Do I need to tell my insurer about my solar or battery? Yes — and the real risk isn't the premium.
Installer blogs love to say the insurance impact is “minimal.” That’s half-true and self-serving. The honest version: your home policy treats the panels and battery as part of the building, so you must notify your insurer and lift your sum-insured to cover the full replacement cost. Skip that and you risk silent under-insurance — a rule that quietly trims every future claim, not just the big ones. The fix usually costs little; the trap can cost thousands.
Written by Juan Flinn, Content Editor · Reviewed by the Mission Green Energy Team · Updated August 2026
The short answer:
tell them, and lift your sum-insured.
Yes, notify your insurer after solar or a battery goes in — and the reason that matters is not the premium.
A rooftop solar array and a home battery are, in insurance terms, a permanent improvement to your house — the same category as a new kitchen, a deck or an extension. Your building policy covers them against insured events, but only up to the sum insured you nominated. Add $10,000–$20,000 of equipment to the roof and wall without lifting that figure, and you are quietly under-insured.
The honest trap here isn’t a scary premium. It’s that under-insurance in Australia doesn’t just bite on total losses — it proportionally reduces every claim you make. So the job is simple and cheap: tell your insurer, and raise your building sum-insured to the full cost of rebuilding your home including the system.
Silent under-insurance
cuts every claim, not just the big one.
This is the part installer blogs skip — and it’s the whole reason to bother.
Most people assume under-insurance only matters if the house burns to the ground and the payout falls short. It doesn’t work that way. ASIC’s MoneySmart is blunt: most policies pay only a proportion of your claim when you’re under-insured, and “this will apply to all claims and not just those that total above the insured amount.”
Their worked example: if you are 33% under-insured, the insurer pays only about 67% of the cost — even on a small claim like a kitchen flood or storm damage. Add a battery and panels worth tens of thousands to your rebuild cost but leave the sum insured untouched, and you’ve quietly created that gap across your entire policy.
Are solar panels covered
by home insurance?
Generally yes — but as part of the building, not as a separate item, and only up to your sum insured.
Storm, hail, theft, vandalism
Australian home building policies generally treat roof-mounted panels as part of the building, so damage from an insured event is covered on the building policy — the same way the roof itself is. You do not normally need a separate solar policy.
Only up to your sum insured
Cover is capped by the sum insured you nominated, and most people set that before they added $10,000–$20,000 of panels, inverter and battery to the roof. If the figure was never lifted, the shortfall comes out of every claim, not just a solar one.
Faults and wear
Panels that degrade, an inverter that fails or a battery that stops holding charge are warranty matters, not insurance ones. Insurance is for sudden external damage; the warranty is for the equipment not doing its job.
The practical test: ring your insurer, tell them what is on the roof, and ask what your sum insured would need to be to rebuild the house including the solar. If the answer is higher than your current figure, that gap is the real exposure — and it is cheaper to close before a claim than to argue about after one.
Building policy vs warranty:
two different safety nets.
Knowing which net catches which failure stops you making the wrong call — or the wrong claim.
Insured events, on the building
Per CHOICE, solar panels are treated as part of the building and are covered against insured events such as hail, windstorm, theft and vandalism — provided your sum insured includes their replacement cost. This is the net for sudden, external damage.
Faults, degradation, failure
A panel, inverter or battery that simply fails, degrades or stops performing is generally a warranty matter, not a home-insurance one. Keep your paperwork — our battery warranties guide unpacks what those warranties actually promise.
Same kit, different claim
Assuming your home policy will replace a dud inverter, or expecting the warranty to cover storm damage, both end in a knock-back. Match the failure to the right net — and if your installer has vanished, see warranty claims when the installer’s gone.
Why non-disclosure
can shrink or sink a claim.
This isn’t insurer fine-print scare-mongering — it’s a statutory duty that sits under every home policy.
For consumer home insurance, you have a statutory duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to your insurer. This duty (introduced following the Financial Services Royal Commission’s recommendation 4.5, and in force since 2021) replaced the older duty of disclosure that used to apply to retail policies.
The Insurance Council of Australia describes the underlying principle plainly: when you apply for, renew or extend a policy, you should tell the insurer everything relevant — anything that could reasonably be expected to affect their decision to insure you. A battery, a rooftop array and a materially higher rebuild cost all qualify.
Get it wrong and the consequences are real: where relevant information isn’t disclosed, an insurer may not be obliged to pay all or part of a claim, and in some cases can treat the policy as if it never existed. That’s the mechanism by which an undisclosed system, or a stale sum insured, turns into a reduced payout.
How to update your cover
in one short phone call.
None of this is hard or expensive. It’s a five-minute job you should do the week your system is switched on.
Get the replacement figure
Ask your installer for the full supply-and-install cost of the system — that’s roughly what it would cost to replace and refit after a loss, and it’s the number your sum insured needs to absorb.
Call your insurer, raise the sum insured
Tell them you’ve installed solar and/or a battery and lift your building sum-insured to include it. MoneySmart’s advice is to work out an accurate sum insured and update it after any big change to the property.
Review it every year
Rebuild costs drift. MoneySmart says check your cover annually and after any renovation or big purchase — a new kitchen, deck or extension, and by the same logic your energy system, all move the number.
Renting it out,
or living in strata?
Most solar-and-insurance advice quietly assumes you own and occupy a free-standing house. Plenty of Australian solar is not on one.
Landlord building policy
Fixed solar is part of the building, so it generally sits under the landlord building policy rather than the tenant’s contents cover. The disclosure duty is still yours, and so is the sum insured — a tenant has no way to tell your insurer that a battery went on the wall. If you added solar after the policy started, that is a change to the risk you need to report.
Strata and owners corporations
Where the roof is common property, the building policy is usually the owners corporation’s, not yours — which means the corporation, not you, may need to notify the insurer and hold the sum insured. Getting written approval before installation is the step people skip, and it is the one that causes trouble later when a claim points at unapproved works.
Tenants and portable gear
You cannot insure someone else’s roof. A tenant’s contents policy covers their own belongings, and any portable battery or plug-in gear is a contents item rather than a building one. If a landlord asks a tenant to arrange cover for fixed solar, that is worth querying in writing.
The pattern in all three cases is the same: the party who owns the building carries the disclosure duty and the sum insured for anything bolted to it. Work out which party that is before the install, not after a storm.
Does who installed it
change your claim?
It can, and this is the part of the conversation an installer has the least incentive to raise with you.
Home policies generally exclude loss caused by faulty workmanship or by work that did not meet the relevant standards and approvals. That exclusion is not aimed at solar specifically, but solar is exactly the kind of job it can catch: it is electrical work, fixed to the building, done under a licence, and usually inspected and signed off. If a fire or water-ingress claim is traced back to an install that was never compliant, the insurer has a legitimate reason to look hard at it.
What that means in practice is unglamorous. Keep the certificate of electrical safety or compliance for your state, the installer’s licence and accreditation details, the inverter and battery serial numbers, and any network approval for the connection. Keep them somewhere that is not the kitchen drawer of the house you might be claiming on. A claim is a paperwork exercise, and the household that can produce the file on the day is in a different position to the one that cannot.
We will not tell you an insurer will decline a claim over an accreditation number, because that depends on the policy and the cause of loss, and we do not write policies. What we will say is that the paperwork costs nothing to keep and is worth having — and that if an installer cannot give you a licence number and a compliance certificate, that is a reason to pause well before insurance ever enters the picture.
What we won’t pretend to know
about your premium.
Because a guide that over-promises here would be doing exactly what we criticise.
Your premium may move when you add the system to your cover, and it may barely budge — it depends on your insurer, your home’s value and your location. Anyone quoting you a precise “it’s only about $20–30 a year” figure is guessing; we won’t. Get an updated quote from your own insurer and judge it on that.
Some insurers ask specific questions about batteries or lithium storage, and some offer system-specific benefits — but these vary by insurer and by policy version, so check your own PDS rather than trusting a blanket claim either way. What’s consistent across every insurer is the under-insurance rule. That’s the part worth acting on today.
And if you’re still deciding whether the system itself stacks up, that’s a separate question — start with is solar worth it in 2026 or is a home battery worth it.
Make the call this week.
It's the cheapest protection you'll buy.
Ordered by where you are right now.
If your system is already installed: phone your insurer this week, tell them, and raise your building sum-insured by the system’s full replacement cost. It’s a five-minute call that closes a gap sitting under every future claim. If you’re about to install: ask your installer for the supply-and-install figure now, and update your cover the day the system is switched on. If you’re buying a home with an existing system: confirm it was disclosed and is inside the current sum insured before you settle. In every case, keep your warranty paperwork separate — that’s a different net for a different kind of failure. The premium change, whatever it turns out to be, is almost never a reason to delay; silent under-insurance is the only expensive mistake here.
Solar, battery & insurance:
your questions, answered.
For consumer home insurance you have a statutory duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to your insurer, which applies when you apply for, renew or extend a policy. Because solar and a battery add materially to your home's rebuild cost and are treated as part of the building, they are exactly the kind of change you should disclose. The safest and simplest approach is to notify your insurer when the system is installed and raise your building sum-insured to include its full replacement cost. Your policy wording, or a quick call to the insurer, confirms exactly what they need to know.
Insurers increasingly ask about the battery specifically, and the questions are about installation and product, not brand loyalty — so it helps to have the answers ready. Our guides on whether home batteries are actually safe and the CER battery inspection checklist cover what a compliant install looks like, and the battery recalls and safety warnings checklist is worth five minutes if your system is a few years old — an unresolved recall on your battery is exactly the kind of thing that complicates a claim.
Two things can go wrong. First, if you didn't disclose relevant information, an insurer may not be obliged to pay all or part of a claim, and in some cases can treat the policy as if it never existed. Second, and more commonly overlooked, if your sum insured is too low you become under-insured. ASIC's MoneySmart explains that most policies then pay only a proportion of your claim, and this applies to all claims, not just those above the insured amount. So a stale sum insured can quietly reduce even a small storm or water-damage payout, not just a total loss.
Your building policy generally covers the panels as part of the building against insured events such as hail, windstorm, theft and vandalism, provided your sum insured includes their replacement cost. What it typically does not cover is the equipment simply faulting, degrading or failing over time. A dud inverter, a battery that stops holding charge, or general wear are warranty matters, handled by the manufacturer or installer, not the home policy. Keep both safety nets in mind: insurance for sudden external damage to the building, warranty for the product's own performance. Check your policy's product disclosure statement for the exact insured events.
The sum insured is the maximum your building policy will pay to rebuild or repair your home, and you nominate it. MoneySmart advises working out an accurate sum-insured amount so you avoid being under-insured, and updating it after any change to the property, such as renovations or big purchases. After solar or a battery, ask your installer for the full supply-and-install cost of the system and lift your building sum-insured to absorb it, on top of the existing rebuild figure. Then review it every year, because rebuild costs drift over time and an accurate figure is what protects every future claim.
It might rise, and it might barely move. The change depends on your insurer, your home's value and your location, so there's no reliable one-size figure, and anyone quoting an exact dollar amount is guessing. The honest point is that the premium is not the real issue. Getting your sum insured right matters far more, because under-insurance proportionally reduces every claim you make. The cost of updating your cover is almost always small next to the payout you could lose by staying under-insured, so it's rarely a good reason to delay the call. Ask your own insurer for an updated quote to see your actual number.
It depends on the cause, and your policy wording is the final word. Sudden damage to your home from an insured event is generally covered as part of the building, up to your sum insured, so check which perils your product disclosure statement lists. But a battery that simply fails, degrades or stops working is normally a warranty matter handled by the manufacturer or installer, not your home insurer. Some insurers also ask specific questions about batteries or lithium storage, so it's worth confirming your cover directly. Keep your warranty documents safe and separate from your insurance, because you may need whichever one applies.
Fixed solar is part of the building, so it generally falls under the landlord's building policy rather than the tenant's contents insurance. The duty to tell the insurer about the installation, and to lift the sum insured to cover it, sits with the building owner. A tenant's policy covers their own belongings and any portable equipment, not the panels on the roof.
It is possible, though it depends on the policy and the cause of the loss. Home policies commonly exclude damage caused by faulty workmanship or by work that did not meet the required standards and approvals, and solar is licensed electrical work fixed to the building. Keep the certificate of electrical safety or compliance, the installer's licence and accreditation details, the equipment serial numbers and any network approval. We do not write policies and will not promise how yours would respond, but that paperwork costs nothing to keep.
Where these figures come from.
Primary regulator, industry-body and consumer sources. Figures and rules can change — confirm current detail at each source, and treat your own policy’s PDS as final.
- ASIC MoneySmart — Under-insurance: the proportional-payout (co-insurance) rule
- ASIC MoneySmart — Choosing home insurance: setting an accurate sum insured
- Insurance Council of Australia — What is the duty of disclosure?
- Australian Treasury — Duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation (Royal Commission rec 4.5)
- CHOICE — Are solar panels covered by home insurance?