{"id":101886,"date":"2026-09-14T06:01:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T20:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=101886"},"modified":"2026-09-13T22:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:32:17","slug":"australia-has-installed-half-a-million-batteries-whos-checking-theyre-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/australia-has-installed-half-a-million-batteries-whos-checking-theyre-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia Has Installed Half a Million Batteries. Who’s Checking They’re Safe?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Peter Hannam quoted me in RenewEconomy on Friday, saying I expect there are hundreds of thousands of solar and battery systems out there that aren’t optimally installed or configured, some of them carrying real potential for dangerous outcomes.<\/p>\n

He ran that alongside what Chris Bowen had told parliament two days earlier, when Dan Tehan asked whether the minister could guarantee every subsidised battery had been installed safely and to standard. Bowen’s answer was that the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme is “one of the world’s most rigorous schemes for compliance,” and that it had received 315 complaints against 800,000 installations in the past year. That’s 0.04 per cent.<\/p>\n

I want to show my working because “hundreds of thousands” isn’t a number I pulled out of my arse to sound alarming. If anything, it’s conservative compared to what you get from multiplying out the Clean Energy Regulator’s own inspection data.<\/p>\n

A complaint rate measures complaints, not compliance<\/h2>\n

Bowen’s 0.04% tells you how many people rang up to complain. I’m not sure about you, but one of the last places I’m gonna call if I fall out with a solar retailer is the Clean Energy Regulator. That number tells you nothing about how many systems are broken, badly installed, poorly designed, misconfigured, or underperforming.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the regulator has a second number. The CER conducts its own physical inspections of battery installations, separate from the complaints line, and publishes the results. As of 30 June 2026, it had inspected 3,425 systems and checked over 285,000 individual items against them. The result: 62.28 per cent of installations were rated substandard, which the CER defines as breaching at least one clause of an Australian Standard or industry guideline while still being safe to leave running, and a further 0.76 per cent were rated outright unsafe.<\/p>\n

To be fair to the installers, the biggest share of the substandard findings is labelling: missing warning labels at the switchboard, backed-up circuits not marked, no emergency services sticker on the meter box. The wiring faults, misconfigured RCDs, cables without proper mechanical or fire protection, and undersized overcurrent protection are the smaller share.<\/p>\n

Doing the maths Bowen didn’t<\/h2>\n

Bowen told the House that more than 530,000 batteries have gone in under the Cheaper Home Batteries program. Apply the regulator’s own inspection rate to that population and you get roughly 330,000 systems that are technically non-compliant and around 4,000 that are unsafe.<\/p>\n

That’s where “hundreds of thousands” comes from: the CER’s own audit percentage, multiplied by the CER’s own installation count.<\/p>\n

It indicates there are thousands of systems the regulator would classify as an immediate or developing risk to people or property, sitting in Australian homes right now.<\/p>\n

The stuff that will never even get inspected<\/h2>\n

The CER’s substandard and unsafe categories cover compliance with wiring rules. They say nothing about the much bigger bucket of batteries that are technically safe, technically compliant, and still doing a mediocre job for the person who paid for them. Some examples off the top of my head, based on what folks tell me every week:<\/p>\n