From 1 Jan­u­ary 2027, the fed­er­al rebate on home bat­ter­ies gets small­er. For a typ­i­cal home bat­tery, wait­ing until 2027 means rough­ly $400 to $600 less upfront. For the largest eli­gi­ble sys­tems, the gap reach­es about $1,100.

The rebate is still avail­able after the change. It is just low­er. This guide shows you the num­bers for your bat­tery size, and how to decide whether the tim­ing mat­ters for you.

From 1 Jan­u­ary 2027, the fed­er­al rebate on home bat­ter­ies gets small­er. For a typ­i­cal home bat­tery, wait­ing until 2027 means rough­ly $400 to $600 less upfront. For the largest eli­gi­ble sys­tems, the gap reach­es about $1,100.

The rebate is still avail­able after the change. It is just low­er. This guide shows you the num­bers for your bat­tery size, and how to decide whether the tim­ing mat­ters for you.

How much could wait­ing cost?
 

Here is the rebate before and after the change, using an STC val­ue of $40.

Most Vic­to­ri­an homes install a bat­tery between 10 and 15 kWh, so the real­is­tic dif­fer­ence is in the $400 to $600 range. The $1,100 fig­ure applies only to the largest eli­gi­ble sys­tem, and it is a ceil­ing, not a typ­i­cal outcome.

How we cal­cu­lat­ed this: the num­ber of cer­tifi­cates (STCs) per kWh falls from 6.8 to 5.7. At $40 per cer­tifi­cate, that is $272 per kWh before and $228 per kWh after, applied to the first 14 kWh at the full rate, 14 to 28 kWh at 60%, and 28 to 50 kWh at 15%. Your actu­al fig­ure depends on your bat­tery’s usable capac­i­ty and the STC price on your instal­la­tion date.

The date that counts is instal­la­tion, not sign­ing
 

This is the point most peo­ple miss. Sign­ing a con­tract before 1 Jan­u­ary does not lock in the high­er rebate. The rebate is tied to when the bat­tery is installed.

If your install slips into Jan­u­ary because of equip­ment delays, a switch­board upgrade, approvals or installer avail­abil­i­ty, you receive the low­er rebate, even if you signed in December.

If tim­ing mat­ters to you, ask your installer one ques­tion before you sign: ​“When will my bat­tery real­is­ti­cal­ly be installed?”

Get a real­is­tic instal­la­tion date for your home. Request a bat­tery quote →

What is an STC?

A Small-scale Tech­nol­o­gy Cer­tifi­cate (STC) is the fed­er­al scheme’s way of pay­ing you upfront. You do not receive the cer­tifi­cates your­self. The installer claims them on your behalf, and the val­ue comes off your quote as a gov­ern­ment discount.

Because STCs trade at a mar­ket price, always check which val­ue your quote assumes.

The rebate sched­ule
 

The rebate is designed to shrink over time. The Clean Ener­gy Reg­u­la­tor pub­lish­es the schedule:

The num­ber of cer­tifi­cates per kWh was 8.4 from Jan­u­ary to April 2026 and is 6.8 from May to Decem­ber 2026. It falls to 5.7 for Jan­u­ary to June 2027, then 5.2 for July to Decem­ber 2027. In 2028 it steps down to 4.6 and then 4.1, in 2029 to 3.6 and then 3.1, and in 2030 to 2.6 and then 2.1.

The fac­tor now steps down every six months, so the 1 Jan­u­ary change is the first of sev­er­al. The cur­rent lev­el of sup­port will not last, so the rebate belongs in your over­all deci­sion. It should not be the whole deci­sion. You can also use our ener­gy sav­ings cal­cu­la­tor to see how a bat­tery fits your usage.

Why you should­n’t buy just because of the dead­line
 

A bat­tery pays off when it fits how your house­hold uses ener­gy. The rebate improves the val­ue, but it does not cre­ate it.

Sun­rise Inno­va­tions has com­plet­ed more than 23,109 instal­la­tions across Vic­to­ria, with a 4.9‑star rat­ing from 516+ ver­i­fied Google reviews and a 97% right-first-time instal­la­tion rate. Across all of them, the best out­comes come from bat­ter­ies sized to the home, not to the rebate.

A big­ger bat­tery does not earn a pro­por­tion­al­ly big­ger rebate, because larg­er capac­i­ty attracts low­er rates (the 60% and 15% bands in the table above). Buy­ing more stor­age than you will use costs more than the extra rebate returns.

Should you buy before the change?
 

Use this as a start­ing point:

Buy before 1 Jan­u­ary if you already have solar, you use a lot of elec­tric­i­ty in the evening, you export plen­ty of solar to the grid, and you can be installed before the dead­line. The $400 to $600 sav­ing is a bonus on a bat­tery you would buy anyway.

Take your time if you are unsure how much stor­age you need, your evening usage is low, or you can­not be installed before 1 Jan­u­ary. A rushed, over­sized pur­chase will cost you more than the rebate difference.

Solar and bat­tery togeth­er? The incen­tives are cal­cu­lat­ed sep­a­rate­ly. Solar pan­els fol­low their own STC rules, and a good quote shows each one clearly.

Buy­ing a bat­tery in Vic­to­ria
 

Sun­rise Inno­va­tions is based in Carl­ton and ser­vices cus­tomers across Mel­bourne and region­al Vic­to­ria. See our bat­tery and solar prod­ucts, res­i­den­tial solar and rebates and incen­tives pages for more.

What to check before you buy
 

Your usage. Look at your recent bills and, if you can, your solar gen­er­a­tion and export data. Evening and overnight usage mat­ter most, because that is when a bat­tery replaces grid electricity.

Usable capac­i­ty. Com­pare the usable kWh, not the head­line num­ber in the brochure.

How the rebate is cal­cu­lat­ed. A good quote states the STC val­ue and the assump­tions behind it, so you can com­pare installers fairly.

The instal­la­tion time­frame. Get it in writ­ing if the rebate change affects your decision.

Eli­gi­bil­i­ty. The bat­tery, the installer and the instal­la­tion must all meet pro­gram requirements.

Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions
 

Is the bat­tery rebate avail­able in Vic­to­ria? Yes. The fed­er­al incen­tive applies to eli­gi­ble instal­la­tions across Aus­tralia, includ­ing Victoria.

Does sign­ing a con­tract before 1 Jan­u­ary guar­an­tee the high­er rebate? No. The rebate depends on the instal­la­tion date. The Clean Ener­gy Reg­u­la­tor mon­i­tors instal­la­tion dates to make sure the cor­rect set­tings are applied.

Could I real­ly lose $1,100 by wait­ing? Only on the largest eli­gi­ble sys­tem. For a typ­i­cal 10 to 13.5 kWh bat­tery, the dif­fer­ence is rough­ly $440 to $600 at a $40 STC value.

Will the rebate keep reduc­ing? Yes. It is sched­uled to reduce pro­gres­sive­ly over time. See the sched­ule above.

Do I need a big­ger bat­tery to get a big­ger rebate? Not use­ful­ly. Larg­er bat­ter­ies attract low­er rates on the extra capac­i­ty, so a big­ger sys­tem rarely pays for itself through the rebate alone.

Should the rebate be the main rea­son I buy a bat­tery? No. Size the bat­tery to your ener­gy use first. The rebate is an extra benefit.

Get a clear quote for your home

We will size a bat­tery to your usage, show exact­ly how the rebate is cal­cu­lat­ed, and give you a real­is­tic instal­la­tion date so you know what you will receive.

Request a bat­tery quote →