How to start a solar and battery business in Australia, and actually win customers.

Australia is installing home batteries faster than at any point in its history, and the number of businesses able to install them is shrinking. If you are thinking about starting a solar and battery installation business in 2026, that gap is your opportunity. This guide walks through how to set the business up properly, and then covers the part most new installers get wrong: actually winning the customers who are already searching.

The market you are entering

Battery installations have roughly tripled since 2025, driven by the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which is processing around 8,000 applications a week. At the same time there are an estimated 5,046 solar installer businesses operating nationally in 2026, and that number is falling by about 7.3 per cent a year. Demand is surging while the operator base consolidates. The installers who build efficient sales systems now will take the share that leaves the market.

How to start a solar and battery business in Australia

The setup is a sequence of qualifications and registrations. Confirm the current detail with the official bodies named below, because requirements change, but the shape is consistent.

• Register the business. Set up your structure, ABN and GST registration, and put professional indemnity and public liability insurance in place before you quote a single job.
• Hold the electrical licence. Solar and battery installation is licensed electrical work. You need to be a licensed electrician or employ one, under your state or territory electrical safety regulator.
• Get SAA accreditation. Accreditation now sits with Solar Accreditation Australia, not the Clean Energy Council, since early 2024. Only SAA-accredited installers are eligible under the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, which underpins the STC rebate. Always describe yourself as SAA-accredited and SRES-eligible.
• Add battery accreditation. Battery work needs its own accreditation, and only about half of installers hold it, which is exactly why battery-ready installers are in demand right now.
• Set up your rebate and compliance workflow. STC documentation, installation photos and checklists must be accurate. The Clean Energy Regulator now uses AI-assisted checking on battery installation photos, so clean documentation is not optional.

Do all of that and you are licensed, accredited and insured. You are also exactly where most installers stall, because being able to install is not the same as being able to sell.

The number that decides whether you survive: speed to lead

Here is the trap. Most new installers assume the constraint is lead volume, so they buy leads. Shared leads are sold to three to five competitors at once, cost $50 to $100 each, and convert at only 8 to 15 per cent. The real constraint is speed. The average installer takes 22 hours to respond to an enquiry, and booking rates fall from about 43 per cent when a lead is answered within minutes to roughly 2 per cent once a day has passed. Whoever answers first usually wins the job.

Trust is the second decider. 97 per cent of consumers read reviews before choosing a local trade business, 31 per cent will not use one rated under 4.5 stars, and about half of solar businesses sit on a 5-star rating built on only a handful of reviews. A brand-new business with no review base has to build proof deliberately, from the first job.

Build a growth channel that compounds, not one-off leads

The installers who last do not rent leads forever. They build an owned channel that gets cheaper and stronger over time. That means five things working as one system rather than six disconnected tools: search visibility so households find you, answer-engine visibility so AI assistants name you, social proof so people trust you, paid ads to buy reach while the organic side builds, and automation that responds and follows up instantly. This is precisely the model LydSolarBattery is built to deliver.

What LydSolarBattery gives a new installer

LydSolarBattery (lydsolarbattery.com) is the solar and battery vertical of Sharktech Global's Launch Your Dream series. It gives a new installer the entire growth engine, done-for-you and white-labelled to their own brand, running on Sharktech's proprietary VCPility platform. It covers the five channels directly:

• A website built to convert. A StoryBrand-based site that positions the homeowner as the one with the problem and your business as the trusted guide, focused on one action: request a quote.
• SEO. A dedicated, search-optimised page for every service, built around what households actually type, plus Google Business Profile and local search setup so you get found for "solar installer near me".
• AEO. Structured content and schema so AI assistants name your business when someone asks for a recommendation. Almost no installer is set up for this yet, so early movers get named first.
• Instant AI response. Every enquiry gets an instant reply, day or night, and a missed call texts itself back within seconds. That is the 22-hour problem solved on day one.
• The Pylon connector. A link from Australia's most-used solar design tool straight into your pipeline the moment a proposal is accepted, which no generic CRM has.

Plans start from $360 a month, less than the effective cost of a single poorly converting shared lead. It is built for SAA-accredited, SRES-eligible installers, and it is honest about its limits. It will not fix the accreditation labour shortage, supply chain volatility or grid connection timeframes. It fixes the commercial engine: response speed, follow-up, reviews and reactivation.

Start with the growth engine built in

The best time to build your sales system is before your first job, not after you have lost fifty leads learning the hard way. See LydSolarBattery live at lydsolarbattery.com, explore the wider series at Launch Your Dream, or call the team on +61 485 097 373 for a walkthrough. If you are starting an NDIS business instead, read our guide to starting an NDIS provider business.