The accreditation check that takes two minutes
Battery work in Australia runs on accreditation. The person who designs your system and the person who installs it should hold current battery accreditation with Solar Accreditation Australia — and in Victoria, the business itself must be a licensed Registered Electrical Contractor. Ask for both numbers and check them. A legitimate installer will hand them over without blinking; ours are on every page of this site.
Salesperson or electrician?
The single most useful question you can ask: will the person quoting my system be on site installing it? Battery sales companies quote from a call centre, sell from a script, and subcontract the install to whoever's available that week. When something needs adjusting on the day — and something always does — the person on your roof has never seen your quote. An electrician-led installer walks the site, designs from what's actually there, and owns the result.
Ask one question: will the person quoting this be the person installing it?
Sizing: the polite fiction of the standard package
Batteries are sold in packages because packages are easy to sell — not because homes are standard. The right size comes from your evening usage: how much power the house draws between sunset and sunrise, which is what the battery actually has to carry. Too small and you're still buying peak-rate power at 7pm; too big and you've paid for storage that never fills in winter. Ask any quoter what evening usage they sized from. If the answer isn't a number from your bills, it's a guess.
the window your battery earns its keep, covering the peak-rate hours after the sun drops off.
The questions that sort the field
What happens in a blackout? (Standard systems shut down unless backup circuits are configured — if they promise the whole house stays on, ask them to put it in writing.) Is my inverter compatible, or does it need replacing? Who lodges the federal battery discount paperwork, and is it already off this quote? What's the usable capacity — not the nameplate number? And who do I call in year three when the app shows an error? The answers tell you everything about what the after-sales relationship will look like.
Warranties that mean something
A battery warranty has two halves: the product warranty from the manufacturer, and the workmanship warranty from the installer. The first is only as good as the brand's Australian presence — a ten-year warranty from a company with no local office is a courtesy, not a promise. The second is only as good as the installer still being in business and answering the phone. Local, licensed, established — boring qualities that matter enormously in year six.
Want this worked out for your place?
A real electrician, at your kitchen bench, with the numbers for your roof and your bills.
- Check SAA accreditation and the REC licence — takes two minutes, filters most of the field.
- Insist the quoter is the installer — no subcontracted mystery crews.
- Size from your evening usage, not a package tier.
- Warranties are only as good as the local company behind them.
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Written by Luke Jones, A-Grade electrician (REC 33326)
Luke runs Polarised Electrical out of Boronia. Everything here comes from jobs we've done across Melbourne's east — not a brochure.
