S02E2: Why 2026 Will Change Solar Forever: Batteries, AI & Electrification
In the second episode of Season 2 of The OpenSolar Podcast, Derek McKercher, founder of Perth Solar Warehouse, and Jimi Gatland, OpenSolar’s Director of Pro Experience – Australia, discuss the installer shortage gripping Australia, where home electrification is heading next, and how AI could fundamentally change how solar businesses operate.
Also available to stream on Apple and Spotify.
Australia’s biggest constraint is no longer demand
Australia’s rooftop solar market is still growing rapidly, but the pressure point has shifted.
“The bottleneck now is installation capacity,” Derek explains.
As batteries, EV chargers, and electrification upgrades become more common, demand for qualified installers is rising faster than the industry can comfortably absorb.
For Derek, rushing training is a false economy. Perth Solar Warehouse has been running internal training programs for months in preparation, with new staff moving through solar accreditation, battery certification, and operational onboarding before entering the field.
Done properly, that process can take anywhere from three to six months.
The businesses investing in workforce development now, Derek argues, are the ones positioning themselves for long-term growth, particularly as Australia’s battery market enters its next expansion phase following the federal government’s confirmed five-year battery rebate extension.
The fully electrified home is getting closer
Derek’s vision of the fully electrified home feels less like a distant dream and more like a logical progression.
Solar generates energy. Batteries store and manage it. EV chargers, hot water systems, and eventually air conditioning become additional controllable loads connected into the same ecosystem.
Rather than replacing one technology with another, the transition happens incrementally — one appliance, upgrade, or energy decision at a time.
One of the most amusing and exciting gaps for Derek is air conditioning integration. Every manufacturer has it on their roadmap, consumer demand is obvious, and yet nobody has cracked it yet. Whoever gets there first could unlock a significant advantage in the market.
But as home energy systems become more interconnected, the technical complexity for installers increases as well.
Derek’s advice cuts against the industry instinct to carry everything: go deep on three or four technologies you know well enough to troubleshoot with confidence, and build customer relationships around that expertise.
AI is about getting back to being human
Derek’s view of AI is less about replacing people and more about removing administrative friction.
Too much of the modern solar workday, he argues, is still spent manually processing information, chasing updates, and moving data between disconnected systems — work that software should handle invisibly in the background.
That shift toward agentic workflows is already starting to appear across the industry. Derek points to new tooling integrations, including monday.com’s MCP compatibility, as early signs of how operational workflows may soon become significantly more automated.
“2026 is the year of the agent,” Derek says.
If that happens, the role of humans inside solar businesses will likely shift away from administration and back toward the things software still struggles to replicate well: trust, relationships, and customer communication.
Derek’s advice? The groundwork you lay now will separate you from the field.
One piece of advice: go see it for yourself
As the conversation wrapped up, Derek offered one final piece of advice for anyone trying to understand where energy is heading: go and see it firsthand.
Places like Shanghai, where electrification already operates at enormous scale, stop the future feeling abstract and make the direction of travel much harder to ignore.
And for Australia’s solar sector to fully capture that opportunity, collaboration across the industry will matter just as much as technology itself.