Why nobody can quote you an exact figure
The most useful thing on this page is a question you can ask any installer, including us, and what their answer tells you.
The incentive is a certificate, not an amount
If a supplier has given you an exact rebate figure for a commercial battery in NSW, they have guessed. Not lied, necessarily. Guessed. Understanding why is the difference between reading a proposal and being sold one.
The NSW commercial battery incentives are not fixed dollar amounts. The value is delivered through Peak Reduction Certificates1, created by the project and sold into a market. That market has a price, and the price moves.
So the number that was true when a proposal was written is not necessarily the number on the day the system is installed. Nothing has to go wrong for that to happen. It is how the mechanism works.
Reported indicative values sit around 30 to 40 per cent of the cost of the battery where it is installed with new or additional solar2. NSW publishes a Certificate Estimator3 for project level figures, and that is the right starting point for a specific site.
The evidence that the value genuinely moves
In November 2025, the 2026/27 scheme target was cut to 0.5 per cent, down from 7.5 per cent4.
Nothing about the incentives themselves was amended. No rule was rewritten. The target moved, the certificate market responded, and the value of a project changed.
That is not an argument against proceeding. It is an argument for knowing what your project's value actually depends on.
What a defensible proposal looks like
Five things. A proposal that has them is one you can take to a board.
A range, not a single number, with the certificate price assumption stated in writing. The Certificate Estimator output for your site, dated. The activity named, with the eligibility test shown rather than asserted. The solar ratio demonstrated against the actual proposed array, where it applies. And a statement of what would have to change if any eligibility test is not met as designed.
The question worth asking
Ask whoever quoted you what certificate price they assumed.
A supplier who has thought about it will answer immediately, because the assumption is written into their model. One who has not will change the subject.
Either way you will have learnt something useful about the quote, and about who you are dealing with.
Our answer to that question
We state the certificate price assumption in writing, and we give a range rather than a single number. That is a less impressive-looking proposal than the one with a confident figure on it, and it is the honest one.
It is also the reason nothing on this site quotes a savings figure. We do not have your bill yet.
Sources
- Peak Demand Reduction Scheme. NSW Climate and Energy Action.
- Batteries for businesses incentive. NSW Climate and Energy Action.
- Safeguard Certificate Estimator. NSW Climate and Energy Action.
- “Shockwaves through the market”: NSW slashes peak demand reduction target amid home battery rebate fallout. RenewEconomy. 3 November 2025.
We check this for your address
Incentives change, and they change by building, by capacity and by whether there is already solar on the site. Working out which ones apply to you is part of the design, not an extra.