Under the Cheaper Home Batteries Program the discount appears on the customer’s invoice. The customer pays $X less the STC value, and the installer waits for the certificates to turn into money. Between the day the battery is installed and the day the money lands, the installer is lending the customer the discount, interest free.
On a single job this is a footnote. On a book of 30 or 60 jobs a month it is the biggest line on the balance sheet, and the one most likely to decide how fast a crew can grow.
The size of the float
One battery job, with numbers from the verified schedule. A 14 kWh usable battery installed before 1 January 2027 creates 95 STCs at the 6.8 factor. At $38, that is $3,610. After 1 January 2027, at 5.7, it creates 79 STCs, $3,002, and after 1 July 2027, at 5.2, 72 STCs, $2,736. Use the battery STC calculator for your size.
Now multiply by the time the money is outstanding. Float is roughly jobs per month times value per job times the wait, in months.
| Jobs a month | Wait: 20 business days (about 1 month) | Wait: 7 days (about 0.25 month) | Wait: 1 day (about 0.03 month) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | about $36,100 | about $9,000 | about $1,200 |
| 30 | about $108,300 | about $27,100 | about $3,600 |
| 60 | about $216,600 | about $54,200 | about $7,200 |
At 60 jobs a month on 20-business-day terms, a crew is carrying about $217,000 of other people’s discounts at any moment. That money has to come from somewhere: savings, an overdraft, a loan, or supplier credit.
What the float costs
Assume your cost of money is 10 per cent a year. Holding $108,300 (30 jobs, 1 month) costs about $10,800 a year. Holding $3,600 (30 jobs, 1 day) costs about $360. The saving from faster settlement is about $10,400 a year at 30 jobs a month, before you count the work the money can do elsewhere.
Compare that to a rate difference. If a buyer with slow terms pays $1 more per STC than one with fast terms, at 30 jobs a month and 95 STCs per job that is 2,850 extra STCs a month, $2,850, or $34,200 a year. So at that volume the higher rate beats the fast terms by $23,800 a year, if the figures are what they say. At 10 jobs the extra rate is $11,400 a year and the interest saving $3,500, so the rate still wins. Do the sum with your own cost of money and real quotes rather than assuming speed wins, because it does not always.
What the arithmetic does show is that terms and rate are two parts of one number. A rate that is 10 cents higher with 30-day terms can be worse than a lower rate with next-day settlement, once the interest and the headroom are counted.
Where the delay actually comes from
It helps to split the wait into its parts, because you can shorten some of them.
Install to lodgement. Your own admin time. Photos uploaded, forms signed, details entered. You control all of it.
Lodgement to validation. The registry processes the creation request and the claim is checked. A clean claim moves quickly. A queried one stops.
Validation to transfer. The certificates are transferred to the buyer once they are valid.
Transfer to payment. The buyer pays, on the contract’s terms.
The first stage is the least visible and the easiest to shrink. A job that waits three days for an assignment form to be scanned has three days of float it did not need. See how long STC payment should take and battery STC payment time for the timing at each stage.
Five ways to shrink the float
- Lodge complete claims on day one or two. An hour of admin the day after the install is the cheapest working capital you will ever find.
- Pre-check before lodgement. A rejected claim is the longest delay of all. Use the battery submission checklist.
- Choose a buyer with short, written settlement terms. Established partners at Energy Merchants are settled within 24 hours, with the first claim taking 48 to 72 hours while details are verified, and the rate is locked on lodgement of a complete claim. See today’s rate and how it works. Compare any buyer on the same terms.
- Lock your rate at lodgement. A rate that floats while you wait adds price risk to the time risk.
- Price the finance into the job. If you must carry the float, build the cost into your margin, and show the customer a clear discount.
What happens at the factor steps
The float shrinks with each factor step, and so does the certificate value per job. At 30 jobs a month on 14 kWh batteries and one-month terms, float falls from about $108,300 at the 6.8 factor to about $90,100 at 5.7 and $82,100 at 5.2. The relief is real but small compared with what faster terms deliver, and it comes with a smaller discount for the customer, which can soften demand. Our factor schedule to 2030 has the steps.
There is also a bunching effect. Before a step, installers rush jobs to beat the cut-off, and many certificates arrive at the buyer at once. If your buyer’s terms are slow, a rush before 31 December 2026 will stretch your float for the first months of 2027, just when the discount drops. Plan the cash for it.
Mixing in other certificates
Many battery jobs sit alongside solar, so a customer’s invoice can carry two discounts: one for solar STCs and one for battery STCs. Each has its own claim, its own evidence and its own timing. Treat them as two receivables, and watch the combined float. A busy solar-plus-battery crew can find its working capital stretched across both, and the compliance workload doubles with it. For the solar side, run numbers in the STC calculator.
Short answers on this topic: battery rebate installer cash flow.
What to do next
- Measure your days to cash on the last twenty battery jobs.
- Calculate your float using the table and your own volume.
- Compare buyers on rate and terms together, with a cost of money you actually pay.
- Fix the internal delay first. It is free.
- Talk to the desk about 24-hour settlement: start trading or read the battery STC pillar.