Amber Electric Review: Eight Months With Solar and a 48kWh Battery

The short version

Amber has been the right decision for my household and I have no plans to leave. But the reason it worked is not the reason I signed up, and that gap is the most useful thing I can tell you.

Amber does not sell cheap electricity. It sells access to the wholesale price for $25 a month. Every other retailer buys on that same market and resells to you at a marked-up fixed rate, absorbing the risk in exchange for the margin. Amber removes the markup and hands you the risk. Whether that is a good trade depends almost entirely on whether you own something that can move energy through time.

I expected to make money catching evening price events. I did not catch a single one. What happened instead was quieter and, in hindsight, more durable: the battery removed my household from the expensive part of the day almost completely, and the wholesale price for the rest of the day turned out to be far below what a retailer had been charging me for the same electricity.

How Amber Electric actually works, in plain English

If you already understand the National Electricity Market, skip to the next section. If not, this is the part that makes the rest make sense.

Electricity in eastern Australia is traded on a live market. Generators offer power, the market operator works out how much is needed, and a price is set for your whole state, recalculated every five minutes and settled every thirty. That price moves enormously. On a sunny afternoon with more rooftop solar than anyone needs, it goes to zero and frequently below. On a still, hot evening when every air conditioner in Sydney is running, it can briefly reach thousands of dollars per megawatt hour.

Your normal retailer sees all of that and hides it from you. They buy on that market, hedge against the spikes, and sell you a flat rate that includes their margin and their insurance against a bad summer. The flat rate is a service, and you pay for it. In my case I was paying 25.45c/kWh for it, at every hour of the day, whether the underlying energy was worth two cents or eighty.

Amber does the opposite. You pay the wholesale price directly in each 30-minute block, plus the same network and environmental charges everyone pays, plus a flat $25 monthly subscription. Amber makes no margin on the energy. Their app shows the current price and a 24-hour forecast, and that forecast is the actual product.

What you pay for energy	The 30-minute wholesale price, at cost
What you earn for exports	The same wholesale price, at cost
Amber's revenue	$25/month subscription only
Network & supply charges	Passed through, same as any retailer
Price protection	A wholesale cap on usage; it does not cover network charges
Contract term	None. No exit fee
Available in	NSW, VIC, SA, ACT, south-east QLD

For the incompatible-hardware crowd

What to do if your battery isn't compatible with SmartShift

SmartShift only drives hardware Amber has built support for, and support comes in two grades. Amber lists compatible batteries in its help centre (there is also a compatibility checker), and separately names brands in open beta — as of September 2026, 1KOMMA5°, Anker, Enphase, FoxESS and GivEnergy. Beta means compatible and usable, but under active development: Amber's own wording warns of "occasional connectivity dropouts, missed commands, or periods where we need to temporarily pause automation".

If your inverter or battery is on neither list, you can still be an Amber customer — you just do not get the automation, which is the part that does the actual work.

The usual advice at this point is "use Home Assistant". That is broadly right, but it is given far too loosely, so here is the precise version, including the bit that trips people up.

What Home Assistant actually is, in this context

Home Assistant is open-source home automation software you run yourself, on a Raspberry Pi, a mini PC or a container on a NAS. It is not a service you sign up to and it is not something Amber operates. It sits between a data source and your devices: it reads state in, applies rules you write, and switches things on the other side.

That is the whole difference. SmartShift replaces the decision-maker. Home Assistant replaces the decision-maker with you.

The catch nobody mentions

Where it works regardless of your battery is everything else in the house. A hot water circuit, a pool pump or an EV charger on a smart relay can be driven off the price forecast by anyone. In my house that is not a consolation prize: hot water on controlled load is 88% of everything I pull from the grid, and the battery never touches it. If your position is "no supported battery but a big overnight hot water load", Home Assistant addresses the larger of those two problems.

What the integration gives you

The Amber Electric integration ships in Home Assistant core, so there is no custom repository to add. You need an API token: in the Amber app, open Settings, turn on Developer Mode and generate a key — copy it immediately, because it is shown once.

It then creates, for each of your three channels (general, controlled load and feed-in):

Price	Current price for that channel, in $/kWh
Forecast	Forecast prices for the next 12 hours
Descriptor	extremely_low, very_low, low, neutral, high, spike
Renewables	Percentage of renewable generation in the grid right now
Price Spike	Binary sensor, on when prices exceed $3/kWh

There is also an action, amberelectric.get_forecasts, which takes a site and a channel type and returns each upcoming interval with per_kwh, spot_per_kwh, renewables, spike_status, descriptor and start and end times. That is the one to build against if you want a rule like "run the immersion heater during the cheapest three hours between now and 4pm" rather than a simple "is it cheap right now" test.

A calibration note on that spike sensor, from my own data: across 90 days, only 8 of 25,920 five-minute intervals went above $1/kWh, and just one went above $3 (a single spike on the morning of 10 October). If you build your whole automation strategy around the spike trigger, it may sit idle for months. The reliable triggers are the boring ones — descriptor being low, or the forecast for the next few hours.

SmartShift versus Home Assistant, side by side

	SmartShift	Home Assistant
Who decides	Amber, from its own price forecast	You, in rules you write
Controls your battery	Yes, automatically	Only if that battery has its own HA integration
Controls hot water, pool, EV	No	Yes — anything on a smart switch
Hardware required	A battery on Amber's compatible list	Something to run HA on, plus an integration per device
Cost	Included in the $25/month subscription	Software is free; you pay in hardware and hours
Setup effort	Enrol the battery and leave it	An evening to read prices; considerably longer to control anything
Price data you see	Used internally; you see the outcome	Current price, 12-hour forecast and descriptors as sensors
Reacts to a price spike	Automatically	Only if you wrote that automation
Works with unsupported hardware	No	Yes, for everything except that battery
When it misbehaves	Amber's problem to fix	Yours, at 11pm
Best suited to	Supported battery, wants it handled	Unsupported battery, or large shiftable loads, and enjoys tinkering

They are not mutually exclusive, which is worth saying plainly because most write-ups frame it as a choice. Plenty of people run SmartShift on the battery and Home Assistant on everything else. That is the arrangement I would build toward if I were starting again.

The actual numbers

These are measured, not modelled. They cover 90 days from 13 July 2026 to 10 October 2026, taken from Amber's API across all three channels — general household import, controlled-load import and feed-in.

Grid imported	770.1 kWh, costing $105.90
Average import price	13.75c/kWh
Exported	1,371.0 kWh, earning $167.56
Average export price	12.22c/kWh
Net energy result, 90 days	$61.66 earned
Share of import on controlled load	88%
Share of import in the 4–8pm peak	3.9%
Best export price on real volume	35.1c/kWh, 8:25pm on 30 July
Highest import price seen	$26.63/kWh
Previous plan, usage	25.45c/kWh flat (14.42c controlled load)
Previous plan, feed-in	4c/kWh (8.2c on a smart window)

Three things in that table are worth pulling out, because they are the review.

My average import price is roughly half my old flat rate. 13.75c against 25.45c. That is not clever trading; it is what electricity costs when nobody is adding a retail margin and you are not forced to buy it at 6pm.

Only 3.9% of my grid import happens between 4pm and 8pm. This is the battery's real job, and it is almost invisible in a bill. The expensive part of the day simply stops being something I participate in.

Over 90 days my energy came out slightly ahead — exports earned $167.56 against $105.90 of grid power, so I came out $61.66 ahead. I am not claiming free power; the supply charge and subscription still arrive every month, and this window is winter and early spring. But the energy itself, the part Amber actually changes, paid for itself.

What Amber changes for each kind of household

The mechanism is the same for everyone; what differs is whether you can act on it. Only the third row is measured — it is mine. The others describe the direction of the effect, not a dollar estimate I have not earned the right to make.

Household	What Amber changes	Likely against a flat-rate plan
No solar, no battery	You pay the wholesale price all day, including the evening peak, with nothing to draw on.	Worse. The $25 subscription is added to a bill you cannot shift.
Solar, no battery	Exports land at midday when wholesale prices are lowest and sometimes negative.	Usually worse. A conventional high feed-in tariff typically beats it.
Solar + battery (measured)	Battery covers the peak and stores cheap midday power. My import averaged 13.75c/kWh against 25.45c flat; exports earned 12.22c/kWh against 4c.	Better. Only 3.9% of my grid import fell in the 4–8pm peak.
Solar + battery + EV	Adds a large, genuinely movable load that can be scheduled against the price forecast.	Better again, in proportion to how freely the charging can move.
Controlled-load hot water	Heats overnight on a circuit the battery does not serve. In my house this was 88% of all grid import.	Neutral until you move it. It is the largest saving still on my table.

The thing I did not expect: hot water is the whole story

88% of everything I pull from the grid is hot water on a controlled-load circuit. My general household import across 90 days was under two kilowatt hours a day — the solar and battery cover essentially all of it. Everything else is a tank heating overnight on a circuit the battery does not serve.

That single fact reframes the whole plan for me. The biggest remaining saving in my house is not a smarter battery strategy or a better price forecast; it is moving hot water off an overnight controlled-load circuit and onto the middle of the day, when my own solar is free. I would not have found that without half-hourly data, and no fixed-rate retailer would ever have shown it to me.

What went wrong, because something always does

My experience has been positive and I would sign up again. That is not the same as saying nothing went wrong.

The 25% state-of-charge floor

SmartShift will not discharge my battery below 25%, which on a 48kWh stack means roughly 12kWh is permanently unavailable to me. There are sound reasons for a reserve, but it is a quarter of an expensive asset that I cannot use, and it is not something I understood clearly when I bought the battery. If you are sizing a system around Amber, size it knowing that the top quarter of the number on the brochure is not yours.

The first three months were bad, and it was nobody's fault

I joined in January with no battery, in summer, with SmartShift still learning the house. That was my worst stretch by a distance. Amber is a plan that gets better as your hardware and its model of your house both improve, which is a genuinely awkward thing to sell — the experience you get in month one is not the one you are signing up for.

SmartShift occasionally makes a call I disagree with

Once or twice a month it does something I would not have: importing to charge when I would have waited, or discharging earlier in the evening than I would have chosen. Checking the forecast it was working from usually vindicates it. Sometimes I still think it was wrong. You can override it manually. This is the most common complaint in Australian Amber reviews and I do not think people are imagining it — they are correctly noticing that a system optimising against a forecast will sometimes lose, and that watching it lose on your own battery is more annoying than the dollar amount justifies.

Support is the weakest part of the product

I have not personally had a bad support experience, and I will not overclaim from a sample of one. But the volume of complaints about slow email responses in public reviews is large and consistent enough that leaving it out would mislead you. If you want a phone number answered quickly when a bill looks wrong, weigh that seriously.

The first month is genuinely unsettling

Watching a live price move while your house draws power is a different experience from getting a bill each quarter. For a few weeks I checked the app far too often. That passes, and the automation means it does not actually matter — but if you will find it stressful rather than interesting, that is a real cost that appears in nobody's savings calculation.

Who Amber Electric suits, and who it does not

If you are in the right-hand column, no referral credit is a good enough reason to switch, including mine. The $120 is worth roughly two months of an average bill; the plan determines what you pay for years.

The Amber Electric referral code, and what it is worth

If this review has been useful and you decide to join, you can use my referral code. I would rather say this in the middle of the page than hide it: I am paid $120 if you use it, on exactly the same terms you are. Amber pays both sides; your credit is not reduced by mine, and it is identical to the credit any other valid code would give.

Two honest notes. The credit is paid monthly across a year, so leaving after four months gets you $40, not $120. And $10 a month is most of Amber's $25 subscription — which is the accurate way to describe the offer: it is a discount on Amber's fee for your first year, not a discount on power. Full details are on the Amber Electric referral code page, which is kept current as Amber rotates codes.

Common questions about Amber Electric

Is Amber Electric worth it?

For a household with solar and a battery that can shift load, yes — that has been my experience. Amber does not sell cheaper electricity; it sells wholesale exposure for a $25 monthly subscription. Over 90 measured days my grid import averaged 13.75c/kWh against the 25.45c flat rate I was paying before, and my exports averaged 12.22c/kWh against a 4c feed-in tariff. Without a battery, or without the ability to move usage, the same plan can easily cost more than a fixed rate.

How much does Amber Electric cost per month?

Amber charges a $25 monthly subscription on top of your usage, your daily supply charge and network costs. Amber adds no margin to the energy itself — you pay the 30-minute wholesale price, plus network, metering and environmental charges at cost. On my August bill the subscription was $23.16 before GST, and the network daily supply charge was actually the larger line at $35.33 for the month.

Do you need a battery to use Amber Electric?

No, but it changes the outcome more than anything else. My household import in the evening peak between 4pm and 8pm was 3.9% of my total grid import — the battery covers that window almost entirely. Without storage you are exposed to those prices with nothing to draw on, and your solar exports land in the middle of the day when wholesale prices are lowest and sometimes negative.

Can your Amber bill spike?

Yes. Across 90 days the price went above $1/kWh in 8 five-minute intervals, all on the mornings of 9 and 10 October, and peaked at $26.63/kWh at 8:15am on 10 October. The battery covered my usage, so those intervals cost me 6 cents in total. That measured window is winter and early spring; summer is when the serious price events occur, and I have not yet been through one with the battery in place. Amber applies a wholesale price cap on usage, but it does not cover network, metering or environmental charges.

What is SmartShift and does it work?

SmartShift is Amber's battery automation. It forecasts wholesale prices and decides when the battery charges, holds, discharges or exports. It works well — the clearest evidence is that I exported only 39.9 kWh while the price was negative across 90 days, which cost me 49 cents in total. The curtailment is doing its job. My main complaint is the 25% state-of-charge floor it enforces, which keeps roughly 12kWh of my battery permanently out of play.

Why is my Amber feed-in tariff negative?

Because the wholesale price itself is negative. In the middle of a sunny day there is more rooftop solar on the grid than demand, and the market price falls below zero — generators pay to keep exporting. On Amber you see that directly, so exporting at that moment costs you money instead of earning it. A battery or solar curtailment fixes it: store the energy, or stop exporting until the price recovers.

Which states is Amber Electric available in?

New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and south-east Queensland. Amber does not operate in Western Australia, Tasmania or the Northern Territory, because those regions are not part of the National Electricity Market that Amber's pricing is built on.

Do you need a smart meter for Amber?

Yes. Amber bills against the 30-minute wholesale price, and an older accumulation meter cannot record consumption at that resolution. If your property does not have a smart meter, Amber arranges the upgrade as part of the switch, which adds a few weeks to the process.

Is there an Amber Electric referral code?

Yes. The current code is CQV73EEH, verified on a live sign-up form on 12 November 2026. It gives you $120 off your bill, applied as a $10 credit on each of your first 12 bills rather than as a lump sum. The person whose code you use receives the same $120 on the same terms — including me, if you use mine, which is worth saying plainly rather than burying in a footer.

Does Amber lock you into a contract?

No. There is no fixed term and no exit fee, and you can leave at any time. That matters more than it sounds: trying Amber is a reversible decision. If three months of real bills show it does not suit your household, you switch back having lost the subscription fees and nothing else.

Can you use Amber with Home Assistant?

Yes. Amber publishes a REST API returning current, actual and forecast 30-minute prices for your site, and there is a well-maintained community integration for Home Assistant. Every figure in this review was pulled from that API rather than typed out of the app, which is a fair summary of how useful it is.

Is Amber better than a standard retailer for solar?

It depends entirely on whether you can move energy through time. A standard retailer pays a flat feed-in tariff regardless of what the energy is worth at that moment — mine was 4c/kWh. Amber pays what it is actually worth, which is close to nothing at midday and considerably more in the evening; mine averaged 12.22c/kWh. If you have storage, the second arrangement is better. If you export a lot at midday with nowhere to put it, the first one is.

Where else to check before you decide

One household is one data point. These are the places I would read next, none of which are affiliated with this site:

• Amber Electric on ProductReview — the largest pool of Australian customer reviews, and the least flattering.
• Amber Electric on Trustpilot — a more positive picture than ProductReview; read both.
• CHOICE's assessment of Amber — independent, subscription-funded, takes no advertising.
• SolarQuotes' own long-run Amber review — a different setup and a different verdict on SmartShift.
• Energy Made Easy — the regulator's plan comparison, which takes no commission from retailers.

Is Amber Electric worth it?

For a household with solar and a battery that can shift load, yes. For a household without storage, usually not. That is the whole answer, and the rest of this section is why.

I am staying. My average import price is about half what a retailer charged me for the same electricity, my exports earn roughly three times what they used to, and the battery has taken my household almost entirely out of the evening peak. The API has made the house genuinely more interesting to run, and it found me a problem — an overnight hot water circuit — that no fixed-rate plan would ever have revealed.

But I would not have written that with a 10kWh battery, and I would not write it at all without one. I would also not have written it three months in. Amber rewards a specific kind of household with specific hardware, and it quietly penalises everyone else while charging them $25 a month. Work out which one you are before you switch, not after.

Figures in this review are my own, taken from Amber's API for the period 13 July 2026 to 10 October 2026, and from my own bills. Your results will differ. Nothing here is financial or energy advice, and Amber's pricing, offers and features change — confirm current terms with Amber before switching. Last updated 12 November 2026.