Eastern Melbourne battery boom as Labor invests another $4.9 billion into rebates

In Glen Waverley, 230 energy storage systems were installed from July to October.

Author

Matthew Sims
December 15, 2025

Shaun Cowley’s Bayswater North company was used to about one in five jobs requiring the installation of a battery to store power. 

But since the federal government began tipping billions of dollars into subsidising the rollout, things have changed significantly.

“Now pretty much every job is a battery job,” the Cowlec Electrical and Solar founder and director told the Eastern Melburnian.

He said government rebates and finance plans made the leap to battery storage “financially viable for nearly everybody”.

📈Extra boost: In April Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced a $2.3 billion investment in the Cheaper Home Batteries program, and on Saturday Bowen said the Federal Government would invest a further $4.9 billion.

  • "This is expected to see more than two million Australians install a battery by 2030, delivering around 40 gigawatt hours of capacity, doubling our election estimate of one million batteries and increasing the expected capacity by almost four times,” Bowen said of the boost.

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💡Local uptake: According to data from the Clean Energy Regulator, under the first four months of the Cheaper Home Batteries program, there were 230 batteries installed in Glen Waverley, 142 in Wantirna and 129 in Ferntree Gully. 

  • Bowen said half of the households installing a battery around the country were also installing or upgrading existing solar systems.

  • About 175,000 batteries are expected to be installed nationally in the scheme’s first six months (July 2025 to January 2026).

  • Home batteries allow households to store their own solar power and avoid buying electricity at peak prices.

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🔋 Bigger batteries: Cowley said the average size of batteries being installed had increased by about 80 percent since the rebate started on July 1.

  • 🗣️ “The cost of living is going up and the electricity prices just keep on increasing, so people are looking to store that extra electrical power,” said Cowley.

  • The minimum size the company installs nowadays is about 20 kilowatt hours (kWh).

  • A kWh measures a household battery’s storage capacity – the total amount of energy it can hold – not how quickly the supply may be used, which depends on your household’s energy needs.

  • If you think of a household battery like a water tank, the capacity (kWh) is the total water volume and power (kW) is the rate of usage, meaning the bigger the battery capacity, the longer it may take to run out and switch back to the grid.