Utility scale batteries are now at ~$66m/GWh, or about ~$726m equivalent.
It does not make sense for everyone to be doing a bespoke installation inside their own home. It is ridiculously inefficient.
We are a society. We don't build our own roads, water, grid, schools, hospitals. Why have we suddenly decided to DIY our own redundant power sources? (A: failure of governance)
1. You are using the current point-in-time cost for batteries as compared to a subsidy spent over years while battery costs were dropping.
2. You do not include transmission upgrades and costs to distribute energy from centralized batteries.
3. You ignore the benefits and efficiencies of having generation and batteries distributed and close to the source of demand. It also increases resilience of the grid.
4. You assume the political will was there for government and taxpayers to bear the full cost burden of development of the batteries.
Note that figures like $66m/GWh are projected costs based on projects starting today, not coming online today. They may not include 'balance of plant'. For better comparison you would have to look at the financials of recently commissioned storage.
Then the local power company realized that as well and started shifting to solar with the net result that it became cheaper to buy the power company supplied electricity than from your own solar.
I’ll add that we’re not DIYing this. Professionals are manufacturing and installing these at scale. Also, though I’m not sure how it works outside the US, the government doesn’t build the grid. Energy providers and utilities are also companies.
And the battery thing even looks kind of neat.
https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/vermonts-largest-energy-sourc...
There's no use pretending. Utility scale has a single political point of failure. Batteries in home do not.
Domestic electricity was too expensive (and I’m assuming producers would rather pass the costs onto consumers rather than spend their own money and build solar/battery plants themselves), so individuals with capital did the cost-benefit analysis and determined that installing solar is cheaper in the long term.
This drove the price of electricity down during the day, causing the cost-benefit of home-scale batteries to become positive over a reasonable timescale. Thus, people with capital invested money for a positive ROI over a medium term!
The government subsidies level the playing field so it’s not only the upper-class that can benefit from this phenomenon - they are providing equity, not equality. And, cutting out all the middle management waste of the large utility companies, meaning Australians get more electricity for their buck.
Modern capitalism is what failed here. The Australian power providers should’ve gone down this route, but (I’m assuming) shareholders would be upset about ROI on the scale of 5-20 years. Homeowners are more reasonable.
Investing in more grid power would require additional grid capacity which would raise the price for all grid users, and with cheap renewables that would be an increasing amount on power bills.
Everyone I know has had that happen at one time or another, and it’s extremely common to want home battery just for the degree of ‘power sovereignity’ it grants you.
You can read up on the subsidy itself too - they basically set a cost per kwhr target based on the few bespoke batteries on the market, before it was flooded with cheaper Chinese options. Because it was based on capacity rather than a percentage discount, this caused the effective discount to be much higher than intended at the outset.
We don't know the final numbers yet - but government has reforecast for 7 billion for the program's duration, which includes a much smaller subsidy continuing until 2030. I expect it will be close to about 5B spent so far.
That's simple! As per Felon Musk - to sell overhead to electricity providers. Allegedly they will gladly buy energy from you! So with big enough roof, you can just sit home relax and watch TV, while your solar panels make your living.
Because government is failing to address these issues?
Back in Trumpistan we had some storms roll through my area the other day. Power has been out for some (not me, thankfully) for a couple of days in a major metro. It was a bad storm and I do not fault the crews who are doing hard work out there repairing everything and it takes time.
But what the hell are you supposed to do when the power goes out and it takes a few days to get turned back on? Well, spend $10,000 - $20,000 and install your own backup power. Is it inefficient? Sure! Does that matter? Absolutely not.