Government Grants and rebates for Solar Panels
Numerous grants and subsidies are available for SMEs as well as individual home owners that are looking to cut their energy bills using solar energy. While some of these grants are funded by the Federal Government, most of them are funded by State Governments for local businesses and home owners. In this section, we will discuss some of the grants available in this category and their eligibility criteria.
The Australian government encourages community organisations to make use of solar energy by providing them with grants ranging from $2,500 to $12,500 to put up solar panels, store batteries, make use of solar water systems, etc. To be eligible, businesses should be:
- non-profit organisations
- legal entities located in eligible regions and
- have an ABN
If total costs incurred exceed $12,500, businesses will have to bare the additional costs on their own.
Few states are also helping SMEs to encourage the use of solar energy by providing them with funding of up to $3,000 to install solar panels or to upgrade their energy storage systems. To be able to avail these grants an applicant:
- must be based in the state providing the grant,
- must be the owner of an SME
- must be willing to install an appropriate battery or an energy system capable of storing solar energy in batteries
- must own and operate the small business and the place where the solar / battery storage system is to be installed
Government Subsidy – Solar Panels
One of state governments has decided to extend the grants program under which homeowners can purchase household energy storage batteries at a subsidised price. Earlier, the grant was also nominated for an award by the Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership initiative.
The extended grant will have four companies: ActewAGL, Evergen, Solahart, and Solarhub delivering the services for next round of the Next Generation Energy Storage program. Under this program, homeowners will get a subsidy of $825 per KW (maximum claim allowed is for up to 30KW) for installing renewable energy storage systems from any of the vendors mentioned above.
Thus, for installing a battery system, the grant, on an average will provide homeowners with a subsidy of up to $4,000. To be eligible for this grant, homeowners must be installing batteries that are both grid-connected as well as solar enabled. Service providers are offering a large number of battery models under the scheme from reputed manufacturers like LG, Tesla, SolaX, etc.
Another grant funded by one of the state governments which came into effect after a long wait and numerous protests, has tripled the number of applications available for the month of September along with a 50% increase in the rebates on offer up to $4,000 for 2019-2020 fiscal year.
For more information on the above programs and their eligibility criteria, call now to speak to one of our advisors.
