Expanded SRES (from 100kW to 1MW) eligibility goes live today (Thursday 1st October 2026)

From 1 October 2026, rooftop and small building solar systems up to 1 MW can now access the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES), up from the previous 100 kW cap. The government claims the change cuts upfront costs for businesses by 20 per cent. The Clean Energy Regulator will begin accepting applications in mid to late November 2026 once systems are in place. The expansion sits within the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) framework.

Where this fits

This expands distributed solar eligibility, pushing more generation toward the rooftop end of the spectrum and away from large, grid-scale firming plant. It addresses upfront capital cost for mid-scale operators, which is real, but does not address the whole-system cost buried in grid integration. Every megawatt of weather-dependent rooftop solar added requires either storage, interconnection upgrade, or firm standby generation to compensate for output variability. The scheme makes no mention of who bears the cost of that firming, transmission overbuild, or the materials supply chain, 90 per cent of which runs through China.

What it means

Expanding SRES eligibility accelerates Australia's pivot toward distributed, weather-dependent generation without mandating the firm capacity or transmission backbone needed to run it reliably. This pushes the burden of grid stability onto gas plants, battery storage (made in China), and eventual grid upgrades, costs that sit outside the headline subsidy and outside the SRES framework itself. Australia continues to build a renewables-dependent system while banning the one firm, low-material, lowest-emissions alternative, nuclear, that could deliver the same decarbonisation with less whole-system cost, less China dependence, and higher grid resilience.