The Commercial Solar Rebate Just Grew Tenfold: What the 1MW SRES Expansion Means

The mechanism itself is not new. Small-scale solar earns Small-scale Technology Certificates, or STCs, which your installer typically sells on your behalf and passes back to you as an upfront discount on the invoice. It is the same scheme behind the “rebate” on a household 6.6kW system. The only thing that has moved is the size limit: the point where a system stops qualifying as small-scale has been lifted from 100kW to 1MW.

That sounds like a technicality. In practice it removes a distortion that has been shaping commercial roofs for years. The 100kW cap was a hard edge, not a taper, so the sensible move was to design right up to 99.9kW and stop, even on a roof begging for more. Lifting the ceiling to 1MW lets a business size a system to the roof and to its actual daytime load, rather than to a rebate threshold. The Government puts the untapped opportunity at more than 80GW of commercial rooftop potential against only around 5.6GW installed so far.

The upfront discount is only part of the return. A commercial solar system also cuts your daily power bill, and businesses can generally claim depreciation on the asset, which sharpens the after-tax payback further. Our guide on solar panel depreciation and the ATO covers how that side works for a business.

You will see it claimed that NSW businesses can “stack” the expanded rebate with Peak Reduction Certificates under the state’s Peak Demand Reduction Scheme. That is true, but it is worth being precise about what earns what, because the wording often implies more than it should.

Your solar panels earn federal STCs. The NSW Peak Demand Reduction Scheme does not pay for solar generation at all; it rewards cutting demand during peak periods, which in practice usually means a battery. So the way the two actually stack is that a business installing solar and a battery claims federal STCs on the solar and NSW Peak Reduction Certificates (PRCs) on the battery. Two schemes, two pieces of equipment, both claimable on the one project. What you cannot do is earn PRCs on the solar array itself.

For a lot of mid-scale projects, the upfront cost was never the only barrier. Getting the network to approve a larger connection has been slow and unpredictable, and an uncertain connection timeline can stall a business case just as effectively as a big invoice. Alongside the rebate change, the Government has said it will ask the Australian Energy Market Commission to require network providers to approve commercial and industrial connections more quickly.

That reform still has to work its way through, and it does not remove the need to apply. But it signals that the connection queue, not just the price, is finally being treated as part of the problem. If you are scoping a larger system, start the connection conversation with your network and installer early, because that timeline often sets the pace of the whole project.

First, the timing. The expanded eligibility applies from 1 October 2026. Because the certificates are created around when the system is installed and confirmed, a job above 100kW that is finished too early could fall under the old rules. If you are planning a larger system, talk to your installer about how the build schedule lines up with the start date so you claim the full entitlement.

Second, the value is not fixed. STCs trade on an open market and the number of certificates a system creates is set to keep declining each year until the small-scale scheme ends in 2030, so the discount is generally worth more the sooner you act. We cover that wind-down in detail in our guide on what the STC phase-out means.

Third, keep the quoting honest. A larger job is a larger cheque, and that is exactly where loose pricing hides. Ask for the STC discount shown as a separate line, get the system sized to your roof and load rather than to a headline number, and compare two or three quotes. A legitimate installer will happily break the numbers down.

If you have a big roof and you run through the day, this is worth pricing properly. Start by looking at your consumption profile: the more of your usage that falls in daylight hours, the stronger the case, because self-consumed solar is worth far more than exported solar. Then size the system to that load and the available roof, not to the old 100kW line.

From there it is the usual discipline. Get the connection conversation moving early, get itemised quotes with the discount shown separately, and, if you are in NSW and adding storage, work out the PRC side as its own line rather than folding it into a vague “rebate” number. The rebate has done the hard part by removing the cliff. The rest is sizing the system to your business and quoting it cleanly.