Amber Electric - Tools to Make The Most of Their Wholesale Prices

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Amber Electric

• 

  Hybroid on 31/07/2023 - 10:50

  +2

  Hmm, had a look at Amber Electric. You have to pay a $19/month subscription fee then 82.3c/day supply charge then 29.2c/kWh for usage. That makes it more expensive than AGL whom are already heavily price jacked. YMMV.

  In terms of your other queries, seems you might going down a similar path where you end up spending tons unfront for devices and gadgets that far outweigh the potential savings cost. Something to keep in mind. Also some energy providers will install a smart meter for you for free that you can view via mobile app, worth looking into.

  • 

    asrey1975 on 02/05/2024 - 12:37

    I was getting bills from other elec companies for $700 to $1000 per month till I moved to Amber. This month, even after being on an "old meter", not a smart meter, my bill from Amber was only about $250. Now we have a smart meter and I'm expecting rates to go down more.
    The $19/month is about 2 days a month usage, so to me its nothing.
    My amber rate on the bill is now at a rate of 21.69c/kwH… pretty good considering all the price gouging (rises) electric companies have been doing past 2 years.

    Other Elec companies I have been with before Amber:
    Elysian - best / cheapest electric ever (about 13.5c/kwh), but they would not supply new address I moved to and then they went bust.
    Energy Locals - cheaper than many others but ended up shopping round
    Tango - had good rates (21c/kwh), then they jacked them by 50% after 6 months
    Sumo - they jacked rates (asking 35c/kwh) 1 month after joining - left to go to Amber.

• 

  lgacb08 on 31/07/2023 - 10:52

  +1

  Either home assistant or node red. But you need to spend a bit to start with, at least $500 will be a conservative starting point.

  • 

    outlander on 31/07/2023 - 11:43

    +1

    Home assistant looks very powerful, from what I've seen, and everyone keeps recommending it so I plan on looking into it. But it is a bit intimidating from the outside. Like something I might be able to hack together in a weekend, but then almost completely forget how it works 6 months later.

    How do you find it? $500 seems a reasonable investment for basic implementation. Disconnecting the gas would pay for that alone in daily service charges.

    Have you seen any Amber specific guides or tools for it though? And is it reliable enough to trust to act? Any failure could be quite costly.

    Haven't even heard of node-red before, so that's something new to me.

    • 

      lgacb08 on 31/07/2023 - 19:46

      +1

      Home assistant has evolved a long way since 4-5 years ago where you had to actually write everything single line of code for each automation and watch out for correct indentation. Now you can do that with step by step drop down menu so it's not very challenging. Node red is more robust I think but you'll probably find less support to start with.
      The problem is you'll need cross platform support anyway to keep it working as intended. I don't think there's any existing single provider solutions that knows your consumption and control the circuit to do what you want. Home assistant do all the communications and action but you need to learn. You'll need a $100 pc to run home assistant, something like powerpal to sense your power consumption or something more comprehensive like iotawatt ($50-$200) and a couple smart plug or circuit control devices like shelly ($20-$50 each). And on top of that there'll be existing home assistant integration that can give you spot energy price so you can decide.
      in theory you can go into single eco systems like the shelly device but it will need electrician rates on top.
      I suggest you get home assistant up and running first together with power monitoring devices to get the idea first of you household consumption patterns before setting up automation because it'll be a long learning curve until you can finely tuning your consumption.

• 

  spackbace on 31/07/2023 - 11:23

  +1

  Automatic cutoff for the whole house

  Imagine the power usage of everything starting back up when you do turn it all back on…

• 

  SBOB on 31/07/2023 - 11:52

  +3

  or maybe a small earth current to trip the RCD.

  yeah, thats not going to be a thing you'd want to be suggesting.

  Automatic cutoff for the whole house, so that in the event that power prices reach the stratosphere I'm not going to be stung

  so at 7pm one night the price rises to some high level you're going to want the entire house to just go black at some random point to save a few bucks? and with the entire power off, how will you restore power? manually? insane :)
  IOT, timer, or smart controllable switches on the high load devices is about all you should be worrying about.

  if a 10c/kwh increase is making you go down this path, you're in for a world of stress when it doesnt work flawlessly

  • 

    outlander on 31/07/2023 - 12:18

    insane.

    Or maybe it's so crazy it just
    might
    work!

• 

  netjock on 31/07/2023 - 15:43

  Been on Amber. Too dynamic for regular people. Unless you want to invest in the battery. Their monthly fee is also getting too high to be able to get back with wholesale prices.

  • 

    outlander on 31/07/2023 - 17:53

    Indeed, it is a challenge. For new users who have a CBA account, the monthly fee is waived for 6 months so that's a small saving there.

    How did you find the prices? As I understand it, there is a network overhead that gets added to what you see on the aemo, but it's been hard to find out how much.

    • 

      netjock on 31/07/2023 - 18:42

      The network overhead is like 20c per kwh. They can never explain it via the many emails but if you have their app I believe it will give you the real number.

      Problem with their prices is unless you have a battery and charge up when it is cheap and use it when it is expensive it is very hard to save money. Power retailers buy energy using forward agreements or forwards to lock in prices so they probably won't get stung at the peaks but won't get rock bottom rates.

      If Amber was growing really fast they probably don't have to raise their prices so much. But my guess is they are getting very limited traction with their offer.

      Part of their fee is for hedging which basically means if your power costs end up being higher than default offer they will compensate you. They have to do it but it just means there is an added cost.

• 

  soan papdi on 31/07/2023 - 19:36

  Have you compared with regular retailers like Tango or Momentum for your postcode? Amber is far more expensive for me than tango.

• 

  outlander on 29/09/2023 - 12:48

  +1

  Its about time I posted an update. I joined them in August, figured now is the best time of year to try them out as it's outside the hot hot days of summer or the cold cold nights of winter that drive wholesale prices sky high.

  It's been really good. My bill came to $60 for the month, for an equivalent price of 15.6c/kwh + 41c/day connection fee.
  By comparison my bill this time last year was $90, with figures of 19.2c/kWh + 75c/day, but that was due to expire and be replaced with 30c/kWh + $1/day by now.

  A few things I've learned

  1.You don't get the " wholesale" wholesale rate rate you see on the AEMO website. There is a levy added on each kwh, which in my case is about 15c. I think it's slightly different for every region. So even when power is free, it's not free. To get free power it has to fall below -$15/mWh

  2.You can't just look at your state, you have to look at things as a whole. Power gets sold to whoever is paying the most for it, and the Amber price seems to match that high price. Let me explain: If its very sunny and windy, and Vic has an oversupply of power, the price is going to drop below 0. But if NSW is having a cloudy day, their price is going to be much higher, maybe 15c. So all the cheap power flows to NSW, and Amber users will be paying closer to the NSW 15 than the Vic 0.

  It doesn't work exactly like that, but more often than not it does. What that means is, to get a negative power situation (where they pay you), basically the whole country has to be in oversupply. This does happen, but it's rare, like flipping 7 coins and all coming up heads.

  3.If you have solar, Amber really isn't for you. I only have a small system so it's not so bad, but on Amber solar becomes a liability. That's because you pay the wholesale rates of the AEMO, but there's no 15c loading for you. That means that when power is at 15c on the Amber app, you get paid nothing. If the power falls to 0, you get charged 15c for every kWh you export.
  If there's a negative power situation, where power falls to say -35c on the Amber app, you'll be paying 50c for every kWh you export.
  In essence, unless you have a pool or some other massive electrical draw Amber = Not for Solar People

  • 

    FareEvader on 02/01/2024 - 22:49

    Do you still rate Amber Electric? How has summer been for you?