The number of home batteries installed under federal Labor’s rebate scheme has passed the half-million mark, a huge new milestone for the hugely successful policy that is further slashing household electricity bills while also delivering “enormous benefits” to the grid.
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen will announce the crossing of the 500,000 threshold on Friday morning, from a residential solar and storage installer in Castle Hill – a suburb in the New South Wales postcode that has the highest number of Cheaper Home Batteries installed anywhere in the country.
The shiny new number comes with some interesting new data put together by the Smart Energy Council, which shows that the flagship Labor policy has fared the best in Australia’s outer suburbs and regions, and in Coalition-held electorates.
The message from the data is that the appetite for home battery storage is not partisan. In fact, of the top seven Cheaper Home Battery electorates in Australia, four are Coalition-held – including Hume, the NSW electorate of the leader of the Opposition, Angus Taylor, which is 7th in national rankings.
“Cheaper Home Batteries is doing exactly what we said it would do: helping households cut bills, store cheap solar and take control of their energy use,” says Bowen.
