The Cheaper Home Batteries Program. Are you ready to get a major rebate?
Have you been considering adding battery storage to your rooftop solar system? Or are you still weighing up whether to install a complete system, including rooftop panels and a battery?
If you’re a homeowner, small business owner, or involved in a community facility, now’s the time to crunch the numbers and make a decision. Like, right now!
We expect it to be very popular, so you need to get onto it ASAP!
The program provides 2.3 billion Dollars, nationally. Some quick sums of existing homes with solar that owners will want to add a battery and the volume of new installations, our estimates suggest the 2.3 Billion will have run out in under 2 years.
10 things we know about the Cheaper Home Batteries Program?
- The Cheaper Home Batteries Program will launch on July 1, 2025.
- It will offer a rebate of up to $372 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of usable battery capacity.
- Batteries must meet certain requirements to be eligible and must be installed by an Accredited Installer (see details below).
- The subsidy is not means-tested. (unlike the Solar Victoria Solar Panel Rebate)
- The rebate can be combined with incentives from existing state/territory schemes.
- The rebate is capped at one battery per property, so if you have holiday home you can get the rebate for that property as well.
- It’s an expansion of the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), which already provides the framework for the long-running and hugely popular national solar panel rebate.
- In addition to homes, the subsidy is also available to small businesses and community facilities.
- Battery size is limited to between a 5 – 50kWh, the larger the battery the larger the rebate
- As with the solar panel rebate, the subsidy amount will reduce each year until the end of 2030, when the scheme ends.
How much will you save off the cost of installing a battery?
For an average size home battery of 10 kWh usable capacity, the incentive will be around $3,300 in 2025. A 20 kWh will be around $6,600 Rebate
Which batteries will be eligible for the Cheaper Home Batteries Program?
– Only batteries approved by the Clean Energy Council are eligible.
– The minimum amount of usable capacity covered under the scheme is 5 kWh.
– The maximum amount of usable capacity is 50 kWh (although if you install a system up to 100 kWh, you will still receive the rebate for a 50-kWh system).
– Installations where solar is already present on the premises are eligible (the rebate won’t apply to standalone battery setups).
– Installations in homes, small businesses, or community buildings are eligible.
– On- and off-grid systems are eligible.
– Solar batteries must be capable of connecting to a Virtual Power Plant (VPP), although there’s no requirement to join a VPP. ( Virtual Power Plant offered by electricity suppliers allowing them access to your battery)
What size battery should you get? Talk to an experienced installer
While every home is different, in general, adding any size battery will be more advantageous than a solar system with no battery.
Keep in mind that getting a solar system with battery storage isn’t about going completely off-grid. The battery is there to allow you to maximise the savings from your rooftop solar by storing excess / unused generated solar electricity in the battery. The stored electricity can then be discharged to offset you nighttime electricity consumption, reducing your reliance on the grid (and reducing your power bills).
When the Smart Energy Council crunched the numbers on household power usage, it concluded that the battery you need to lower bills is smaller than you might think.
It found that to avoid using power during the evening peak, over 90 per cent of households could get by with a battery as small as 6 or 7 kilowatt-hours.
That’s smaller than the average battery installation, with two of the most popular batteries in Australia – from BYD and Tesla – being around 13 kWh.
Nevertheless, with this limited opportunity to receive the Cheaper Home Battery Program rebate, it’s worth thinking about getting the biggest solar battery you can afford.
Why is there a focus on battery storage?
With Australia famously leading the world in our rate of rooftop solar installations, we now have (over)abundant solar power in the middle of the day. We’re at the point where homes with solar don’t need any power from the grid during daylight hours and are instead sending their excess back into the system.
However, in the evening, as people return home and the electricity grid has a corresponding sudden spike in demand, the sun is setting or has set, meaning solar production has dropped away to zero.
Households with a rooftop solar and a battery can charge their battery when the sun is shining and they’re producing more power than they need, then use that saved power later. This helps everyone because it reduces the amount of power being drawn from the grid at times of peak demand.
The Smart Energy Council modelled what would happen to peak power prices if there were 1 million batteries installed in Australia and found that it would save $1.3 billion every year on wholesale power prices.