The federal battery discount can be claimed once at a given address. Not once a year. Not once per battery. Once.

That single rule sits underneath a decision plenty of builders are now making on behalf of their clients. Fit a modest battery to round out an energy package, claim the discount against it, and the homeowner has spent their entitlement on a unit they will very likely want to grow later.

Leigh Storr raised it unprompted. Storr is the founder and chief executive of RESINC Solar and Batteries, the Brisbane based installer that won the SunWiz triple gold-equivalent #1 spots for Best Rated, Most Popular, and All-Star Installer, backed by over 3,800 verified customer reviews. Speaking on The Good Builder Podcast, he described builder specified batteries as one of the more common and least visible mistakes in new residential work.

“One of the mistakes I do see builders make is adding a small battery to a system, again, to tick that box. We have a battery rebate available that’s up to fifty kilowatt hours of battery and it’s a one time bite of that rebate. So what you’ve potentially done is provided a really small battery for the customer and they’re ineligible for any rebates to upsize that battery.”

What the battery rebate actually covers

The Cheaper Home Batteries Program is an expansion of the Small scale Renewable Energy Scheme, the same framework that has underwritten rooftop solar for years. Under the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water guidance, an eligible system sits between 5 kWh and 100 kWh of nominal capacity, and certificates are created against the first 50 kWh of new or added usable capacity.

The line that matters for builders is the one about frequency. Support is provided for one battery system at a single premises, and only the first time a battery system is installed, added to, or replaced. Storr has the substance of it right.

There is a second layer that sharpens his point. Since 1 May 2026 the certificate factor tapers with size. The full rate applies to the first 14 kWh of usable capacity. Capacity above 14 kWh and up to 28 kWh earns 60 per cent. Capacity above 28 kWh and up to 50 kWh earns 15 per cent.

So the money is concentrated in the first 14 kWh. A 5 kWh unit specified to satisfy a package captures roughly a third of the value available in the strongest band, and closes the door on the rest for that address permanently.

Storr’s position is that builders have two clean options and should avoid the middle.

“Unless you’re going to provide a substantial battery that you’re going to sell into the build and advertise with, or alternatively involve the customer in that process so that they’ve got the option to choose a package that includes an upgraded solar and battery, I’d recommend potentially just doing the solar component and leaving the battery open to their choice.”

The client is unlikely to know any of this. Storr makes the point that consumers rarely track incentives outside a market they are actively shopping in. The builder holds the pen, and the consequence lands two or three years later when someone quotes an upgrade and explains why the discount is gone.

The builder holds the pen, and the consequence lands two or three years later.

Fifteen per cent of the headcount works after the job is finished

The battery point is the sharpest single item in the conversation, but it is downstream of something larger. Storr has built the business around what happens after installation, to a degree that is unusual in any trade.

“In our industry we always say, panels are on the roof and the cheque’s in the bank, you’ll never hear from the installer again. So we try to be different. We look at that as the moment where our business relationship with the customer is just starting.”

He says roughly 25 staff work solely on proactive customer care after installation, around 15 per cent of the total headcount. That is separate from reactive service, which he treats as a baseline any competent company should already have.

The sequence he describes runs like this. A check in call at the end of installation day, covering whether the client understands the system and has the monitoring app working. A booked session 30 days later, run over video, where the team walks the client through four weeks of their own consumption data. A visit around four months in, timed to land when the first electricity bill arrives, where someone sits down and reads the bill with them. Then annual performance reviews after that.

Underneath it sits daily monitoring. If a system drops offline the team calls the customer. Storr says roughly 98 per cent of the time the cause is the home internet connection rather than the equipment, and the remaining 2 per cent triggers a warranty exchange the customer never had to chase.

The translation he offers to builders is direct.

“Their impression of you as a company isn’t just the day of installation, it’s the results that they get. As a builder, their impression of you isn’t just what they see when they walk in, it’s the livability of the home ongoing.”

Why the service line is treated as revenue rather than overhead

Most operators would read a 25 person aftercare team as a cost problem. Storr reads it as the acquisition channel.

“Everyone else will see that as an expense centre because it does cost a lot of money. I see it as an investment in future business strategy, because that’s where you get your referrals. That’s where you get your reviews. That’s where you get your awards.”

There is a sequencing discipline inside it that is easy to miss. He is explicit that the business does not ask for a review at the end of installation day if something went wrong on that day. The issue gets resolved first, and the ask comes later once the client is actually satisfied. Anyone reworking their review process should read that against the fact that Google has rewritten the rules on reviews, which has changed what a solicited review is worth.

The other half of it is that silence is not the same as satisfaction.

“If you’re not surveying your customers, you’re not showing up, you’re not asking, you’re not seeking to improve that experience constantly, you might be putting a subpar product to market and not even realising it.”

He describes clients who walk a finished home, notice things they are unhappy with, say nothing, and then tell their friends. The grievance does not disappear. It just relocates to somewhere the builder cannot answer it.

The price position that makes the service model possible

None of the above is free, and Storr is blunt that the model only works because the pricing supports it.

“We are by no means the cheapest company in the market. We’re one of the higher priced companies so far as product and service, but we deliver on those promises to our customers better than anyone else.”

His working definition of value is worth borrowing. Real value, he says, is getting what you expected. Great value is getting more than you expected. On that measure a cheap operator that fails to deliver on its cheap promise has produced no value at all, regardless of price.

The failure mode he names will be familiar to anyone who has watched a builder go under while still winning work.

“There’s nothing worse than having the integrity and having the promise to the customer, but not charging enough to be able to deliver on that.”

That is the gap where good operators die. The intent is right, the workmanship is right, and the number underneath it cannot fund either. It is the same argument as understanding your numbers before chasing volume, arriving from a different industry.

He applies the same logic to incentives. Rebates in his sector move constantly, and he watches competitors build their entire proposition on whichever one is current.

“If you’re selling rebates, as soon as that rebate changes, your whole business model has got to change.”

His argument is that the rebate is a mechanism that brings a purchase forward. The reason the customer is buying is the rising bill. Sell the reason, and the business survives the incentive cycle. For builders working through the current run of energy and code changes, that distinction is worth holding onto.

Choosing who not to build for

Storr is comfortable losing work, and specific about why.

“Not everyone is our customer. I almost guarantee you that same customer that didn’t buy on price, if we were ten per cent, even twenty per cent cheaper, they still wouldn’t have bought. They’re looking for the bottom of the market.”

He extends it to job type as well as client type. The business does not present itself as an off grid specialist, and he explains the reasoning in operational terms rather than capability terms. A remote, highly bespoke installation needs someone local who can be on site within a day if the power fails, which the model does not support.

The second reason is the one builders will recognise fastest.

“Any of those bespoke jobs that are one offs, high end, very unique, they end up a disproportionate amount of my time focused on that. I’ll end up forty hours deep in a single project that’s a one off and not repeatable, scalable, rather than working with the teams and on the business.”

The cost of the unusual job is rarely the job. It is the founder’s attention, drawn off the work that compounds. This is the same terrain as getting clear on the clients you actually want, measured in hours rather than margin.

There is a limit to the selectivity, though, and it is where he says he argues internally with his own fulfilment team.

“I’m a big believer that if you have committed to a job, then you see that through and you make good on that.”

Where a job has slipped through the filters, his preference is to complete it at a loss rather than withdraw. Where withdrawal is genuinely the better outcome, he wants it done with the deposit refunded and something offered for the inconvenience. The phrase he uses with escalated clients is the one worth stealing: if you are not yet happy, we are not yet finished.

What 150 per cent growth actually broke

The most useful part of the conversation for anyone scaling is the part where the model failed.

Storr says the business grew 150 per cent over the last twelve months. The sale to installation window, which had held at roughly four weeks for a decade, stretched to three, four, and in some cases six months.

The processes were built for a four week window. There was no role responsible for keeping a client informed across a six month one, because that gap had never existed. Clients went uncontacted. The company that had made after sales communication its entire proposition started dropping the ball on communication.

His account of it is unusually plain for a founder discussing his own business, and the conclusion generalises.

“We’re an industry where we’ve got thousands of active work sites every single year. Anyone that tells you nothing goes wrong, they’re lying to you about other things as well. The difference between a good company and a great company is what they do when something does go wrong.”

Bankability is a specification item

One idea from the conversation transfers directly to how builders choose suppliers. Storr says RESINC assesses products on four criteria in order: performance, reliability, bankability, and marketability. The third is the one he says most operators skip.

The logic is straightforward. If the business promises long term aftercare, and the manufacturer behind a product stops trading, the warranty obligation does not disappear. It relocates to whoever sold it.

“Because we promise such a high level of service and aftermarket support to a customer, if that company is not bankable, we end up holding the can.”

The same test applies one level up. A builder who subcontracts a solar and battery package inherits the reputational consequence of that installer’s decisions, and in most jurisdictions inherits a share of the statutory consequence too. That is the mechanism behind warranty exposure rather than cost or technology being the real barrier to solar appearing in new builds, rather than the price of the panels.

Storr’s summary of the whole reputational question is short. Building a reputation is hard. Keeping it is harder.

The compliance clock behind the conversation

Two points from the episode need correcting, because they are circulating widely and both matter to build programming.

The Victorian all electric requirement is not an NCC provision. New dwellings, apartment developments and residential subdivisions requiring a planning permit have been unable to connect to reticulated natural gas since 1 January 2024, under Clause 53.03 of the Victoria Planning Provisions introduced by Amendment VC250. The broader step comes from the state’s building and plumbing regulations, and from 1 January 2027 every new Victorian home must be all electric from 2027, whether a planning permit is required or not.

The second correction concerns electric vehicles. There is no national requirement for EV charging provisions in new homes arriving in 2029. Those provisions were left out of NCC 2025, and residential code changes are paused until 2029 at the earliest. That date marks the end of a pause, not the start of an obligation. Victorian builders are working to a state timetable. Everyone else has more room than the conversation implied.

What is not in dispute is the direction. Whether the driver is regulation, running costs or client expectation, energy systems are becoming part of the specification conversation earlier in the build than they used to be.

What makes a good builder

Asked the question every guest gets, Storr did not mention solar at all.

“A good builder will go above and beyond to deliver on the promises that they’ve made to the customer and the representations. Irrespective of price, whether you’re at a price point of $300,000 a build, $3 million a build, or $30 million for the build, are you delivering on what you’re promising?”

It is not a novel answer. Storr says as much himself, that there are no genuinely new concepts in service and support, only operators willing to do the unglamorous version of them consistently.

The battery sizing question is small on its own. What sits underneath it is not. Both are decisions a builder makes on a client’s behalf about something that client lives with for twenty years, with the builder’s name attached to it the whole time. That is the same instinct that runs through how a building business is actually run well: the decisions that determine reputation are usually made early, quietly, and by someone the client is trusting to think further ahead than they can.

The Good Builder Take

The battery in a new build is not a fixtures decision. It is a one time claim against the client’s address, and once it is spent it is spent.

There is a defensible case for a substantial battery specified properly and sold as a feature. There is a defensible case for delivering solar and leaving the battery to the client. The position that is hard to defend is a small unit fitted to round out a package, which consumes the entitlement and captures a fraction of the value in it.

If a battery is going into a home you are building, the client should know what claiming that discount closes off. That conversation costs ten minutes now and prevents a phone call in three years that starts with the words you should have told me.

Frequently asked questions

Disclosure: RESINC Solar and Batteries has a commercial relationship with The Good Builder. This article was produced independently by the TGB editorial team and was not reviewed or approved by RESINC before publication.

This article is general information for industry professionals. Program rules, certificate values and code requirements change. Confirm current requirements with the relevant regulator, your certifier or your accredited installer before making decisions on a specific project.

Listen to the full conversation with Leigh Storr on The Good Builder Podcast.

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