You Didn’t Miss The Rebate. It Just Got Better.

There have been massive supply changes within the industry over the last few months, and almost everyone has read them backwards.

In conjunction with that, the rebate dropped too. That’s the part people fixate on. What they don’t understand is why it dropped, or by how much relative to the hardware.

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Why the prices actually dropped

Let’s get the cause and effect right, because this gets told backwards constantly.

The rebate change didn’t drag battery prices down. Demand did.

Before 1 May, installers were booked out for months. Everybody rushed to beat the deadline. Then 1 May arrived and the pipeline emptied. The same installers who couldn’t fit another job in April are now screening for work.

The rebate drop didn’t change the economics much. What it changed was market confidence — and confidence is what filled those calendars. When the orders stopped, the price came down. That’s a demand story, not a rebate story.

Here’s what the numbers actually look like since 1 May.

The hardware fell roughly three times faster than the rebate did. That system is now genuinely cheaper than it was before 1 May. 

On a 50kWh system: this is where it gets important, and where most people get caught out. From 1 May the rebate tapers.

Full rate on the first 14kWh, 60% between 14 and 28kWh, and only 15% between 28 and 50kWh. Run the numbers on a full 50kWh stack and the rebate has dropped by about 58%.

That 58% is almost exactly the drop in battery pricing. Which means on a big system, the cost to you is no different to what it was pre-1 May. The rebate you think you lost came straight back off the hardware.

So: right-sized systems got cheaper. Large systems came out level. Nobody went backwards.
But — and this is the whole point — only if you’re dealing with a company that didn’t oversupply.

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Why you’re being told otherwise

Solar sales companies use “you’ve missed out on the rebate” as leverage. It’s a closing line, and it works, because it sounds plausible and nobody checks the maths.

As an industry insider, here’s the secret — they haven’t missed out. It’s quite the opposite. It got considerably better. Technology improved, prices dropped, and creativity continued among the progressive companies in this space.

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The part nobody wants to talk about…

We don’t hold stock. That’s deliberate, and it’s the whole difference.

Because we don’t hold stock, we always purchase the latest product entering the market. Every job, current generation.

A lot of clients are coming to us right now after they’ve already decided on a product and model. Why? Because solar sales companies that oversupplied themselves — who didn’t expect the demand drop — have been trying to flog off old stock, claiming it’s the latest technology. That warehouse has to be emptied, and someone has to be talked into emptying it.

And here’s the bit that actually costs you money.

Those companies bought that inventory at pre-drop prices. They’re still paying for it, and they’re paying to hold it — warehousing, capital tied up, stock ageing on a shelf while newer models land around it. Their cost base is locked in at last quarter’s numbers.

So you’re either being quoted from that old cost base, or you’re being quoted from it and wearing their holding costs on top. Either way, the discount everyone else in the market got, you don’t.

Not us. We remain cashed up while others can’t get rid of old stock, so we buy at today’s price and we have no reason to push last year’s product at you. We continue to supply the latest brands and models entering the Australian marketplace without compromising on quality.

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What to actually ask

No urgency, no deadline, no missed window. The prices are the same as they were before 1 May — sharper, on a right-sized system — provided you’re buying from someone who isn’t quietly charging you for a warehouse.