Home Batteries Workshop (THIS SUNDAY! Oct 19) and a story about Amber Electric

Local Energy Story:

Bill's bills will Amber Electric

In this Local Energy Story we dip our toes into a topic that many of you have asked about: Amber Electric and their wholesale electricity pricing. This is a long one! And we had to do some research, including listening to this excellent interview with Amber co-founder Dan Adams by Rewiring Australia - which we highly recommend for anyone interested. Read on below to learn about how Amber Electric is different to "fixed rate" electricity pricing, and what benefits and risks to consider when deciding if its the right choice for your household.

We were also lucky to chat with Barragga Bay resident Bill Caldicott about his personal experience switching over to Amber Electric - you can skip to his interview by clicking this text.

Keep in mind that this is not an ad for Amber - we just think it's a pretty neat idea, and a promising step towards a more renewable and fairer grid. Every household is different, and you will want to carefully consider whether Amber Electric's wholesale pricing is the right choice for you.

The wholesale electricity market

Most Australian homes pay their electricity retailer using "fixed rates" - about $0.40 per kilwatt-hour in Bega Valley. Even with plans that offer "time-of-use pricing", where different rates apply at different times of day, the rates are still fixed - determined at the time you sign up to the plan.

The cost of producing electricity, however, is not “fixed” at all – it is very variable. Energy retailers buy wholesale electricity on the National Energy Market (NEM), at a price that changes throughout the day and throughout seasons. Many things can affect this price, most importantly the sun: the solar electricity we get during the day is way cheaper than using coal or gas generators.

We’ve plotted a day’s worth of wholesale NEM electricity prices from a few weeks ago – September 17th – as well as the flat line of a typical fixed rate that you might be getting from your retailer.

Graph showing the wholesale price of electricity on the National Energy Market, for September 17th 2025. Data source: Open Electricity

In the middle of this sunny day, there is lots of solar generation and the price of the energy was so low, it went negative! Anyone paying the wholesale price of electricity (typically big manufacturing facilities, or big battery installations) would be making money by using electricity! As a consumer on a flat fixed rate plan, however, you would still be paying $0.40 per kilowatt-hour used!

The other extreme is in the evening, after the sun sets and when everyone gets home from work. There is so much demand for electricity that the wholesale price can spike up to $3/kWh – almost 8 times your fixed rate ($0.40/kWh).

Traditionally we have accepted that this is a fair exchange: while we give up the chance to buy cheap electricity when the price is low, we get protection from high price spikes. However, now that so many Australian households have their own rooftop solar (over 40%), an increasing number of home batteries, and smart home devices, Amber Electric propose that many homes could benefit from direct access to the wholesale price.

Amber Electric's proposition

Amber Electric’s business is built on the idea that consumers should have the opportunity to save money by changing their consumer behavior in response to the real-time price of producing electricity. There are two main ways to do this:

Use your home battery (if you have one) to soak up energy when wholesale prices are cheapest in the middle of the day, and use it or export it when the grid demand is highest in the evenings
Shift the times when you use electricity for big appliances, in particular if you have to charge an electric vehicle, but also for other big energy consumers like washing machines, dishwashers, dryers

How does it work?

Amber customers pay a subscription fee of $25 per month (this is how Amber's business makes money), and get access to wholesale electricity pricing through Amber's app. You continue to pay a daily supply charge (about $2) and network fees (about ~15c/kWh in our area) for being connected to the grid, as you would with a regular retailer on a fixed rate plan - but there is no markup on these from Amber.

Through the Amber app, you can see the electricity price in real-time, and use this to decide on whether to run that energy-hungry appliance or wait to do it when the price is cheaper. If you have a home battery, you can use their app to automate its charging and discharging behaviour to respond to the wholesale price. If you have solar, you can get access to real-time feed-in tariffs based on wholesale prices.

Do they offer any protection from price spikes?

Yes, they offer a Bill Guarantee protection, that promises that each quarter you'll never pay more than that you would have paid using the average "fixed rate" from a traditional retailer in your region.

Does Amber help make the grid more renewable?

We do think Amber helps make the grid more renewable, in two main ways:

Amber’s customers shift their energy use, and charge up their batteries, in the middle of the day, when the grid is mostly powered from solar and wind. This means that there's less energy used from fossil-fuel power plants that run in the evening, so a cleaner, more renewable grid overall!
Access to the wholesale electricity price is an additional incentive for homes to invest in rooftop solar and home batteries, since they will be able to get more savings on Amber’s plan than with a fixed-rate retailer.

Who is it for? 🤩

We think Amber is likely to be a great choice for households that have one or more of the following:

A home battery that can be used to buy and sell wholesale electricity
An electric vehicle that can be charged at home during the day
Rooftop solar and want to take advantage of the wholesale feed-in tariff

We think Amber might also be a good fit for households that don't have any of the above, but:

Are able and happy to be flexible with when they run energy-hungry appliances, like washing machines, dishwashers and dryers, and are able to follow real-time electricity price alerts from the Amber app to decide when to run them. In this way, you could still get savings from using Amber by shifting when you use the most energy, but the benefits won't be as significant as for households with a battery.

Who is it not for? 🧐

For many of our households, it is not realistic to significantly shift the times when we use the most energy. If you are away at work for most of the day, the only time to run big appliances may be during the evening peak, when wholesale pricing is high. In this case, switching to Amber might not bring any savings compared to your fixed rate plan, or might not outweigh the $25/month Amber subscription fee - so please consider carefully! We recommend you go through Amber's "Get a Quote" process on their website to get an estimate of your bill with Amber.

Bill's experience with Amber

So how does this actually work, for a real household in our area? We talked to Bill from Barragga Bay about his home, and his experience with Amber Electric.

Bill told us about his all-electric house: “We have 6kW of solar and a Powerwall battery with back-up power, which we’ve really relied on during power outages over the past few years. We've also got an electric car. The rest of the house is all electric now: dish washer, clothes washer, induction cook top, electric oven, air/water heat pump and radiators for heating, Starlink internet, but no clothes dryer - we only dry on the line! We also have 240V, 3 phase electric pumps (that run off the battery if the grid goes down) for bushfire sprinklers."

How did you find out about Amber, and what made you switch? "My old electricity retailer changed me over to an expensive plan without warning me - I only found out when I got a big bill! So I started looking at other options, and that's when I came across Amber".

How have your electricity bills changed since signing up? “Since signing up with Amber six months ago, I pay about 20c/kWh on average for my electricity – instead of 40c or more. We are also getting some great savings from our solar and battery – the average feed-in-tariff is 19c/kWh (compared to about 7c with other retailers), but I’ve also seen the wholesale price spike up to $15/kWh at times of peak demand, and that's when feed in tariffs can go into the dollars per kWh!"

Is there something that's surprised you? “There are times when the wholesale electricity price goes negative, and we make use of this to charge our electric car. We essentially get paid to charge our car!"

What do you like most about Amber? “I like Amber mostly because it puts customers in charge of their power purchases, and away from large traditional retailers that have been making outrageous profits from gaming the wholesale price of electricity. Amber reduces the cost of electricity for the consumers.”

Anything else our readers should know? "I think everyone thinking about joining Amber should know they have a $120 referral bonus. Both you and whoever you refer get $120 off your bill when they join."

Where to go for more information

There's a lot to consider here. Amber Electric's model is certainly different to how we are used to paying for electricity, but it seems like there is a lot of potential here. Potential for significant savings on electricity bills, as well as for supporting a steady roll out of renewable generation throughout Australia.

If you want to learn more, we've put together a list of useful links below, which we used as our sources when writing this story:

We'll also be covering Amber Electric, and other topics related to Home Batteries at our October 19th "Understanding Home Batteries" workshop - it's a free community event! Come along, meet us, and chat to local experts about battery technology. Hope to see you there!