Updated 24 August 2026, the third recomputation. First published 4 July with 11 months of data, extended to the full first year on 26 July, and recomputed again here against the CER release current to 31 July 2026. The window is unchanged, July 2025 to June 2026, so the figures are directly comparable: batteries have revised up from 438,319 to 460,792 and new solar from 299,678 to 314,650, both about five per cent, which is the certificate-creation lag doing exactly what the methodology below says it does. June is the clearest illustration, nearly doubling from 12,908 to 25,766. The finding is unchanged and slightly stronger. One ranking did move: Victoria has edged ahead of Queensland for second place on batteries, having been marginally behind on the last release.
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 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 June 2026, 460,792 home batteries were installed nationally. New rooftop solar installations over the same 12 months totalled 314,650. That is not an attach rate: Australia has 4.50 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 and June 2026 are drawn hollow because they are still not settled numbers: the CER's certificate-creation window means the newest months always undercount and revise upward (see methodology). Two releases show the size of that effect on this dataset. April 2026 has gone from about 68,600 when we first published in early July, to 78,125 in late July, to 83,353 now. June has nearly doubled, from 12,908 to 25,766, in the same seven weeks. Source: CER small-scale installation postcode data, battery installations dataset, current as at 31 July 2026.
Show the monthly figures as a table
| Month | Installations | Avg usable capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 29,466 | 17.5 kWh |
| Aug 2025 | 25,726 | 19.4 kWh |
| Sep 2025 | 30,957 | 22.2 kWh |
| Oct 2025 | 36,552 | 24.4 kWh |
| Nov 2025 | 38,486 | 26.6 kWh |
| Dec 2025 | 45,035 | 30.4 kWh |
| Jan 2026 | 28,372 | 29.3 kWh |
| Feb 2026 | 40,390 | 30.9 kWh |
| Mar 2026 | 54,418 | 33.4 kWh |
| Apr 2026 | 83,353 | 36.7 kWh |
| May 2026 (provisional) | 22,271 | 21.9 kWh |
| Jun 2026 (provisional) | 25,766 | 24.1 kWh |
2. The batteries got much bigger, then tiering cooled the size off
The average battery installed in July 2025 had 17.5 kWh of usable capacity. By April 2026 the average was 36.7 kWh, roughly double, and the growth was steady across the ten months in between. In total, about 13.1 million kWh of usable storage was added to Australian homes over the year.
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). With two further months of data now in, the tiering change shows up clearest in the average system size: after climbing to 36 kWh in April, the average new battery fell to 21.9 kWh in May and 24.1 kWh in June, back to where it sat in mid-2025. Read the volume drop with more care. The newest months are the most incomplete, and April itself has revised up twice, from about 68,600 to 78,125 to 83,353, since early July, so May and June will keep rising and the apparent cliff after April is mostly reporting lag, not a real collapse in demand. The robust signal from the tiering change is the size coming off, not the volume.
Average = total usable kWh recorded for the month divided by installations recorded for the month, both from the CER datasets. May and June remain provisional for count, but the average size is far less sensitive to reporting lag and the post-tiering drop is already clear. 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 Victoria and Queensland (each close to 20 per cent, Victoria now marginally in front), then SA and WA (about 11 per cent each). Solar's all-time state ranking has Queensland first; batteries are so far a NSW-led story.
That second place changed hands on this release. On the July data Queensland was narrowly ahead; recomputed to 31 July it is Victoria, by 1,548 installations out of 460,792. Read it as a tie rather than a lead: the gap is a third of one per cent, both states round to 20 per cent, and the months still filling in could put it back the other way. What has been steady across all three recomputations is the shape of the table, and that is the part worth acting on.
Shares of the 460,792 national total, states derived from postcode ranges (see methodology). Percentages rounded, so Victoria and Queensland both show as 20 per cent: unrounded they are 20.3 and 20.0.
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 3,877 batteries, followed by 3029 (Truganina, Hoppers Crossing and Tarneit in Melbourne's west) with 3,563 and 2155 (Kellyville and Rouse Hill) with 3,444. 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 before tiering pulled the average back down, 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.