Home battery uptake hits record high in market primed for rebate “gold rush”

Australian households installed a record-setting 72,500 home batteries in 2024, new data has revealed, marking a 27 per cent increase on installation numbers in 2023 and adding a total of 852 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy storage capacity behind the meter – also a record.

The latest annual Battery Market Report from industry data analysts SunWiz paints a picture of a market that is primed for the introduction of the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries rebate in July, that will slash the upfront cost of adding storage by around 30 per cent.

The report shows that, in 2024, nearly 23 per cent of all new rooftop solar installations included a home battery – a new high and near doubling of the numbers from 2023, driven by various state-based incentives and falling feed-in tariffs.

At the end of 2024, there is a cumulative national total of 3,600 MWh – 3.6 gigawatt-hours – of residential home battery storage installed.

Source: SunWiz

More than half of the total batteries installed in homes over the course of the year were added to existing and unchanged solar systems, the report says.

On a state-by-state basis, New South Wales has a comfortable lead with a total of 28,900 new home batteries installed for the year, making it responsible around 40 per cent of all national installations.

New South Wales is one of the few states with its own battery rebate – the Peak Demand Reduction Scheme – but that only came into play in November 2024, so is unlikely to have had much of an impact on the 2024 numbers.

Still, the NSW rebate – which provides an upfront discount of between $1,600 and $2,400 on the cost of installation depending on the battery’s usable capacity – is reported to have delivered more than 7,800 installations in the five months since its launch. 

NSW energy minister Penny Sharpe has since said the program has delivered 10,000 batteries. (You can listen to her interview in last week’s episode of Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast.

Source: SunWiz

Next to NSW, South Australia had the second highest home battery installation rate for the year, with years of consecutive growth in uptake taking it past Victoria, where the market cooled a little following the discontinuation of that state’s rebate in favour of a zero interest loan.

An interesting statistic from the report reveals that the Northern Territory, which added just over 1,000 home batteries in 2024, tops the nation on solar attachment rate – that is, the percentage of new rooftop solar installs that include a battery – at more than 80 per cent.

The NT is also the state with the leading proportion of all solar homes to include a battery, at 15.9 per cent, the report says. The ACT and South Australia follow, with 15 per cent and 14.9 per cent, respectively.

Source: SunWiz

Tasmania and Victoria are in roughly the same spot, with batteries included in 8.3 and 8.4 per cent of rooftop solar homes, respectively, while Queensland and Western Australia lag well behind, with only around 4 per cent of solar homes including a battery.

South Australia has the leading penetration into building stock, with the report showing that 7 per cent of dwellings in that state host a battery. Of the other large states, that figures is more like 2.3 per cent, SunWiz says.

Looking to the future, SunWiz says the Albanese government’s Cheaper Home Batteries rebate will act as a double-edge sword in 2025; chilling uptake in the second quarter of the calendar year as sales stall ahead of the July 01 launch, with boomtimes to follow.

“Battery installations will immediately dry up [between now and July 01], before a gold rush ensues,” SunWiz managing director Warwick Johnston says, adding that he expects 10-50 per cent of rooftop solar sales to pause, too, as customers weigh up their options.

“People for whom batteries were too expensive will get a small battery, potentially paying only $2,000 out-of-pocket,” Johnston says in the report.

“People who would have [bought a battery anyway] will direct the subsidy towards a bigger battery,” he adds, taking a ‘one-shot to buy as big a battery as you can’ approach.

In 2024, the average home battery system size was assessed to be 11.75kWh.

On cost, Johnston expects the rebate to drive down the cost of all batteries – which currently remains stuck at roughly $1,000 per kWh. But this trend is expected to be most pronounced for the budget end of the market, which will in turn shift brand popularity away from the premium end of the market.

Outside of home batteries, SunWiz says a total 152 MWh was installed behind the meter by the commercial and industrial sector, while grid-scale projects of more than 10MWh totally a record 1,900MWh.

“The combined tally of 2902 MWh makes 2024 a record year,” Johnston says, but “with 25GWh of grid-scale storage [currently] under construction, this record won’t last long.”

SunWiz has been producing an annual Australian Battery Market Report since 2015. The full 2024 report is available for purchase here.

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