u/EinSV

Australia has had huge success with its « Cheaper Home Batteries Program » with homeowners snapping up batteries, leading to dramatic reductions in wholesale energy prices as peak grid demand has fallen.

Now Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, is proposing to extend generous incentives to businesses and apartments that cut up front costs by up to 40% for battery storage systems between 20 kWh and 30 MWh, with the most generous benefits for businesses that also install solar.

Great to see Australia continue to lead the way on distributed solar and batteries.

Highlights:

Solar supplied a record 10% of global electricity generation in H1 2026

On the average day in H1 2026, solar met over a quarter of global electricity demand at midday, only to fall to near zero in non-sunny hours.

And most importantly: New batteries installed in 2026 could shift 34% of new daily solar to the evening, based on solar growth in H1 2026.

Via Google translate:

More than a third (35%) of new cars sold in France in July were electric, the Plateforme automobile (PFA) reported on Saturday, announcing that new vehicle sales rose by 9% year-on-year in July—with 126,808 registrations—though they remain well below pre-Covid levels.

Since the beginning of the year, 983,974 new passenger cars have been registered, an increase of 2.65% compared to the same period in 2025. Despite this rebound, the market remains well below pre-Covid pandemic levels, with sales volumes more than a quarter lower than those of July 2019.

Fully electric cars accounted for 35% of registrations in July—totaling 44,378 vehicles—compared to 48% for hybrids. Year-to-date, electric vehicles have captured 29% of the market, versus 50.5% for hybrids.

The rise of Chinese brands

This growth in electric vehicle sales follows the July 16 launch of the third edition of the "social leasing" scheme, a subsidy program designed to help low-income households acquire electric cars. "The launch of the new social leasing scheme and its knock-on effect on manufacturers' offers are creating an environment that accelerates the transition to electric vehicles, confirming the trend observed since the start of the year," said Marie-Laure Nivot, an automotive market analyst at AAA Data.

Chinese brands accounted for 8% of registrations in July, with 9,935 vehicles sold; BYD, Xpeng, and Leapmotor more than doubled their volumes year-on-year, according to AAA Data.

The two leading French manufacturers continued to see growth in July. Registrations for the Renault Group rose by 9.5%, while Stellantis saw a 7.2% increase. Within the Renault Group, the namesake brand surged by 21.9%, offsetting a decline at Dacia (-10.9%); meanwhile, at Stellantis, Citroën (+17.3%) and Fiat (+53.5%) drove growth, with Peugeot advancing by 6.7%.

Some details from the article:

In 2025 China doubled its battery storage capacity, installing more (190 GWh) than the rest of the world combined.

In December 2025 alone China installed more capacity (65 GWh/19 GW) than the second place United States did the entire year.

Battery additions are outpacing solar additions, which is allowing higher and higher percentages of solar generation to be shifted to other parts of the day — from 6% in 2022 to 21% in 2025.

In the past the vast majority of the storage has been co-located with solar, but stand-alone storage optimized to support the entire grid instead of one installation can be cycled much more frequently (100 cycles more per year — 299 v. 199 in 2025) and is more useful overall.

A major transition has already taken place — 85% of utility-scale batteries installed in the first four months of 2026 were stand-alone. In the past 70% were co-located with solar.

Ember says that what’s needed next is market reform and revenue stacking. Energy arbitrage alone (charging batteries when energy prices are low and discharging when they are high) no longer presents a strong business case but a « reliable capacity pricing framework, wider adoption of joint clearing between spot and ancillary service markets … and grid tariff rules that reflect the bi-directional role of batteries will all be needed to allow BESS stack multiple revenue streams and be rewarded for the full value it brings to the system. »

Lots of interesting charts and additional details in the full report: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/07/From-scale-to-system-navigating-the-next-phase-of-Chinas-battery-storage-1.pdf

A few highlights from the article:

“Building nuclear for the first time in Australia would take longer and cost more than building offshore wind for the first time in Australia, according to modelling by Australia’s premier science agency that once again rules out nuclear power from any and all cost-efficient scenarios for a net zero grid.”

“CSIRO’s draft GenCost modelling continues to find that a combination of wind and solar with firming technologies is the best way forward on both costs and emissions reductions.

As Graham told the conference, ‘mainly using existing mature solar PV and onshore wind is preferred, and what that looks like from a cost perspective is that the mature technology scenario is the lowest cost scenario.’”

“As Graham told the conference, the numbers still well and truly rule out nuclear, while leaving offshore wind still ‘in the pocket’ as a potential part of Australia’s future generation mix.”

Also predicts that BEVs will be 90% of NEVs in 2030 — so more than 80% overall market share 👍

“Li's forecast was more specific. He said that by 2030, battery electric vehicles (BEV) will also make up more than 90% of China's NEV market.”

“Tesla and BYD have both smashed their EV sales records in Australia – by a wide margin – in what is shaping up as a landmark month for the electric vehicle transition in Australia, with even the main car lobby acknowledging a ‘permanent structural shift’ to EVs.

BYD on Friday revealed it had sold more than 10,000 EVs in June, the first time any EV maker has reached that level in a single month, just a day after Tesla revealed it had sold a record 8,760 EVs in June.

The result of the two biggest EV companies in Australia propelled the market share of electric vehicles to 23.5 per cent, according to data from the main car lobby group, the Federated Chamber of Automotive Industries.”

The top selling EVs were the Tesla Model Y followers by 6(!) BYD Models:

Tesla Model Y – 8,072
BYD Sealion 7 – 4,730
BYD Atto 2 – 2,482
BYD Atto 1 – 871
BYD Seal – 769
BYD Atto 3 – 677
BYD Dolphin – 645

Australia’s strong EV growth in 2026 continued as EV market share more than doubled from 10.3% in June 2025.

Note: figures are all for full EVs.

Market share v. May 2025

BEVs 42% v 31% (+11%)

PHEVs+EREVs 21% v. 22% (-1%)

All NEVs 63% v. 53% (+10%)

On an absolute basis BEV sales were up slightly, while sales of everything else was down:

BEV +3.9%

PHEV -23.0%

EREV -28.0%

All hybrid (including PHEV+EREV) -24.4%

Conventional ICE -39%

Here we go again.

Despite predictions from many that PHEV emissions would improve the ICCT has found that they have become worse:

“The gap between real-world and official emissions values grew from 265% in 2021 to 400% in 2023, on average across all manufacturers.”

And despite hype from traditional auto manufacturers, the ICCT found that essentially all improvements in vehicle emissions are coming from adoption of full EVs:

“Between 2018 and 2023, official average CO2 values for new cars fell by 28%, while real-world emissions declined by only 15%. Battery electric cars were the primary driver of these emission reductions. Combustion engine car real-world emissions only decreased, on average, by 1% during this period, showing no real-world efficiency improvements.”

Full EV sales in Australia, continuing their rapid climb, hit 20% for the first time in May, more than doubling from 9.2% in May 2025 and a significant jump from 16.4% in April.

Top 10 EVs sold were:

Tesla Model Y – 5,605 sales
Omoda Jaecoo J5 – 2,126 sales
Geely EX5 – 1,814 sales
BYD Sealion 7 – 1,538 sales
Zeekr 7X – 966 sales
Tesla Model 3 – 828 sales
BYD Atto 2 – 778 sales
BYD Atto 1 – 768 sales
BYD Atto 3 – 627 sales
BYD Seal – 581 sales
MG MG4 – 580 sales
Kia EV3 – 531 sales

This is great to see. Especially given huge (and growing) installations of rooftop solar — and now home batteries — Australia is an obvious place for EVs to rapidly take over. Seems like it’s finally starting to happen.