Australia installed a record 276,011 home batteries in the first half of 2026
Serguey Asael Shinder1 min readAustralian households installed rooftop solar and home batteries at record levels in the first half of 2026, according to the Clean Energy Council's Rooftop Solar and Storage Report for January to June, as reported by pv magazine. Households added 1,894 MW of new solar capacity and 8,691 MWh of storage.
The report counts 180,878 rooftop solar systems installed in the six months, 35% more than in the same period of 2025 and the strongest half-year since 2021. The new capacity, 1,894 MW, was up 41% and the highest for any six-month period on record. The June quarter alone brought 102,234 installations and 1,079 MW, the largest quarter so far. The council expects installations to pass 300,000 again this year, after falling to 273,672 in 2025, the first year below that mark since 2020.
Batteries grew faster still: 276,011 home batteries were installed in the half-year, 52% more than in the previous six months. The council credits the federal government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program and says battery incentives appear to be pulling new solar installations with them, as households install or upgrade solar at the same time as adding storage.
What it means
A battery subsidy that also revives rooftop solar is a double effect grid operators have to plan for: more generation at midday and more stored energy moving into the evening peak. With more batteries than solar systems installed in the half-year, Australia's household sector is starting to look less like a source of midday surplus and more like a distributed storage fleet.