Australia’s home energy storage uptake continues to grow at roughly three times the rate it did in July 2025, when federal Labor’s Cheaper Home Batteries scheme was first launched, with new monthly data showing a market that is “quickly recovering” from having the brakes slammed on in May.
By the end of July 2026, a total of more than 490,000 home battery systems had been installed through the rebate, adding upwards of 13 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of storage behind the meter and putting the booming market on track to notch up half a million installations this month.
And while federal energy minister Chris Bowen recently confirmed there are still roughly 2,000 new systems being installed every week, the volume of registered capacity has been levelling off since May, when the scheme was adjusted to reduce the discount being offered and to incentivise smaller systems.
According to the latest market update from SunWiz, registered home energy storage system (ESS) volume came in at 0.96 gigawatt-hours (GWh) or 960 megawatt-hours (MWh) in July, more or less flat against June’s numbers and continuing a steep decline from April’s 2.43 GWh peak.
Source: SunWiz
April was the last month under the rebate’s original settings, which encouraged households to install super-sized home battery systems of 50 kWh and above and chewed through the four-year scheme’s initial budget – $2.3 billion – at an unsustainable rate.
Since May, batteries sized up to 14 kWh still can get the full roughly 30 per cent discount off the up-front cost of a storage system, but the rebate tapers off significantly for capacity beyond 14 kWh, offering 60 per cent of the discount for capacity between 14-28 kWh, and 15 per cent for between 28 kWh and 50 kWh.
The changes appear to have had the intended effect, with average system sizes falling by half from their peak (see graph below), while still driving thousands more solar households to add battery storage each month.
“Our analysis of installation month figures … reveals a market that is quickly recovering,” says SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston.
“The recovery is occurring because of continued healthy public demand for energy storage systems from Australia’s 4+ million solar households, combined with preference for batteries closer in size to 28 kWh [kilowatt-hour] than 14 kWh.”
“Volumes remain roughly triple their year-ago level, and the market continues right-sizing, with the 20-30 kWh band now overtaking 40-50 kWh as the largest segment by absolute volume.”
Source: SunWiz
SunWiz finds that the 20-30 kWh system size segment grew by 18 per cent from June to July to 322.2K kWh (322 MWh), making it the largest segment by absolute volume, overtaking 40-50 kWh, which added 276.5K kWh (276 MWh) in July, down 23 per cent from June.
Mid-scale battery system size bands 10-20 kWh and 30-40 kWh also grew – by 5 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, month-on-month – “reinforcing the shift away from oversized systems,” says Johnston.
Source: SunWiz
Interestingly, Victorian households continue to install the largest battery systems, on average, sitting just under 30 kWh at 29.94 kWh.
In Western Australia – whose market has been a bit different to the rest of Australia due to its stacking of the federal rebate with its own state Residential Battery Scheme – in July delivered a new milestone, with total installs hitting the 50,000 mark.
WA energy minister Jade Sanderson and assistant federal energy minister Josh Wilson announced the state’s milestone on Tuesday, which has added a more than 1.1 GWh of energy storage capacity to the state’s huge rooftop solar resource and its geographically isolated main grid.
The ministers said the strongest uptake of home batteries was happening in Perth’s outer suburbs, demonstrating that solar storage was becoming a “mainstream household investment.”
“The remarkable progress that we’ve made has seen suburbs like this be the leading postcode in WA,” Wilson said at a doorstop interview from a household in Bedfordale that has installed two 20 kWh batteries through the dual rebates.
“Western Australia, of course, the leading jurisdiction within Australia as a whole, and Australia now leading the world on a per capita basis when it comes to the deployment of battery energy.
“We are literally third in the world in terms of sheer battery deployment numbers, behind only the USA and China, but on a per capita basis, we are number one.
“That is what Australians want to see: cheaper and cleaner energy, lower prices for everybody, as we make a contribution to tackling dangerous climate change, and as we achieve our destiny to be a world leader when it comes to what will be the defining industrial and technological shift of the 21st century.”
