Amber Electric
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SmartShift works but leaves a LOT to be desired!!
I have been an Amber customer for over 18 months now and haven’t had to pay an electricity bill in that whole time, and with a few sizeable refunds of credit balances. So yes I think Amber is definitely worth it if you have solar AND a battery. So why only 3 stars? Everyone needs to know that if you truly want to optimise your returns, you will need to ditch (turn off) SmartShift and work at it yourself using something like HA (Home Assistant). SmartShift is generally ok but it makes some truly bizarre decisions on the way. For example it is great at curtailing generation during times when the battery is full and the FIT is negative. That is until every now and then it starts the curtailing before the battery is full (<60%) and never lets the battery charge properly. If you don’t notice the problem you are left with low battery levels, entering the worst peak consumption rates, with no excess battery charge to export, and having wasted a stack of solar energy! And then there is the all too often occurrence of SmartShift commencing the export of battery energy too early, at half decent but low FIT rates (around 15 c/kWh), when in 1 or 2 hours time the FIT rates are approx 23c/kWh or more, which leaves you with no battery energy left to take advantage of the higher rates. I have frequently had the situation of SmartShift draining my battery down to almost nothing, exporting the energy at approx 17c/kWh or less, which leaves my household drawing off the grid all night long when the consumption rates remain well above the 17c FIT that the battery was drained at. It only makes sense to export battery energy at FIT rates that are higher than the consumption rate available later on. That’s basic!!! Amber provides very good access to wholesale electricity prices, but to make good use of that you need to be aware that it takes intervention from the customer and a bit of work. By the way, I tried to find a “feedback” link to submit this review directly to Amber techs without going to an external review site, but I could not find any way of submitting my feedback, even through their much advertised “AI support bot”. I was disappointed to say the least, but I really feel that existing or prospective customers need to know the facts. I really hope the techs improve the programming of SmartShift which would solve these issues, but unfortunately I think their focus lies elsewhere. And since on the average SmartShift performs adequately, there is no real incentive for improvement.