The Australian Labor government's recently unveiled $2.3 billion solar battery incentive scheme is a significant and commendable stride toward achieving a more resilient and decarbonised energy landscape.

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Promising a 30 per cent reduction in the price of batteries for households, small businesses and community facilities, the scheme hopes to help Australia get to one million new batteries by 2030.

This will undoubtedly drive widespread adoption and help alleviate strain on the national grid.

But, as history demonstrates, ambition without accountability can result in unintended, yet avoidable, consequences.

To understand the risks, we need to only look back to less than two decades ago when the Home Insulation Program, colloquially remembered as the Pink Batts scheme, was launched in 2009.

The infamous scheme was part of the Rudd government's economic stimulus package during the Global Financial Crisis, aimed to retrofit ceiling insulation across millions of Australian homes.

However, the rapid rollout, combined with insufficient training, lax regulatory controls, and inadequate auditing, resulted in multiple fatalities, hundreds of house fires, and significant public distrust that saw the program shut down just a year into its planned four-year duration.

It's a powerful example of how large-scale energy programs, when not paired with adequate regulatory frameworks, can collapse under the weight of preventable failures.

Over the past few years, we have conducted thousands of audits on newly installed solar battery systems throughout Australia, covering both grid-connected and off-grid installations.

The findings are truly eye-opening.

More than a third of systems we inspected were classified as substandard, often due to........

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