Solar rebates for systems between 100 kW and 1 MW

From 1 October 2026, subject to the regulations being made, systems between 100 kW and 1 MW create small-scale certificates instead of large-scale ones. What changes, what does not, and what to do before October.

Warehouses. Cold stores. Packing sheds. Clubs. Schools. Farms with machinery sheds. Buildings with more roof than they use, and a load to match, sitting in a band that had no scheme worth the administration.

Under the small-scale scheme a system creates certificates at installation and the support arrives as a reduction on the invoice. Simple, quick, and capped at 100 kW.

Above that ceiling a project moved to the scheme built for generators. Accreditation, metering obligations, and certificates created over time against generation actually produced. A revenue stream rather than a discount, and one somebody has to model, administer and chase.

For a solar farm that is entirely reasonable. For a packing shed with 300 kW of usable roof it is a compliance programme attached to a capital purchase, and it is why so many of those business cases failed on complexity rather than on economics.

Solar systems with a total onsite capacity between 100 kW and 1 MW become eligible to create small-scale technology certificates instead of large-scale generation certificates. The change is intended to apply from 1 October 2026, subject to regulations being in place ¹.

Two things follow, and they matter more than the arithmetic. The support is applied to the invoice, so it becomes a reduction in capital cost at the point of purchase rather than a forecast somebody inside the business has to own. And the accreditation and metering obligations of the large-scale route fall away.

The announcement put figures against it. On a 250 kW system the estimated discount is around $68,000. On a 500 kW system, $136,000 ².

Those are the government's own estimates rather than entitlements. What a particular site receives depends on its capacity, its installation date and the certificate price on the day.

An existing accredited large-scale system stays where it is. There is no retrospective conversion. If your site is already creating large-scale certificates, nothing here applies to it and the arrangement you have continues as it is. That is worth stating plainly, because it is the misconception most likely to generate phone calls from October onwards.

The connection position does not change either. Nothing here alters what your network will approve you to export. A larger system still has to be assessed, and it may come back approved as proposed, approved with an export limit, or requiring network works first. That conversation is unchanged, and it is still the one that decides what actually goes on the roof.

Nor does the switchboard. A site sized to just under 100 kW a decade ago has a board that was sized for that system. Doubling the array is a switchboard question before it is a roof question.

Design, installation and compliance requirements for mid-scale solar have been flagged as still under consideration, with guidance to be published.

That is not a reason to wait, and it is not a reason to sign either. It is a reason to have the design reviewed by somebody tracking the regulator's notices rather than the headlines. A system designed against assumptions that then change is a system that gets re-engineered late, which is the expensive version of this project.

The buildings that were deliberately under-fitted. If a site was sized to just under 100 kW at some point in the last decade, the ceiling was almost certainly the reason. Not the roof, not the load, and not the budget. Somebody did the arithmetic, found the administrative cliff at 100 kW, and specified to stay below it.

Those roofs did not get any smaller. The reason for leaving them half empty went away.

The same applies to a site that looked at solar, priced it against the large-scale route, and decided the compliance burden was not worth it. The inputs changed. The building did not.

Re-run the business case rather than re-deciding it. The site has not changed, so most of the work already done still stands. What changed is one input.

Four things are worth establishing now, while the regulations settle. The usable roof area, measured rather than estimated from an aerial, because on a commercial roof the difference between the two is regularly a third. The load profile, read from the building's own interval data. The switchboard position, meaning whether the existing board can carry the larger system and what it would take if it cannot. And the connection enquiry, which is the item with the longest and least controllable lead time.

None of those depends on the certificate route being confirmed, and all of them have to happen anyway. A site that does that work in September is ready to contract in October. A site that waits for certainty before starting is beginning a three month process in a queue.