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Battery storage is becoming a practical option for more Australian businesses. Lower technology costs, changing tariffs and smarter controls are creating opportunities to reduce energy costs, make better use of onsite solar and keep critical operations running when the grid cannot.
Kealy Day from Smart Commercial Energy explains the signs that a battery may be worth exploring, the different roles it can play on a commercial site and why a clear, long-term business case should come before any equipment decision.
Watch: Is Commercial Battery Storage Worth It for Your Business? | Smart Answers
Is commercial battery storage worth it?
It can be, but the answer depends on your site. A battery creates value by moving energy to the time it is most useful. That might mean storing excess solar for the evening, avoiding expensive grid energy, reducing a short demand peak or supporting the business through an outage.
The best opportunities rarely come from looking at one benefit in isolation. We assess how the battery can support several priorities at once, then model how those benefits work together over time. This gives decision-makers a realistic view of the potential return, rather than a one-size-fits-all estimate.
How do you know if your business could benefit from a battery?
A battery is worth a closer look when one or more of these situations applies:
- Your solar system regularly exports energy that could be stored and used onsite later.
- Your electricity rates change significantly across the day.
- Short demand peaks are adding to your electricity costs.
- Blackouts or power interruptions lead to lost production, sales or service.
- Move energy from lower-cost periods to higher-cost periods.
- Store excess solar for use later in the day or at night.
- Reduce peak demand by supporting the site during short, high-load periods.
- Provide backup power to selected critical loads, where the system is designed for that purpose.
- Participate in eligible energy market or network programmes.
These are useful starting points, but every site is different. Sometimes the strongest opportunity comes from combining solar storage, peak demand management and backup power in a single, carefully controlled system.
Do you need solar to install commercial battery storage?
No. Solar can strengthen the case for a battery, but it is not essential. A battery can charge from the grid when electricity is less expensive and discharge when prices are higher. It can also help manage demand peaks or support selected loads during an outage.
The right energy source and charging strategy should be based on your operating profile, tariff and business priorities, not an assumption that every battery must sit behind a solar system.
What can a commercial battery do?
Commercial batteries are flexible, which means one system can often support several outcomes:
The control strategy is what brings these uses together. Good data, suitable equipment and thoughtful programming help the battery respond to the site without compromising its operating limits or warranty.
How does battery storage affect ROI?
Battery economics have improved as equipment prices have fallen and support schemes have emerged in some states. Smart Commercial Energy has seen indicative payback for some combined solar and battery projects move from around eight years to approximately three and a half years.
That result will not apply to every business. A credible business case should use current pricing, available incentives, site energy data, tariff details, finance assumptions and a realistic control strategy. It should also make clear which savings are expected, how they will be measured and what could change over the life of the project.
This growing commercial case is also reflected in Smart’s customer base. Across commercial solar projects, battery attachment rates have risen from 3.5% in 2021–2024 to 11.7% in 2025–2026, more than tripling since 2024*.
How long does a commercial battery last?
Many quality commercial battery systems are offered with warranties of around ten years. Over that time, the cells gradually lose some usable capacity, while components such as inverters may need servicing or replacement.
That is why we model more than the first year. A sound forecast should account for degradation, cycling, warranty conditions, maintenance and likely replacement costs, so the investment still makes sense in year ten, not just on day one.
Build the business case around your site
A battery should be designed around the way your business actually operates. Interval energy data, solar exports, tariff structures, demand peaks, outage costs and future load changes all influence the right battery size and control strategy.
Smart Commercial Energy starts with the site and the commercial outcome. We identify the use cases that matter, model performance over time and design a system that can deliver those results in practice. The goal is not simply to install a battery. It is to make your next energy investment work harder for the business.
Make your next energy investment count
Commercial battery storage can lower costs, increase the value of onsite renewable energy and improve operational resilience. With careful modelling and experienced delivery, it can become a flexible, long-term business asset.
Speak with the Smart Commercial Energy team to explore whether battery storage could deliver a stronger financial and operational outcome for your site.
*Based on 637 commercial solar and battery projects contracted by Smart Commercial Energy between January 2021 and October 2026.
Read Full Video Transcript
Kealy Day
If you're a large Australian business with existing solar, there is probably a way that we can make a battery worth it on your site, but it's really hard to know and you need someone who knows how to run the numbers from start to finish to give you a definitive answer and make a business case that works.
Smart Commercial Energy has installed more batteries than anyone else on C&I sites in 2025, and those batteries do hundreds of different things on all those different sites. So, we really know the nitty gritty of how to make a battery worth it for you.
Three telltale signs that your business needs a battery are: firstly, you're sending any solar back to the grid that could be used by a battery. Secondly, your energy rates are really different in different times of the day. Or thirdly, you're losing business to loss of power from blackouts.
Those are some of the typical reasons. But we see cases all the time where there are ways that you could use a battery on site that have never been thought of before, maybe have never been done before by anyone else. There's a million ways that we can approach these problems.
You don't need to have solar to have a commercial battery. There's differences in energy prices across the day. Maybe your site has constant blackouts. There's lots of different ways that you can use a battery that doesn't involve solar.
When we're looking at commercial batteries, the key applications are shifting energy from one time of day to another, or taking the top off your energy peaks, or shifting solar from daytime to nighttime.
You'll probably be familiar with those sorts of use cases if you have a residential battery, but in a commercial circumstance, we can get a lot more clever and tricky with how we use it. So, we might introduce other things like backup power or trading energy on the energy markets to boost the business case for the battery.
Historically, adding battery to a solar installation would make the ROI look a little worse because batteries are more expensive. But in the last 12 months, we've seen the price of batteries come down precipitously. We've seen rebate schemes emerge in different states, especially New South Wales, that mean that now the ROI is actually improved by introducing a battery when it's used correctly by someone who can set it up in a clever way.
For example, in the time that I've been at Smart, payback on a solar and battery system has gone from, say, eight years down to today, we see three and a half years every day. It used to be that the solar alone paid itself off, while the battery was a sort of tag along, but now the battery is carrying the business case just as much as the solar is.
It's really common to have questions about lifespan and warranty on battery systems. Most good battery systems in Australia now are warranted for ten years, and it can be expected that you'll get ten good years out of that system before you'll need to replace an inverter or any battery cells.
The battery cells themselves degrade over time, so that 10th year you won't have quite as much energy storage as you started with. So modelling it out accurately over that ten years is really important so that you understand the business case in the 10th year as well as you understand the first year.
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