Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen says rushing the process to make plug-in solar and battery storage safe and legal to use in Australian apartments and rental properties risks giving ammunition to “deniers and delayers,” keen to undermine the transition to renewable energy and electrification.
But the minister – who at the same time announced that Australian households have now installed more than 600,000 Cheaper Home Batteries – has also assured industry and consumer groups that governments are working together and with regulatory bodies to get the job done “as quickly as possible.”
Plug-in solar – or balcony solar, as it is known in Germany, the market where it first took off – has become hugely popular in parts of Europe and the US as an affordable and easy way for people living in apartments or in rental properties to get in on the bill savings offered by PV self-generation.
The technology – which was most recently legalised in the UK – literally allows households to plug portable PV panels into a standard wall outlet and has also expanded to include plug-in batteries, extending the full consumer energy experience to households otherwise excluded from its benefits.
In Australia, were plug-in solar and batteries are not yet legal to use, federal and state energy ministers agreed in September to “explore pathways” to support its safe deployment, promising to identify measures that enable its safe use and report back later this year on next steps.
Last month, Western Australia upped the ante on the process launching its own consultation on safety standards for and declaring its intention to become the first Australian state or territory to legalise the potentially game-changing portable energy systems.
Speaking at a webinar on plug-in consumer energy hosted by Solar Citizens last Thursday, Bowen said he welcomed the progress from WA, but stressed the importance of “getting it right,” particularly on safety standards.
“You have my commitment to continue to work very hard on [this] to get it done as quickly as humanly possible, but I … just want to be very frank with you about the sorts of issues that we need to work through, and those issues cannot be rushed,” the minister told the webinar.
“We need to … really think about the standards and requirements we put in place. …There’s a lot of things to be worked through, and we’ll work them through as quickly as we possibly can.
“[But] we don’t want any safety risks. We would be letting down the people relying on us if we cut corners and allowed safety risks,” he said.
“And secondly, deniers and delayers will use any opportunity … All it takes is one mistake, one poorly installed piece of equipment, one fire, and you know the usual suspects will be out saying, ‘Ah, look, we told you this is all nonsense’.
“They’re already doing it about Cheaper Home Batteries with zero evidence to support their case,” Bowen added.
Bowen told the webinar that the while mainstream media and federal Labor’s political opponents have taken any opportunity to criticise the Cheaper Home Batteries rebate, the rebate continues to be a huge overall success, last week passing another installation milestone.
“It’s particularly a pleasure to join you on the day where Australia has surpassed 600,000 …Cheaper Home Batteries since the first July, 2025, and 16.6 gigawatt-hours [of combined behind-the-meter storage],” he told the webinar.
“[This] makes us now second in the world for home batteries; more home batteries than China, more home batteries than India, more home batteries than the United States, more home batteries than France, more home batteries in the United Kingdom, second only to Germany.
Bowen said part of the federal battery rebate’s success was that it is “so highly regulated,” with requirements and restrictions to ensure that the rollout is safe, adding “which it is, and has been, and will continue to be, for those two reasons: one, we owe it to people, and two, we can’t allow deniers and delayers to use anything as an excuse.”
Bowen also pointed out that in other countries where plug-in solar and batteries are proving so popular and successulf, this has only happened after a sometimes years-long process to develop the right supporting framework.
“It’s taken off since then, but it did take [Germany] six years from original announcement to getting it done,” he said. “Now, it’s not going to take us anywhere near that long. I won’t let that happen. But I did just want to give that context … [that] is, we do have a lot of issues to work through.
“We can learn from their models and take their their teachings very seriously and learn from their mistakes and what they got right, but nevertheless, we do need to get it right ourselves.
“We need to think about things like installing plug-in solar and batteries in older homes with older wiring. We need to ensure that the safety standards are all up to scratch.
“We need to ensure that people understand the circuit loading requirements and … what level of professionalism we require in installation, residual current protection, … fire risk more broadly, [and] balcony mounting and wind loading – I mean … we don’t want solar panels blowing off balconies.
“We do need to get those things right, so we will do so as quickly as we prudently and safely can,” Bowen said. “And I look forward to giving further announcements so before Christmas, and then further announcements over the course of next year on what progress we’re making.”
If you would like to join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, you can click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.
If you wish to support independent media, and accurate information, please consider making a one off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Renew Economy. Please click here. Your support is invaluable.
Sophie is editor of Renew Economy and editor of its sister site, One Step Off The Grid . She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
Related Topics
© Copyright RenewEconomy 2026. All rights reserved.

Learn more

source