One year into the Cheaper Home Batteries program – How’s it going?

The program has added at least 12.4 GWh — more than quadrupling the home battery fleet in a year

Updated version of the April map and blog post. Sections drawing on the December 2025 ECA survey are largely unchanged from the original.

Australia’s household battery fleet held somewhere between 3.5 and 4 GWh when the Cheaper Home Batteries program started on 1 July 2025. Twelve months later the program has added at least 12.4 GWh on top of that — more than quadrupling the fleet in a year.

I’ve pulled publicly available data to map battery capacity growth over time at a postcode-level. I’ve also used Energy Consumers Australia survey data to better understand who is buying the batteries (and who isn’t).

This article will discuss household battery trends, look at who is buying the batteries, why, and where, and discuss the bill savings and overall grid effects of household batteries.

Total and monthly household battery capacity added since the start of the Cheaper Home Batteries program using CER data current to 30 June 2026. Monthly and postcode-level data is not available prior to July 2025 as CER didn’t track battery installations until they became eligible under SRES – raw data available here. All months are subject to upward revision under the 12-month STC creation period, and the most recent months are material underestimates due to CER data delay.

The install rates in the most recent months are underestimates, as the publicly available data from the Clean Energy Regulator tracks small-scale technology certificate (STC) registrations as they’re formally processed, which often happens up to a few months late. CER’s data is backdated as it arrives, and I update this graph periodically as new figures come in. To give a sense of how much the backdating matters: when I first published this article in April, the February 2026 figure was 460 MWh. In the latest data it’s 1,236 MWh —169% higher. January has been revised up 23%, December 12%, and even the July–November 2025 figures have crept up 1–5%. The 437 MWh and 307 MWh currently showing for May and June 2026 will rise a lot — market analyst SunWiz, which tracks registrations from other data sources, put those months at roughly 1.5 GWh and 1.1 GWh respectively. Their version is more timely, but my version is free.

The Australian Government’s Cheaper Home Batteries program (CHBP) is a rebate on household battery systems that are connected to new or existing rooftop solar.¹ The program was introduced to help more people access batteries and reduce their energy bill while lowering energy costs for everyone by reducing peak demand. The program aims to add 2 million batteries by 2030 with 40 GWh of capacity. In the program’s first 12 months, the postcode data shows almost 12.4 GWh of validated capacity added, and government figures put the program at more than 466,000 systems including pending registrations.

April 2026 was the biggest month on record with at least 2.8 GWh — with households possibly rushing to install before the rebate stepped down on 1 May. That single month added roughly 75% as much capacity as Australia’s entire household battery fleet held before the program began.

Due to the program’s success, the Government announced they would spend $7.2 billion on it over the next four years (up from the original $2.3 billion). Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen has been quite chuffed with the program so far and posts about it on LinkedIn a lot, but honestly fair enough.

Where are these batteries being bought?

Let’s look a little deeper at where the batteries are being installed at a postcode-level. I used CER’s postcode-level data and the magic of Claude to create an interactive map showing total household battery capacity added since the CHBP across Australia, now updated through June 2026. I also calculated the battery capacity per capita for each postcode using ABS 2021 Census data and added this as a toggle.² The former is more useful if you’re trying to work out how much capacity is available in an area for, say, a virtual power plant, and the latter is more useful if you’re interested in population-level data. Neither are controlled for the size of the postcode. The raw data behind this map is available here.³

I pulled the top 10 postcodes by battery capacity per capita below. The top 3 postcodes are unchanged from when I first published this in April: semi-rural suburbs north of Adelaide, with Virginia (5120) now at a remarkable 4.6 kWh of battery capacity per person. Postcode 2765 (Marsden Park and surrounds) is now the single biggest postcode in the country by total capacity at 140 MWh — a potentially valuable chunk of storage from a grid operations perspective, if it could be coordinated. Some of the lowest capacity per capita postcodes are in the inner Sydney region, likely suggesting a high proportion of apartments and other types of properties where solar and batteries are hard to install, and/or a high proportion of renters.

Table 1 – Top 10 postcodes by battery capacity per capita, CER data to 30 June 2026. Not including postcodes <1,000 people.

Who is buying the batteries?

In a nationally representative⁴ December 2025 survey⁵ of 4,535 Australian households and businesses by Energy Consumers Australia, 6% of respondents said they already have a home battery, with 11% actively researching and 22% considering one. 18-24 year olds are the most likely cohort to say they have a battery, but 34% of 18-34 year olds⁶ say their battery was installed by a landlord or previous owner compared to 16% for the 50+ cohort.

Table 2 – Home battery adoption status by age. Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025 (n=4,535).

Generally speaking, people with a higher income are more likely to own a battery — no surprises there. It’s interesting to note that people in the $100-149k bracket are less likely to have a battery than those under $100k. This could reflect a higher prevalence of retirees in the lower brackets, who have more wealth but low income.

Table 3 – Battery interest and ownership by household income. Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025. Excludes ‘prefer not to say’ for income (n=393).⁷

Why do people buy batteries?

Besides the obvious boom in batteries since the CHBP began, the survey data supports this being a strong motivator for those without a battery yet. And among those who installed a battery in the 12 months prior to December 2025, 66% say they received the CHBP rebate.

Table 4 – Impact of CHBP on likelihood to install among non-battery owners (n=4,222). Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025.

Saving money is the dominant reason people buy or are considering buying a battery, followed by storing energy/reducing grid reliance. Reducing emissions and using their battery to actually profit by selling their excess energy are the least likely reasons for buying or considering a battery.

Table 5 – Reasons for installing or considering a home battery, by ownership status. Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025. Owners n=252; considerers n=1,597.

The case for a battery is fairly simple when you have solar. You almost certainly generate excess energy for most of the day, so you store more so you can use it in the evening and overnight, or on a following cloudy day. It extends the value of your solar. If you don’t have solar, you can still benefit by using a time of use or solar soaker tariff (like AGL’s Three for Free) and charging during the day when electricity is cheaper and using it in the evening when it’s more expensive (but you won’t be eligible for the CHBP rebate). There are also more complicated versions available, like exposing yourself to the wholesale electricity market (with all its risk and opportunity) or using an aggregator to provide grid services.

The amount of money you’ll save by buying a battery depends on many factors, including your energy use quantum and patterns and whether you’re playing with the wholesale market or on a VPP. The payback period for a battery on its own (i.e. ignoring the solar panels it’s attached to) is currently around 8 years in a typical scenario with the federal rebate, though this varies a lot by state and tariff structure. Many batteries have a 10-year warranty, so in a good scenario you’re looking at a few years of “free” electricity after payback.

Many people still don’t want to buy a battery, with the main reason being the cost of installation despite the rebate (which matches higher income correlating with being more likely to own/consider a battery). 34.6% of non-battery owners said living in a rental property is a major barrier, while 18.3% said they don’t have the space.

Table 6 – Barriers to installing a home battery among non-battery owners (n=2,239). Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025.

What do more household batteries mean for the grid?

Besides save battery owners money, what does all this extra battery capacity do for the grid? The short answer is that household batteries reduce wholesale costs and take pressure off the grid at peak times — but the degree to which they do this depends on how they’re used.

Most battery owners run theirs in self-consumption mode: charge from solar during the day, use it in the evening. This helps the grid somewhat — AEMO has estimated that every battery in self-consumption mode reduces peak demand consumption by about 1 kW on average. But there’s a gap between what a battery does in self-consumption mode and what would be optimal for the grid. A household on a flat tariff has no price signal telling them when to discharge — their battery just runs down as they cook dinner or use their air conditioner, which might be before or after the actual grid peak when it matters most. Even time-of-use tariffs only loosely match wholesale conditions. The grid needs your battery at specific and sometimes hard to predict times, e.g., 6:30pm on a 40-degree day when the spot price hits $13,000+/MWh.

This is where virtual power plants (VPPs) come in. A VPP coordinates batteries so they respond to wholesale market conditions or grid stress events rather than just household consumption. 58.6% of ECA survey respondents said they’re interested in joining a VPP, but only 9.8% of current battery owners are actually on one based on ECA’s survey, roughly consistent with other estimates (13% as of December 2025). Research from Curtin University found that many consumers would prefer to forgo a rebate entirely rather than let a third party control their battery — unsurprising when one of the top reasons people buy batteries is to reduce grid reliance.

Table 7 – Interest in joining a virtual power plant. Source: Energy Consumers Australia, Consumer Energy Report Card, December 2025 (n=4,535).

The Climate Council estimates that effective coordination of household batteries could avoid $4.1 billion in grid-scale storage investment, so it’s worth getting right.

All views are my own, and do not represent my current or previous employers.

I’m working on a map/analysis of electric vehicle ownership by postcode next — please subscribe if that sounds like something you’ll want to see.

1. The Federal Government funds the discount by issuing STC's based on the battery's size using their federal budget (taxpayer funded). From 1 May 2026 the STC rate is tiered by system size.

2. 2026 Census is coming soon yay

3. It's possible the postcode boundaries have changed from the 2021 Census to when the CER data was collected and when I made this map. This may alter the results slightly.

4. Data is weighted according to 2021 Census population data. This was adjusted to account for the fact that energy decision makers have a different age and gender profile compared to the general population.

5. Energy Consumers Australia releases a fairly rich twice-yearly survey dataset which I’m surprised more researchers don’t take advantage of.

6. 33% of 18-24 year olds with a battery say it was installed by a previous owner or landlord (n=35) and 35% of 18-34 year olds say this (n=90).

7. Note that this table uses unweighted data, unlike the rest of the results which use weighted, nationally representative data.