The Clean Energy Regulator has published battery installations by postcode since the Cheaper Home Batteries Program began on 1 July 2025, which means the scheme's first near-full year can now be read directly from the regulator's own dataset rather than from industry estimates. Three findings stand out for a household weighing up a battery of its own.
1. Batteries are now the bigger job queue
Between July 2025 and May 2026, 401,185 home batteries were installed nationally. New rooftop solar installations over the same 11 months totalled 267,995. That is not an attach rate: Australia has 4.44 million rooftop solar systems accumulated since 2001, and most new batteries are being retrofitted onto existing solar rather than installed alongside a brand-new array. The honest reading is about the industry's workload: installers are now doing roughly three battery jobs for every two brand-new solar jobs, on a continent where most of the easy solar roofs are already done.
*May 2026 is drawn hollow because it is not yet a real number: the CER's certificate-creation window means the newest months always undercount and revise upward (see methodology). Source: CER small-scale installation postcode data, battery installations dataset, current as at 31 May 2026.
Show the monthly figures as a table
| Month | Installations | Avg usable capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 29,380 | 17.5 kWh |
| Aug 2025 | 25,627 | 19.4 kWh |
| Sep 2025 | 30,831 | 22.2 kWh |
| Oct 2025 | 36,326 | 24.4 kWh |
| Nov 2025 | 38,140 | 26.6 kWh |
| Dec 2025 | 44,495 | 30.4 kWh |
| Jan 2026 | 27,968 | 29.3 kWh |
| Feb 2026 | 39,427 | 30.9 kWh |
| Mar 2026 | 51,401 | 33.3 kWh |
| Apr 2026 | 68,598 | 36.0 kWh |
| May 2026 (provisional) | 8,992 | 21.0 kWh |
2. The batteries got much bigger, right up to the tiering change
The average battery installed in July 2025 had 17.5 kWh of usable capacity. By April 2026 the average was 36.0 kWh, roughly double, and the growth was steady across the ten months in between. In total, 11.36 million kWh of usable storage was added to Australian homes over the 11 months.
That April peak, in both count and size, landed in the final month before the federal discount changed shape: from 1 May 2026 the program's support is tiered by capacity, paying full rate only up to 14 kWh (explained with the arithmetic here). The dataset is consistent with households and installers sizing up ahead of that change, but the numbers alone cannot prove a rush: battery hardware prices were falling across the same period, and April's count will itself revise upward as late paperwork lands. We note the timing and stop there.
Average = total usable kWh recorded for the month divided by installations recorded for the month, both from the CER datasets. *May provisional, as above. Figures in the table above.
3. Where the batteries are going
New South Wales leads with about 35 per cent of all battery installations, ahead of Queensland (20 per cent), Victoria (19 per cent), SA (11 per cent) and WA (11 per cent). Solar's all-time state ranking has Queensland first; batteries are so far a NSW-led story.
Shares of the 401,185 national total, states derived from postcode ranges (see methodology). Percentages rounded.
At postcode level, the list is dominated by the outer growth corridors, and the same postcodes top both the battery and the recent solar tables: 2765 (Marsden Park, Riverstone and surrounds in Sydney's north west) leads the country with 3,465 batteries, followed by 2155 (Kellyville and Rouse Hill) with 3,158 and 3029 (Truganina, Hoppers Crossing and Tarneit in Melbourne's west) with 2,905. New estates are being built with solar and, increasingly, storage from day one, at a scale established suburbs are not matching.
What it means if you are considering a battery
The dataset says nothing about whether a battery pays back for your household; that depends on your tariff, your solar, and your evening usage, and no national average answers it. What it does say is that batteries have moved from early-adopter to mainstream volume within a single year of the federal discount, that typical system sizes climbed well past the 14 kWh full-rate tier that now shapes the discount, and that if your quote is for a system over 14 kWh you should read how the tiered discount actually applies before comparing prices. How this dataset works, including what it counts and what it misses, is set out in the methodology note below.