The Solar Rebate Is Being Expanded From 100kW to 1MW: What It Means for Gold Coast Business

The Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, the same scheme behind millions of household solar installs since 2011, is being expanded to cover commercial systems up to 1MW.

Systems in that range currently sit outside it. Under the change they will earn small-scale technology certificates in the same way a smaller system does, delivered as a discount on the install price rather than as income over time.

The government put the value at around 20 per cent off the upfront cost of a medium-sized system.

A 100kW system sounds large until you put it on a real commercial roof. On a warehouse, a distribution centre or a decent-sized factory it covers a fraction of the available area and often a fraction of the load.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen described the gap directly: "One in three Australian homes have rooftop solar, but larger energy users have been locked out because the existing solar rebate only supports systems up to 100 kW."

The scale of the gap shows in the national figures. Australian homes have installed around 22 gigawatts of rooftop solar. Businesses have installed roughly 5.6 gigawatts, and most of that sits below the 100kW line.

The government published worked figures for the sizes most affected. They are useful as a sense of scale, not as a quote, because the certificate value depends on the system, the zone and the market price on the day it is claimed.

On the generation side, the same release put a 250kW system at around 345 MWh a year, worth roughly $50,000 off an annual power bill. An 850kW system was put at around 1,173 MWh a year and roughly $175,000.

The upfront discount and the ongoing saving stack. That combination is what changes the payback period on a mid-sized system.

This is worth being clear about, because an expansion is easy to mistake for a deadline. The rebate you can claim today on a system under 100kW is not being withdrawn on 1 October. It continues as it is.

What continues as well is the annual step-down. The certificate count is tied to the years remaining until the scheme ends in 2030, so it drops each January regardless of this announcement.

So the timing question for a smaller system has not changed. The timing question for a larger one has.

A business planning a 200kW, 400kW or 800kW system is the one this was written for. Today that system sits in the large-scale scheme, earning certificates over time rather than money off the invoice.

From the expected commencement it would instead attract an upfront discount, on the same mechanism your smaller neighbours already use.

If a project that size is on your list for this year, the sensible move is to get the design and the numbers done now and line the install up against the commencement date. Detail on how the current schemes work is in our rebates guide, and our incentives article covers how the certificate value is calculated.

Money is only half of what slows a mid-sized commercial project down. The other half is the network connection approval, which for systems in this range can take longer than the install itself.

The government said it will also work to improve connection processes for mid-scale solar through targeted rule change requests and improvements to the existing framework.

No timeline was attached to that part, so treat it as a direction rather than a date.

The change is announced, not yet law. It is expected to commence from 1 October 2026, subject to the necessary regulations being in place, so the responsible thing is to plan for it rather than bank on it.

Design work, roof and structural checks, load analysis and network paperwork all take time and none of it depends on the regulations landing. Doing that now is what puts you in a position to act.