Rooftop solar installations in Australia hit strongest six-month total since 2021

Australia’s rooftop solar sector posted its strongest half-year performance since 2021, with battery storage increasingly riding alongside it.

New data from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) shows installers paired a record 153 home batteries for every 100 solar systems in the first half of 2026.

The CEC is Australia’s clean energy industry body, and its biannual Rooftop Solar and Storage Report for January to June also records 276,011 home battery storage systems installed in the period, 52% more than in the previous six months, up from 130 per 100 in the second half of 2025.

Those home battery storage systems added 8,691MWh of capacity, more than double the 4,221MWh added in the previous six months.

Installations rose in every quarter, from 70,571 in the September 2025 quarter to 154,140 in the June 2026 quarter, which the report’s charts put at about 4,950MWh of capacity on its own.

Average battery system size climbed from 17.2kWh in July 2025 to a peak of 35.3kWh in April 2026, the largest month for both battery and rooftop solar installations, before easing to 26.6kWh in June. Over the programme’s first 12 months, the average was 28.2kWh.

Rooftop solar also grew. The CEC counted 180,878 systems installed in the first half, 35% higher than the same period in 2025 and the strongest six-month total since 2021.

They added 1,894MW, up 41% and the highest six-month figure on record, and the June quarter was the largest on record for rooftop solar in six of eight states and territories.

The average system size on a six-month rolling basis reached 10.45kW, up 4.5% on a year earlier. The two growth rates use different baselines, with batteries measured against the preceding six months and solar against the same period a year earlier.

Rooftop solar supplied 12.9% of Australia’s electricity in the six months, and cumulative installations since January 2019 reached 2.45 million systems and 21,979MW.

That is close to the roughly 22GW of coal capacity that remains. However, the report notes that rooftop solar’s lower capacity factor means 22GW of it produces about a quarter of the annual energy of 22GW of coal.