Australian homes and cities are increasingly producing and storing their own power.

After two decades of growth, solar panels are now on the rooftops of one in three Australian homes. And home batteries have surged after the Australian government began offering subsidies last year. Around 450,000 batteries had been installed by the end of 2025 – about 4% of Australia’s 10.9 million households.

What would happen if these trends continue? It’s tempting to picture a future where Australian homes and cities could power themselves using these two decentralised technologies.

But while rooftop solar and batteries can take us a long way, they aren’t enough to take most households off-grid – let alone run entire cities.

The real question is how much household power demand can be met by solar and batteries, at what times of day, and under what conditions. These five charts show what’s possible – and what’s not.

How far could these technologies take us?

As of April 30, the National Energy Market had close to 26 gigawatts installed capacity of small-scale rooftop solar, which includes small-scale rooftop PV installed on homes, businesses and other eligible premises.

Solar panels never produce at their full capacity. Clouds cut output, and there’s no sun at night. As a result, that 26GW of panels produced 4GW of power on average from January to March this year.

That’s still significant.........

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