Australia’s huge and growing fleet of home batteries are delivering “enormous benefits” to the electricity grid, cutting system costs and power bills, even without being orchestrated as part of virtual power plants, the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator says.
AEMO chief executive Daniel Westerman says the market operator has been surprised by the positive, system-wide impact that hundreds of thousands of “passive” home batteries have had on the grid, changing the shape of demand even without high levels of third-party orchestration.
Westerman on Wednesday opened the Australian Energy Week 2026 conference in Melbourne with a market update that zeroed in on how batteries of all sizes are “fundamentally changing” the electricity system, while also changing the outlook for AEMO’s grid blueprint, the Integrated System Plan.
At the small end of the scale, the more than 430,000 batteries installed through the Cheaper Home Batteries scheme over the past year takes the total to around 600,000 Australian homes with storage.
But the side-quest of the federal home battery rebate – to encourage virtual power plant (VPP) participation, including through the offer of higher discounts in some states – has had far less success.
