, it’s not too bad. If you are getting a pricier battery, such as a 13.5 kWh Tesla Powerwall 3, it might only add around 7% to the installed cost. For one that’s lower cost, but still decent quality, it might add 11% or more.

To find out what amount of incentive you can claim for your preferred battery, use our federal battery rebate calculator.

Price Increase May Be Less Than Rebate Decline

If you’re getting a 14 kWh battery and the rebate falls by $880, it’s reasonable to expect its installed cost to rise by about $880 from May 1.  But the actual increase may be less for 2 reasons:

1. Battery installers won’t be so rushed and may lower prices as demand falls.
2. Batteries will continue to fall in price.

There’s no guarantee these effects will apply, but I’m expecting them to at least slightly offset the rebate decline.

The Rebate Ends In Nearly 5 Years

The actual end of the federal battery rebate is over 4 years and 9 months away.  The rebate will reduce over time, but it won’t disappear until then, so it has a lot of life left.  Or at least it does if the government doesn’t change it, which they’ve already done once, with government departments reportedly modelling further changes, although Labor has given zero public signal that it intends to further reduce the incentive.

Hopefully, they won’t alter it again.  While I can’t be certain they won’t keep their fiddly fingers off it, I have unshakable faith they won’t suddenly announce that it’s ending in April.

If I put all the currently planned future rebate reductions into a graph, I get this ugly monstrosity. I intended for it to look pretty, like a rainbow, but that’s not at all what happened:

If you get a 14 kWh battery from July to December in 2030, at the very end of the battery rebate, then it will be 25% its current amount, while for a 50 kWh battery, it will be 13%.  But these figures leave out inflation. If this averages 3% per year, the rebate amounts at the end of 2030, as a percentage of the current rebates in today’s money, will be:

• 14 kWh battery: 22%
• 50 kWh battery: 11%

Don’t Panic!

The battery rebate isn’t ending on April 30 this year, and is scheduled to continue until December 31, 2030 – although it will be pretty low by that point.  If you want to avoid the April reduction, it’s going to be very hard to find an installer who can fit you in.  The two ads I’ve displayed on this page show it’s not impossible, but it is going to be hard to find an installer who’s trustworthy. And when you’re blowing the one and only time a property can use the federal battery rebate, you definitely want an installer you can trust.

For accurate information on the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, read our guide to the federal battery rebate.