Anybody have direct experience with Amber Electricity?

[cafz]

I assume AGL (who also owns OVO) can consider their production cost of electricity rather than the actual NEM price whilst pricing these plans.

Yes, AGL is one of those vertically-integrated gentailers (as is Origin, and Snowy Hydro).

I don't think it's altruism, I think that they've found that EV owners tend to be higher electricity consumers even when not charging their EVs, so they can afford to give some cheap overnight charging to attract that business.

 

[Jules22]

The new EV charging controls have been working very well. All sorts of customisable trigger options, solar charging, time based etc. Still in alpha testing at the moment.

 

[Vostok]

Ha ha… if I was on that Alpha my car would never charge

In the 5 weeks I have been with Amber, the price has never gone below 10c at any time, let alone below 0c .

 

[Jules22]

Ha ha… if I was on that Alpha my car would never charge

In the 5 weeks I have been with Amber, the price has never gone below 10c at any time, let alone below 0c .

You can set the prices and percentage to whatever you want. That's just how I have it set most of the time. The last few weeks I've bumped it up to 14 and 12c to get full charge though last week I charged at 1-2c/kWh

 

[Vostok]

You can set the prices and percentage to whatever you want. That's just how I have it set most of the time. The last few weeks I've bumped it up to 14 and 12c to get full charge though last week I charged at 1-2c/kWh

Good to know. I think Amber also needs to allow users to set maximum buy and minimum sell prices, or set a minimum buy-sell spread, e.g. don’t buy then later sell unless the expected price differential is at least 10c/kWh. Or whatever.

The higher the number you set, the more likely it is you will actually make substantial coin, and reduce the chance of losses due to the price forecasts being wrong. Setting a higher number would also mean buy-sell events would occur less frequently - which might be a good thing. Let the user set some guardrails!

And I’ve asked Amber whether SmartShift knows about, and takes into account, the extra 6c/kWh 100% GreenPower charge added to grid prices when it makes its buy/sell decisions. Because you pay the extra 6c/kWh when you buy, but you do not get that back when you sell. No answer as yet.

Given the Amber App knows nothing about the GreenPower charge (the App does not even tell you what it is in your account details - the monthly Bill is the only place it appears) I suspect the answer is, no, SmartShift does not take it into account - which is a rather fatal flaw.

 

[Jules22]

Good to know. I think Amber also needs to allow users to set maximum buy and minimum sell prices, or set a minimum buy-sell spread, e.g. don’t buy then later sell unless the expected price differential is at least 10c/kWh

Yeah I made that suggestion to them.

Apparently they are working on a few things but they didn't confirm if it would do that.