South Australia's subsidised home battery scheme has got off to a limping start.

Just 3,700 households have applied to be part of the SA Government's scheme in its first 12 months -  a long way shy of its target of connecting 40,000 households over four years.

The Government is offering households $6,000 towards a battery and access to low-cost loans to install solar panels.

SA Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan says the scheme is working.

“We've developed it so as many South Australians can benefit from it,” he said.

“We knew that it would start off slowly, we knew it would pick up pace and that's exactly what's happening.

“I'm confident that at the end of the four years we will get to the 40,000 batteries.”

The state’s opposition says the batteries are still too expensive, and energy analyst Tristan Edis appears to agree.

“Even taking into account the rebate, you generally don't get a particularly good payback,” he told the ABC.

“At best, you'd be getting a payback at around eight years. And that's not an exceptional financial investment and for a number of households it would be worse than that.”

Mr Edis, from Melbourne-based Green Energy Markets, also says that feed-in tariffs to export solar energy back to the grid are still relatively generous.

“The price to export power at the moment is quite high and people are kind of happy, they're making good money exporting electricity and they think; ‘Why do I need the battery?’” he said.

Over 2 million Australian households have rooftop solar, but just one in every eight homes is adding a battery, according to the Energy Security Board.

The experts say that reduced feed-in tariffs could prompt more people to look at batteries.