The Australian government has expanded the nationwide Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which has seen rapid uptake from homeowners.
The programme enables customers purchasing equipment from approved lists to receive a rebate of around 30% off the upfront cost of purchase via small-scale technology certificates (STCs).
Its launch, in July, was a key 2025 election pledge of the Australian Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It has already supported 160,000 battery installations, adding more than 3.6GWh of energy storage capacity to the grid. More than 21 million STCs have been purchased through it.
The government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) is expanding the programme to cover an estimated AU$7.2 billion (US$4.76 billion) of support by 2030, more than tripling the initial estimate of AU$2.3 billion announced when the programme launched six months ago.
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That equates to an additional 40GWh of energy storage capacity, putting batteries in the homes of around two million people. The programme is open to households, communities and businesses installing small-scale battery systems of between 5kWh and 100kWh capacity. The discount is reviewed annually and will decrease each year in line with reductions in battery prices.
DCCEEW said the programme has been an ‘unprecedented success,’ bringing down the cost of owning batteries to store solar electricity. Australia has more than 4.2 million rooftop solar PV systems.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen said home energy storage capacity in Australia has already almost doubled through the programme and noted that half of the households taking up the offer are also installing solar PV for the first time or upgrading existing systems.
“Australia is a solar nation – we’ve got more solar on our roofs than pools in our backyards, and we want to match that success with home batteries to cut bills for everyone, for good,” Bowen said.
“We want more Aussie households to have access to batteries that are good for bills and good for the grid – because it means more cheap, fast, safe solar energy is available in our homes night or day, when and where it’s needed.”
The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is also now included in the extended scope of the government Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), through which STCs are created for solar, wind, hydro or low-carbon hot water systems.
In October, as the programme’s uptake surpassed 100,000 installations and 2GWh of distributed energy storage capacity, Chris Bowen noted that many of the new installs are taking place in suburban and remote areas that are served by weaker centralised transmission and distribution (T&D) networks.
Speaking at the All-Energy Australia 2025 conference in November, Carl Binning, executive general manager at the Clean Energy Regulator, said that roughly 8,000 Cheaper Home Batteries Program applications per week were being processed.
Adjustments
DCCEEW has also made some adjustments to the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, aimed at ensuring households get the right size of battery system and that funding the programme remains sustainable.
In changes that take effect from 1 May 2026:
- The STC Factor, which determines the number of STCs a system is entitled to create per kWh of usable capacity, will be adjusted to decline every six months at a higher rate.
- The level of support will be adjusted based on system size, with the aim of maintaining a 30% discount for a range of battery systems at each available capacity level. A 100% STC Factor will be applied to every kilowatt-hour of capacity from 0kWh-14kWh, 60% to every kilowatt-hour of capacity above 14kWh and less than 28kWh and 15% for every kWh greater than 28kWh and up to 50kWh.
