Changes on May 1 to the federal government’s Cheaper Home Battery Program (CHBP) rebate triggered a frenzy of registrations to the scheme across Australia in April 2026, as households dived in last minute to take advantage of subsidies, with registrations peaking at a record 2.4 GWh capacity.
Image: SunWiz
New South Wales (NSW) was the frontrunner, becaming the first state to register 1 GWh of battery storage capacity, on the back of its unprecedented month-on-month 60% volume change.
Figures released by Melbourne-based solar and storage market analyst SunWiz reveal similar stories across other state and territories, where Tasmania reported an 80% capacity gain, Queensland, 74% and South Australia 71%.
The monthly capacity volumes in the Northern Territory (NT), Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Western Australia (WA), and Victoria, all grew in April, but at the lower end spectrum, respectively at 52%, 45%, 37% and 35%.
Bigger was better
Nationwide, the subsidy cliff was the perfect carrot on the stick to supercharge an overall 57% home battery registration surge during April, skewed toward bigger systems, with a 78% increase in registrations for systems in the 40-50 kWh range, with Victoria leading the way at almost 50 kWh.
“Looking at the different segments is like looking at a staircase,” a SunWiz April 2026 summary said.
“For the smaller segments, i.e., 0-10 kWh and 10-20 kWh, there is a dip of 10%, followed by an increase of 1%. The larger the segment, the larger the increase, with the greatest increase seen in the 40-50 kWh segment by 78%.”
The retailer year-to-date volumes leaderboard saw three Sydney-based residential and commercial solar installers in the top three, with Solar System Pty Ltd matching its Q1 volume one month into Q2.
Green Engineering/AGPIG took a whole quarter to register the volume that Solar System almost achieved in the first month of the second quarter of the year.
Solar Power Nation is currently ranked third.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.