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.

 

[Vostok]

Amber is forecasting a price spike in NSW this evening - $20/kWh from 5pm to 7:30pm, $17.70/kWh FIT (at that price, a full discharge of my PW2 would earn me $177). It’s a sunny day in Sydney so at least I’ll be entering that with a full battery. It will be interesting to see what transpires… and how much money I can make.

From what I’ve seen so far on Amber, the electricity market in NSW is completely borked. Too little competition between generators, way too coal dependent overall, and certainly nowhere near enough wind power. NSW needs a helluva lot more wind power and more batteries to kill off the evening coal near-monopoly.

But David VeryLittleProud has already come out swinging saying an LNP government will kill off the just approved Illawarra coast offshore wind zone. The idiocy has no bounds… such a move would simply lock NSW customers in to ever-higher prices for the next decade.

 

[Jules22]

Yep I've charged up fully ready to cash in on that FIT

 

[cafz]

Amber is forecasting a price spike in NSW this evening - $20/kWh from 5pm to 7:30pm, $17.70/kWh FIT (at that price, a full discharge of my PW2 would earn me $177). It’s a sunny day in Sydney so at least I’ll be entering that with a full battery. It will be interesting to see what transpires… and how much money I can make.

Looks like the latest AEMO forecast run has cut that down substantially. Still a 7:30AM spike tomorrow morning in the forecast, though.

 

[Quickst]

From what I’ve seen so far on Amber, the electricity market in NSW is completely borke

Ive just renewed my electricity plan with Energy Australia
I don't have a battery and my solar array is double the maximum that is selectable via the website.

My average cents/kWh (25.8c) is now less than Amber's estimated average dynamic price of 27.6c, and the FiT (7.6c) is double that of Amber's average dynamic FiT of 3.4c for 14kW solar array.

I suspect if i was able to use my 25kW array in the website instead of Amber's max 14kW my average dynamic Fit would be even less.

A battery is not going to be financially sound on average as the new Peak tariff is now 48.1c and only applicable for 8 months of the year and only Monday to Friday year round. When i see the price for the new PW3 I'll redo the cost per warranted kWh of a battery.

Annually I consume:
2-8pm peak: 1674kWh over 173 days a year (avg 10kWh per day of peak tariff but thats because i deliberately shift consumption to shoulder period - possibly 20kWh/day if I didn't time shift - which means i need 2 batteries)
shoulder: 5815 kWh
11pm-7am : 8763 kWh
I export annually: 18750 kWh

Am I looking at this correctly?

 

[cafz]

I suspect if i was able to use my 25kW array in the website instead of Amber's max 14kW my average dynamic Fit would be even less.

I would have thought it would be better, because it means you'll have more excess to export at the times when you actually get a good FIT (typically at the start and end of the solar day).

 

[cafz]

Yep I've charged up fully ready to cash in on that FIT

Sadly for you, but happily for electricity consumers in general, it looks like that possible pricing peak was a fizzer.

 

[Quickst]

actually get a good FIT (typically at the start and end of the solar day).

But against that, higher probability the wholesale rate goes negative between 11am-1pm? Our consumption typically uses all solar until about 9am in winter and late afternoon in summer.

 

[Jules22]

Sadly for you, but happily for electricity consumers in general, it looks like that possible pricing peak was a fizzer.

Yeah still made a little over $5 and I'll charge overnight for the morning spike

 

[Vostok]

Sadly for you, but happily for electricity consumers in general, it looks like that possible pricing peak was a fizzer.

Yes, thank goodness. I made all of $1.05 being an energy trader. This rollercoaster isn’t necessarily fun to be on.

 

[Vostok]

Ive just renewed my electricity plan with Energy Australia
I don't have a battery…
Am I looking at this correctly?

I think so. From my experience to date, you would have to be insane to join Amber without a house battery - certainly in NSW. You’d be completely exposed to any price spikes with no way to avoid $1/kWh+ costs unless you turned everything off. Which would be pretty horrible when spikes typically occur between 5 and 7pm and you want to cook dinner with the lights on.

At least with a battery you can mostly avoid these price spikes and potentially make money from them by trading energy.

I really did pick a terrible time to join Amber. Volume weighted average wholesale prices in NSW this year per MWh:

Jan: $92.56
Feb: $137.81
Mar: $74.54
Apr: $95.31
May: $298.75
Jun (to date): $141.39

 

[cafz]

Yeah still made a little over $5 and I'll charge overnight for the morning spike

Elevated prices in all 5 NEM regions forecast for this evening between 1700 and 2100. As usual it may not eventuate but that's an unusually long period of elevated prices in the forecast - let us know how you go!

 

[Quickst]

Elevated prices

How elevated would it need to be to be to be attractive to an Amber user (with battery)

 

[Jules22]

Elevated prices in all 5 NEM regions forecast for this evening between 1700 and 2100. As usual it may not eventuate but that's an unusually long period of elevated prices in the forecast - let us know how you go!

Yeah, I've been watching it. I think given it's such an extended period and the min/max are both so high, I expect it will be way up there (quite often the NEM might have a range from 50c to $18, it was sittin at $13-18 last I checked)

 

[Jules22]

How elevated would it need to be to be to be attractive to an Amber user (with battery)

Any FIT which is over the purchase price during that day is attractive. There are just varying levels of attractiveness. Generally I don't get interested in anything less than a 10-20c profit margin, which you can get most days and will leave you with $3-5 profit for the day, but when you are getting $10+ profit margins, that's when you are earning upwards of $200 in an hour or two (somewhere around 600 is my record so far).