Unlocking Daily Savings with Amber Energy: A New Approach to Your Power Bills

Amber Energy is transforming how Australian homeowners manage their electricity costs by moving away from traditional fixed-rate plans. Instead of locking in a set price per kilowatt-hour, Amber provides direct access to the fluctuating wholesale electricity market. This model offers a unique opportunity for daily savings, especially for households that can be flexible with their energy consumption.

Understanding Amber’s Daily Charges and Rates

With Amber, your daily electricity costs are broken down into three main components:

1. Daily Supply Charge: This is a fixed daily fee that covers the cost of maintaining the poles and wires that deliver electricity to your home. This charge varies depending on your location and local network provider but is passed through from the network to you without any retail markup from Amber.
2. Monthly Subscription Fee: Amber charges a flat monthly subscription fee (currently around $25) for their service. This is Amber’s primary margin for running their business, allowing them to pass on the wholesale energy costs directly to you. On a daily basis, this equates to a small, predictable charge.
3. Wholesale Usage Rates: This is where the opportunity for savings lies. Instead of a fixed rate, you pay the real-time wholesale price of electricity, which changes every 30 minutes based on supply and demand in the grid. Prices are typically lowest in the middle of the day when solar generation is high and demand is low. Conversely, prices tend to be highest during the evening peak (around 5 PM to 8 PM) when demand is high and solar generation has ceased. The Amber app provides real-time price alerts, empowering you to use energy when it’s cheapest.

Maximising Your Feed-In Tariffs

For homeowners with solar panels, Amber offers a dynamic feed-in tariff (FiT) that is also tied to the 30-minute wholesale market price. This means:

• You’re Rewarded for High Demand: When the electricity grid is under strain and wholesale prices are high (often on very hot days), you’ll receive a significantly higher FiT for the excess solar energy you export. This can lead to substantial credits on your bill.
• Variable Returns: Unlike a fixed FiT, the amount you receive will fluctuate. During periods of low demand and high solar output across the grid (like a sunny spring day), the wholesale price can be very low, and your FiT will reflect that. In rare instances, if there is a surplus of energy in the grid, the price can even dip into negative territory.

Achieving Daily Savings: A Practical Approach

The key to saving money with Amber is to actively manage your energy consumption. By making small adjustments to your daily routine, you can significantly reduce your costs:

• Load Shifting: The most effective strategy is “load shifting” – running your high-energy appliances when wholesale prices are low. This includes:
  • Using the delay-start function on your dishwasher and washing machine to run them in the middle of the day.
  • Charging electric vehicles or home batteries during off-peak hours or when solar generation is abundant.
  • Running pool pumps and heating hot water systems during cheaper periods.
• Solar and Battery Optimisation: A solar and battery system is the ultimate tool for maximising savings with Amber. Amber’s “SmartShift” technology can automate this process, intelligently charging your battery from your solar panels or the grid when prices are low or even negative. It will then use that stored energy to power your home during expensive evening peaks or sell it back to the grid for a profit when prices spike. Customer experiences have shown that this can lead to credits of hundreds of dollars in a single month during volatile market periods.

By giving you transparent access to wholesale prices and the tools to respond to them, Amber Energy allows you to take direct control of your daily electricity expenditure. For the energy-conscious household, this can translate into significant and ongoing savings.