The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is changing the way we power our homes
The battery boom is real. Australians are installing home solar batteries at a rate that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago.
In the second half of 2025, more than 183,000 home battery systems were sold across the country. If that sounds like a lot, it is. That figure surpasses the total installations across the previous four years combined!
Behind this surge is a policy shift that made batteries not simply a more realistic option but a clearly attractive one for thousands of households: the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program.
It’s now eight months since the initiative kicked in
The Cheaper Home Batteries Program was launched on 1 July 2025, as an expansion of the existing Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), which has subsidised rooftop solar installations since 2011.
The starting point was an estimated upfront discount of around 30% on eligible solar battery installations. For many households, that’s a saving of several thousand dollars, and it removed the single biggest barrier that had been holding people back: the cost.
The impact was immediate. Data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows that within just two months of the program launching, 43,517 home batteries had been installed, equivalent to 888 installations every single working day!
The numbers tell a clear story
The scale of what’s happened is hard to overstate. The Clean Energy Council’s Rooftop Solar and Storage Report for the second half of 2025 found that battery sales in that period were more than the combined total from 2020 to 2024. Year on year, sales in the second half of 2025 were up fourfold compared to the same period in 2024.
New South Wales led the charge with 15,418 installations in July and August alone, followed by Queensland (8,572), Victoria (6,945), and South Australia (6,415). Western Australia, which also benefited from a stacked state-level rebate on top of the federal scheme, added 4,577 installations in that same period.
The appetite was so strong that some manufacturers couldn’t keep up. Sydney-based home battery maker VoltX Energy reported going from roughly 30 installations per month in 2024 to consistently exceeding 600 requests per month after the program launched.
Why batteries make sense now more than ever
As the saying goes: If it makes cents, it makes sense (or perhaps we just made that up).
The financial case for home batteries has strengthened considerably, although the reasons behind the boom extend beyond the simple matter of the rebate.
Rooftop solar now accounts for 28.3 GW of installed capacity in Australia, which has eclipsed the output of the country’s entire coal-fired power fleet.
In the second half of 2025, rooftop solar contributed 14.2% of all electricity generated in Australia, nearly double its share from 2020.
The catch is that solar panels generate power during the day when many households aren’t home to use it. Without a battery, that surplus energy gets exported back to the grid at feed-in tariffs that have fallen sharply.
In Western Australia, for instance, feed-in tariffs are now as low as 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour between 9am and 3pm, while the cost of buying electricity from the grid sits around 32 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The equation has progressively become strikingly clear. Storing that solar energy in a battery to use in the evening turns a low-value export into a high-value saving.
Batteries help ease the load on the grid
There are a lot of stakeholders who have a keen interest in tracking the uptake of home batteries, and not only in relation to the Cheaper Home Batteries scheme.
The innovative Western Australian clean energy company Plico has found that the average household with solar and battery systems is saving more than $1,200 per year on its energy bills, with some of its members experiencing significantly larger savings, depending on their usage patterns and system size.
The company now operates a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) comprising more than 3,500 connected households, and in late 2025 secured up to $35 million in financing from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) through the federal Household Energy Upgrades Fund to support a national rollout.
The VPP dimension adds another layer of financial benefit for members. By coordinating battery output during peak demand periods, households can earn credits on their electricity bill at rates well above standard feed-in tariffs.
At the same time, VPPs demonstrate that thousands of individual household batteries, when coordinated, function as a significant piece of energy infrastructure. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has estimated that without effective integration of household energy resources, the grid could require up to $4.1 billion in additional large-scale investment.
There’s more to come
The surge in installations has also helped significantly expand consumer choice. The Clean Energy Council approved nearly 500 new battery models as meeting Australian safety and quality standards in the second half of 2025, bringing the total number of accredited solar, inverter, and storage products to over 6,400.
For households that haven’t yet made the move, the window to lock in the current rebate level is worth watching. Under the SRES, the value of the subsidy decreases over time as the scheme winds down toward 2030, meaning those who act sooner are likely to secure a better deal.
Australia has spent decades building one of the world’s most solar-saturated rooftop markets. The Cheaper Home Batteries Program appears to have triggered the next phase of that transition – turning the country’s millions of solar homes into a distributed, intelligent energy network, one battery at a time.
If you have a battery, we have a plan
For those with a home battery, GloBird Energy has a plan specifically designed to help you earn more from your battery system and pay it off fast!
ZEROHERO lets you charge your battery from the grid for FREE every day for three hours, between 11am and 2pm. This means you can charge your battery the same way every day, even when it’s cloudy.
Then, you can get paid $1 a day for simply avoiding peak grid usage, a great way to offset your daily supply charge.
And when you’ve got extra energy stored, we’ll pay you 15 cents per kilowatt-hour for exports between 6 and 8pm every day. Think how much extra your battery will earn for you.
At the same time, we let you choose how much control you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to hand over control of your battery to your energy company.
With ZEROHERO, you’re always in the driver’s seat, and that includes the option of becoming part of the Virtual Power Plant and earning even more.
Our smart app makes it easy to manage everything, and our award-winning support team of experts is here when you need them.
That’s why we believe that ZEROHERO is the best value, most customer-friendly battery plan on the market, and the one that will make happy battery owners even happier.
Check it out via the ZEROHERO information page on the GloBird Energy website and, if you’re happy with what you see, sign up today.
Data sourced from the Clean Energy Council, Clean Energy Regulator, Plico Energy, and pv magazine Australia.