Racing to buy a home battery? Read this first |
Australians are installing home batteries at a record rate.
Since July 2025, more than 260,000 households, businesses and organisations have installed home batteries under the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program.
The program offers a discount of about 30% on the upfront cost of installing eligible small-scale battery systems, which help cut power costs while taking pressure off the main electricity grid.
But from May 1, the government is changing how it calculates this discount. This is to keep the rebate sustainable as battery costs fall, while also discouraging people from installing oversized systems.
For a typical household battery with a storage capacity of about 10–13 kilowatt-hours (kWh), the May 1 rebate change will likely reduce upfront costs by between A$600 and $800.
That’s not a major saving. So it’s not worth rushing to buy a battery, especially if it doesn’t suit your needs.
Home batteries allow households to store solar energy for when they need it most – at night, for example – while cutting power costs. Batteries also help reduce our collective reliance on the energy grid, and fossil fuels more broadly.
Australians have installed 260,000 solar batteries to date, capable of storing 7.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy. That’s enough to power about half a million average homes for a day.
The government now wants up to two million households to have a battery within four years. That’s nearly eight times the current number.
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