Author: Donna Wentworth

Right now, an inverter approved in one state can be a problem in the next one over. Same product. Different rulebook. Different paperwork.

That’s being replaced with one national set of rules.

In September 2026, Australia’s energy ministers endorsed the Consumer Energy National Technical Regulatory Framework, covering 2026 to 2029. It sets one national standard for the technical side of rooftop solar, inverters, home batteries and EV chargers. Nothing changes on your roof today. Nothing you’ve already installed gets caught out.

Here’s what this article covers:

• What the new framework actually is, in plain terms
• Whether your existing system is affected
• What changes when you go to buy
• What it means if you’re in the trade
• When any of it starts

What are Australia’s new solar and battery regulations for 2026?

The framework covers what the government calls consumer energy resources. That’s the gear sitting on and around your house that makes or stores power: panels, inverters, batteries, EV chargers, and some connected appliances like air conditioners and hot water systems.

Until now, the technical rules for that gear have been set state by state, and network by network. A manufacturer selling into Australia has had to build for several different sets of requirements.

The framework says that costs everyone money. Manufacturers either wear the cost of multiple versions, pass it on, or walk away from the market entirely. Fewer options on the shelf. Higher prices on the ones that stay.

So the fix is a single National CER Technical Code. One baseline, written by the federal department, updated every two years with the minister’s sign-off.

Now, states and territories can still add their own requirements on top of that baseline. The national rules set the floor, not the ceiling.

Will the new rules apply to the system I already have?

No. This is the part worth being clear about.

The framework does not apply retrospectively. It will not cover devices installed before the first mandated requirements start for that type of product.

Read that last bit carefully, because it’s more specific than “existing systems are safe.” The start dates get set per product type, inside the Code. Batteries will have their own date. Inverters will have their own date. EV chargers, their own.

What it means in practice: your system gets judged against the rules that were in place when it went in. If you install a battery in November and the battery requirements don’t kick in until two years later, your battery isn’t retrofitted into the new regime.

The same goes for anything you buy during the changeover. The regulator has said plainly that buying and installing now is not affected while the transition happens.

What actually changes when you go to buy?

Three public lists. That’s the practical upshot for a homeowner.

A Regulated Product List. Every certified product approved for sale, installation and connection across the country. One list instead of a dozen state ones.

An Accredited Installer List. Every installer accredited to fit those products, with their accreditation current.

A Registered Supplier List. Every supplier registered to sell into Australia.

Say you’re getting three quotes. Today you’re largely taking each company’s word on whether the gear is approved where you live. Under the new system you check the model against one list, and the installer against another.

Products will also need independent testing and certification before they can be sold. Not a self-declaration. Tested by someone else, then listed.

What does this mean if you’re in the trade?

The weight lands on suppliers, not installers. That’s deliberate.

Suppliers will have to register, get each product certified before it can be sold in Australia, register firmware versions before releasing them, and feed installed device information back to the regulator. They also can’t commission a job done by an unaccredited installer, or one using a product that isn’t on the list.

The framework’s reasoning is straightforward. Installers fit the hardware. They have no control over the firmware that determines whether a device keeps meeting its requirements six months later. So the ongoing compliance obligation sits with the party that controls the software.

Installers still need accreditation, plus continuing professional development and a current trade licence. Solar Accreditation Australia doesn’t disappear. Under the framework it becomes one of the bodies that can recommend installers for national accreditation, alongside suppliers and state accreditation bodies. Existing training and accreditation can be recognised where it lines up with the Code.

When do the new rules start?

Nobody can give you a date yet, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.

The framework is a policy document. Legislation still has to pass to establish the regulator and make any of the obligations enforceable. The Clean Energy Regulator will take on the role of national technical regulator, subject to that legislation.

After that, each product type gets its own transition period, then its own mandatory date, set through the Code. The Code hasn’t been published.

So the honest answer is: endorsed, not yet law, rolling out progressively across 2026 to 2029.

Well, what should you do with that? Not much. If a system stacks up for your household on today’s numbers, it stacks up. Waiting for a rulebook that explicitly won’t apply to you backwards is waiting for nothing.

If you’re sizing a system now, the thing that matters is still whether it’s built to offset your usage properly.

Read next: NSW Leads Push for Mandatory Solar Panel Recycling

Frequently Asked Questions

NSW is moving on mandatory solar panel recycling. On 21 September 2026 the Government released a draft regulation that would make panel brand owners pay to collect and recycle their own products. 

Not homeowners. The companies that sell the panels.

It is a proposal for now, with consultation open. It is also the first scheme of its type in the country, and it is good to see the industry getting some structure around this.

What this article covers:

• What NSW has actually proposed
• Why old panels are becoming a problem
• How the scheme would work
• Where the national picture sits
• What it means if you already own solar

What has NSW actually proposed?

A mandatory product stewardship scheme. Product stewardship means the business that puts a product on the market carries responsibility for what happens to it at end of life, rather than the customer or the council.

The draft is the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Amendment (Photovoltaic Panels) Regulation 2026, sitting under the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Act 2025. 

Environment Minister Penny Sharpe put the aim plainly: making sure those panels do not become tomorrow’s landfill problem.

Submissions close at 5pm on Monday 16 November 2026. The regulation is expected to commence sometime in 2028.

Why are old solar panels becoming a problem?

Volume.

NSW carries more than 1.18 million rooftop solar systems. Around 14,000 tonnes of panels reach end of life here every year, projected to reach 89,000 tonnes by 2045 as the first wave of rooftop systems retires, according to the NSW Government. Nationally, Australia is expected to generate around one million tonnes of panel waste by 2035. Roughly 50 million panels.

Only about 17% of end-of-life panels are recycled today.

Most of the rest goes to landfill. Victoria is the only state with an outright ban on panels going to landfill, in place since 2019.

A panel is worth recovering. There is aluminium, glass, silicon, copper and silver inside one. Degraded panels also carry small amounts of lead and chromium, which is a second reason to keep them out of the ground. 

How would the scheme work?

Brand owners, meaning the manufacturers and importers who supply panels into NSW, would have to join a product stewardship organisation. That organisation lodges an action plan with the EPA covering collection points and public awareness, then runs the network.

Where no such organisation exists for a panel type, the brand owner carries the obligations on its own. Non-compliance is an offence under the Act, and the EPA can publish which brand owners are meeting their obligations and which are not.

Scope is narrower than people assume. The draft covers monocrystalline and bifacial panels, rooftop and utility-scale. Portable panels, cables, inverters and batteries sit outside it.

The same Act already covers batteries. That scheme starts on 1 October 2026, and panels would work the same way.

What is happening nationally?

Slower going.

In January 2026 the federal government announced a 24.7 million dollar National Solar Panel Recycling Pilot. Around 100 collection sites, up to 250,000 panels, designed to gather the data for a future national scheme. Lifting recycling rates nationally was costed at up to 7.3 billion dollars in benefits.

The pilot has not started yet. The process to appoint an administrator was suspended in May 2026 over an undisclosed complaint, as reported by the Guardian. Eight solar recycling companies have since written to ministers warning that some operators may not survive the wait.

That is why the NSW move matters. Waste and recycling industry bodies welcomed it, pointing to the certainty a legislated scheme gives recyclers who need to invest in equipment and sites.

What does this mean if you already own solar?

Nothing changes today. Nothing to pay, nothing to do.

When your system does reach replacement, the rule is simple. Panels should not go in general waste, and a decent installer takes the old ones away as part of the job. Specialist recyclers can recover a high share of a panel’s weight.

For businesses, the change is bigger. Decommissioning a commercial or C&I array produces panels by the pallet, and a funded collection network makes that far easier to handle than it is now. Worth factoring into anything you are planning to build past 2028.

If you are in the ACT or Queensland, none of this binds you yet. States tend to follow each other on waste rules, so expect the question to come up.

For now, a scheme that puts the cost where the product came from is a sensible piece of work.

Read next: Will Data Centres Make Your Power Bill Go Up?

Frequently Asked Questions

Solar for renters has sat in the too-hard basket for years. No roof of your own. No say over what goes on it. No simple way to cut a bill that keeps climbing.

That is starting to shift. Every state and territory has now agreed to work with the Commonwealth to make plug-in solar and batteries legal in Australia.

Nothing is legal yet. No product is on the shelf. There is real work to get through first.

Still, this is the first firm commitment from the people who can actually change the rules.

This article covers:

• What the energy ministers have agreed to
• How plug-in solar works, and why it suits renters
• When it could become legal here
• What a system might save you
• What still has to be sorted out

What have the energy ministers actually agreed to?

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced this important update for renters.

Lots of renters and people who live in apartments have raised with me that it’s not easy to get the benefits of solar and batteries. And they are right. I am really pleased that the states and territories have all agreed to work with us to make “plug in” solar and batteries legal in Australia. This will open up new choices for renters and people in apartments. There’s a lot more work to do but this is a huge step towards more cost of living relief for renters.

This is a good step in the right direction to opening up a pathway for renters to have easy access to the savings solar provides.

There is plenty of work ahead, as Bowen says himself, but the direction is the right one.

What is plug-in solar, and how does it work?

Plug-in solar, also called balcony solar, is about as simple as solar gets.

You get a compact panel, or a pair, rated around 600 to 800 watts. It connects to a small inverter or battery unit. That unit plugs into an ordinary power point.

An inverter is the box that converts power from a panel into the type of electricity your appliances can actually use. Every solar system has one.

No sparky. No roof work. No holes in someone else’s house.

The power feeds into your home circuit and offsets your usage while the sun is up. Fridge, router, standby load, whatever is running. It gets served by the panel first, so you buy less from the grid.

Moving out? Unplug it and take it with you. That is the part that makes it work for renters.

This is not new technology. Germany has been running it for years, with roughly one in ten households now using a system. Great Britain legalised plug-in solar in September 2026. New Zealand has committed to doing the same within twelve months.

We covered the hardware in detail last time, including Sigenergy’s SigenMate 2700 Ultra, a plug-in battery already selling in Europe and not available here.

When will plug-in solar be legal in Australia?

No exact date has been set. 

The federal government has committed to working with the states and territories to identify what is needed for safe use, then report back on next steps by the end of 2026.

That report is the next real milestone. It is not legalisation. It is the piece of work that spells out what legalisation would take.

Advocacy group Solar Citizens is pushing for a firm legal date of 1 July 2027. That is their ask, not a government commitment. Worth keeping those apart when you see mid-2027 quoted.

How much could a plug-in system save a renter?

Say you run an 800 watt setup on a balcony that gets decent sun. Reported estimates put the savings at roughly $300 to $400 a year. Add a small plug-in battery and that figure roughly doubles, because you store the cheap daytime power instead of feeding it back for next to nothing.

Systems overseas cost up to $1,300. Payback sits somewhere between four and ten years depending on whose numbers you read. 

Now, is this a replacement for a proper rooftop system? No. An 800 watt panel is a fraction of a standard install. It will not run your house, and for some homes the maths will not stack up.

For a renter paying full retail on every kilowatt hour, though, a few hundred dollars a year back in your pocket is not nothing.

Bowen has also stated that plug-in systems meeting the safety standards would be covered by the existing Cheaper Home Batteries Program and the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme. Details have not been worked through.

What still has to be sorted out?

Four things, roughly.

Standards. AS/NZS 4777 governs grid-connected inverters and has no plug-in category at all. A pathway has to be written into it.

Product approval. Someone has to certify these units and publish an approved product list, the way rooftop gear is handled now.

Tenancy and strata. Rules need updating so a landlord or an owners corporation cannot unreasonably refuse.

Safety. Anti-islanding is the main one. That is the function that shuts a system down when the grid goes out, so nobody working on the line gets hurt.

Whyis it taking so long to get all this sorted? Glen Morris, who sits on the Standards Australia committees covering this equipment, argues the blocker was never safety. Europe sorted the technical side years ago. The real problem is that nobody in this country had the authority to say yes. Standards bodies wait on regulators. Regulators wait on standards. Networks will not connect a device that is not on a list.

That deadlock is exactly what the ministers’ agreement is meant to break.

What can renters do in the meantime?

Three things are worth a look while the rules catch up.

Talk to your landlord. Plenty of owners will consider solar and a battery on a rental, particularly with the rebates currently on offer.

Check your electricity plan. If you are wanting some tips on how to choose a retailer you read about it in our recent article here.

If you are in an apartment, a shared system is already possible, and more incentives are coming.

None of these is plug-in solar. Each chips away at the same problem from a different angle.

Read next: Queensland’s solar for renters rebate explained

Frequently Asked Questions

Australia’s data centres are about to use nearly seven times more electricity than they do today, going from around 5 TWh a year to 34 TWh by 2035–36. So will data centres push up your power bill? They might, and it’s being decided right now in rooms you’re not in. A roof full of panels and a battery change how much you need to buy at all.

Here’s what this article covers:

• How much power data centres actually use
• Whether that cost lands on households
• Why solar alone cannot run a data centre
• What any of it means for your roof

Why are data centres suddenly an energy story?

The number of proposed data centres has exploded. The AEMO counted 225 known data centre projects under development, up from 97 a year earlier.

In NSW, network connection enquiries reached up to 28 GW as of July, with about 13 GW in advanced discussions. The NSW Government notes that 13 GW alone is more than the state’s average daily demand.

Connection enquiries are lodged at maximum possible capacity, not expected use. AEMO found more than 40% of data centre projects proposed since 2025 have already dropped out or gone backwards. The pipeline is big and it is uncertain.

How much electricity does a data centre actually use?

AEMO’s 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities forecasts data centre consumption in the National Electricity Market rising from around 5 TWh in 2025–26 to 34 TWh in 2035–36. That takes them from roughly 3% of grid electricity to 13%.

That is the middle case. AEMO also modelled stronger growth reaching about 52 TWh over the same period.

The shape of the load matters as much as the size. AEMO says mature data centres run at about half their connection capacity and operate constantly, with only minor increases during working hours. Flat, day and night.

Will data centres push my power bill up?

That depends on decisions being made right now, and those decisions aren’t finished.

Here’s the risk if it goes badly. New demand arrives, new generation fails to keep pace, and everyone competes for the same electricity. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation estimates wholesale prices would be 26% higher in NSW and 23% higher in Victoria by 2035 under that scenario. Wholesale prices reach retail bills eventually.

Network costs work the same way. The proposed 800 MW Bundey project in South Australia needs four substations and multiple new transmission lines on its own. If the rules stay silent on who funds that, it spreads across every customer.

So the real question isn’t whether data centres use a lot of power. It’s who gets made responsible for the supply and the infrastructure that use requires.

Governments are working on it. The AEMC recommended in July that new data centres prove they are backing new renewable generation, contract their own firming capacity, and register with AEMO so it can see what’s coming.

National Cabinet signed off in late August on standards requiring operators to invest in new renewable generation, with flexibility for state-owned electricity assets. Queensland and the Northern Territory took that as meaning they could decide how data centres in their states are powered. Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen rejected that two days later, saying the standards will apply “with no exceptions and no carve-outs”. A state-owned company wanting to use coal or gas would have to prove to the Commonwealth it is cheaper than renewables. 

Bowen calls data centres “electricity whales” that “eat” energy, and puts the stakes in bill terms. Under an open slather approach in Queensland, he says, wholesale prices would be 13% higher.

Worth noting that AEMO published its forecast the day before the National Cabinet met. The 34 TWh assumes none of these obligations exist.

Legislation is expected in early 2027. Until then, none of this is settled.

Can solar power a data centre?

Partly, and only during daylight. A data centre draws close to the same load at 3am as at midday, so solar on its own leaves most of the day uncovered.

Solar plus storage is the workable version. New solar and wind backed by batteries is what the Clean Energy Council has proposed data centres be required to contract, on terms of 15 to 20 years, by signing with a project directly, going through a retailer, or building the generation themselves. The length is the point. Renewable projects struggle to get finance without a long contract from a buyer who will still be there in fifteen years. Batteries then shift the midday surplus into the evening.

Same principle as a house with panels and a battery, several thousand times larger.

What does this mean for your own house?

You don’t get a vote on any of this. Rules, connection queues, wholesale prices, none of it is yours to decide.

What you do decide is how much you buy. Right now your electricity comes from a retailer, and the retailer sets the rate. Solar and batteries give you energy independence. Your panels cover the house during the day, the battery covers the evening, and the power you use is power you generated. Whether wholesale prices go up or not, you’re protected.

Australian households added 2.4 GW of battery storage, or 7.4 GWh, as at March 2026. Households are doing at small scale what data centres are now being asked to do at large scale.

Look, it doesn’t stack up for every home. Low daytime use, heavy shading or a short stay all change the answer. Click here to find out whether your home is ready for solar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Read next: Are AGL, Origin and Energy Australia prices going up this year?

South Australia just proved that solar is capable of supporting the electricity grid. In a recent event observed by the AEMO, rooftop solar met 99.9% of grid demand setting a new record for winter.

Here is what happened:

• What South Australia’s solar record actually was
• Why the same afternoon set a national record
• What the batteries were doing
• What it means for solar owners in NSW, the ACT and Queensland

What happened at 1:30pm?

South Australia’s demand for grid-scale generation fell to 2 MW. Homes and businesses were running almost entirely on power made on their own roofs.

At the same time the National Electricity Market set a new winter minimum operational demand record of 11,992 MW, beating the 12,144 MW set in August 2024. Operational demand is the power the grid has to supply. Rooftop solar pushes it down, because those homes are not asking for much.

Across the NEM, rooftop solar was supplying close to 54% of underlying demand. Renewables of all kinds accounted for 71% of generation.

Why is a winter record a bigger deal?

Winter is solar’s hard season. The sun sits lower and the days are shorter. It shows that rooftop solar can carry a state through its weakest months.

What were the batteries doing?

Working hard. Wholesale prices went negative across every NEM region, from -$7.40/MWh in Queensland to -$8.60/MWh in Tasmania. Negative prices mean more power is available than the market needs.

Batteries treated that as an opportunity. Charging soaked up around 10.5% of everything being generated, with hydro pumping taking another 2%. That midday surplus was not wasted. It was held and released into the evening peak.

What does this mean for NSW, the ACT and Queensland?

The same grid, the same direction. Queensland saw negative prices that afternoon too.

Rooftop solar is now the biggest single generator in the country by the middle of the day, and AEMO is planning the system around it. More storage. More flexibility.

For a homeowner the read is simple. Midday power is abundant. The households getting the most from it are the ones storing it rather than exporting it, which is worth weighing up when deciding what battery you install.

Read next: the five best ways to use three free hours of daytime energy

Frequently asked questions