Amber Electric is a retailer that passes the wholesale electricity price straight through to you. Your imports cost the live wholesale price plus network and other costs, and your exports earn the live wholesale price. SmartShift is Amber's free software that runs your battery on top of that: charging when power is cheap, and exporting when prices spike.
That is a very different deal from a flat $1 per kWh event credit. There is no cap on what a spike can pay, but there is no floor either: wholesale export prices can go negative, and imports can get expensive in a heatwave. Amber charges a flat $25 a month for the privilege, whether prices behave or not.
Who it suits
- Battery owners who want to capture price spikes rather than a capped flat credit, and are comfortable with a bill that moves.
- People with a battery few others list, such as BYD on a Fronius GEN24, Enphase on IQ7 or IQ8, Hive or GivEnergy.
- Hands-on types who want to see live prices and override the battery when they choose.
Who should skip it
- Anyone who would lose sleep over a bill that swings with the wholesale market.
- Small users, where a $300 a year membership fee eats most of the benefit.
- Regional Queenslanders: only the Energex network is covered in QLD.
Amber SmartShift at a glance
| Provider | Amber Electric |
| Plan | Amber for Batteries with SmartShift |
| Status | Open when checked. Compatibility list updated 23 September 2026. |
| States | NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, ACT |
| Networks / regions | VIC: CitiPower, Powercor, Jemena, AusNet and United Energy. NSW: Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential. SA: SA Power Networks. QLD: Energex only. ACT: Evoenergy. |
| How it pays | Wholesale-linked: Exports earn the live 30-minute wholesale price (which can go negative); imports cost wholesale plus network charges. $25 a month membership; SmartShift itself is free. |
| Sign-up bonus | None from Amber. A referral gives each person $10 a month off for 12 months. |
| Control and reserve | SmartShift trades the battery automatically but never exports it to the grid below 25%, and never goes below the backup reserve set in your battery app. You can manually dispatch, charge or preserve, or turn SmartShift off. |
| Contract and exit fees | No lock-in contract and no exit fees. |
| Switch retailer? | Yes. Amber must be your electricity retailer, on its wholesale-price plan. |
| State incentive link | NSW: eligible for the NSW VPP incentive, paid by MAC Trade Services. SA: an approved VPP (via Ecovantage), but since 5 May 2026 the SA incentive is not available to non-priority groups. |
| Last checked | Sep 2026, against the provider's own pages |
How the money actually works
Forget event credits. On Amber, every kWh you export is paid the wholesale price for that 30-minute period, and every kWh you import costs the wholesale price plus network charges. The money comes from buying low and selling high, which is exactly what SmartShift tries to do with your battery.
On a normal sunny day, midday wholesale prices are often very low or even negative, so SmartShift keeps your solar in the battery or in your home rather than exporting it for nothing. When the evening peak arrives, or the market spikes on a hot afternoon, it can export at prices far above any fixed feed-in tariff.
Against that sits the $25 a month membership fee per meter, or $300 a year. SmartShift itself costs nothing extra. Amber also publishes a quarterly cap on the wholesale part of your import price, so a runaway market cannot push that part of your import cost above the cap for the quarter.
Nothing about this is guaranteed. A calm quarter with few spikes can pay very little, and that is the honest trade-off of a wholesale plan.
Worked example: what it takes to cover the membership fee
Built only from Amber Electric's published terms, with every assumption spelled out.
- Published: $25 a month membership per meter ($300 a year); exports paid the 30-minute wholesale price.
- Wholesale prices are quoted in $/MWh. $1,000/MWh is $1 per kWh.
- The spike price of $2 per kWh is an illustration, not a forecast.
This is the maths of the fee, not an earnings estimate. Real results depend on how often prices spike in your state, how SmartShift trades your battery, and what your imports cost. We are not giving an annual figure because Amber doesn't publish one and it would be a guess.
Which batteries work with Amber SmartShift
This is Amber Electric's own compatibility list as published when we checked. Lists change, and it is often the exact model, inverter and firmware that matter, not just the brand, so confirm your system with Amber Electric before you count on the numbers.
- Sigenergy (with a Sigen Sensor or Gateway)
- Tesla Powerwall 2 and Powerwall 3
- SolarEdge, and LG Chem batteries on SolarEdge inverters
- AlphaESS (serial number starting "AL")
- Hive / REA
- BYD HVM and HVS with a Fronius GEN24 inverter
- Sungrow
- FoxESS
- 1KOMMA5
- Redback
- Neovolt
- Enphase with IQ7 or IQ8 microinverters
- GivEnergy
- Anker Solix
- Fronius Reserva with a GEN24 inverter
- GoodWe ESA
Read up on the brands we cover: Sigenergy, Tesla Powerwall, SolarEdge, AlphaESS, BYD, Sungrow, FoxESS, Enphase, GoodWe.
The catch: fine print worth reading first
- Prices go both ways. Wholesale export prices can go negative, which means exporting at those times costs you. SmartShift is designed to avoid that, but it is the nature of the plan.
- The fee is fixed, the income is not. $25 a month is due whether or not the market is volatile.
- 25% floor on exports. SmartShift will not send the battery to the grid once it is below 25%, and it always respects the backup reserve you set in your battery app. Below 25% your home can still use the battery down to that reserve, so set the reserve to what you want kept for a blackout.
- You switch retailer. Amber has to be your electricity retailer. There is no bring-your-own-retailer option.
- Network delays in VIC and SA. Emergency backstop and flexible export requirements can slow down getting your battery connected.
Other things to know
- In VIC and SA, enrolment can be delayed while your battery is set up for the emergency backstop and flexible export arrangements run by the networks.
- Amber publishes a quarterly cap on the wholesale part of your import price. For July to September 2026 it ranged from 16.33c per kWh (Energex) to 25.75c per kWh (SA), including GST.
How it sits next to your battery rebates
Amber is eligible for the NSW VPP incentive, paid by MAC Trade Services. Amber's conditions: a battery of 2 to 50kWh (paid on up to 28kWh), at least 6 years of warranty remaining, and one claim per meter. In South Australia Amber is an approved VPP through Ecovantage, but since 5 May 2026 the SA incentive has only been available to priority groups. Either way, the state incentive is its own amount, separate from anything Amber pays you for exports and separate from the federal battery discount.
We always treat these as separate numbers: the federal Cheaper Home Batteries discount comes off the battery invoice, any state incentive is its own amount with its own rules, and VPP payments are ongoing credits on your power bill. Check your state: NSW battery rebates, VIC battery rebates, QLD battery rebates, SA battery rebates, ACT battery rebates. Then run your own numbers in the savings calculator before you add any VPP income on top.
Alternatives worth comparing
- Tesla Electric Dynamic (Tesla): Tesla's own wholesale-linked plan for Powerwall owners, with no membership fee but less control.
- GloBird ZEROHERO with VPP (GloBird Energy): fixed daily credits and $1 per kWh critical peak events, with no monthly fee.
- Origin Loop VPP (Battery Lite) (Origin Energy): a flat $1 per kWh event credit if you would rather avoid market risk.
Or see every plan side by side in our VPP plan comparison, and read how to compare VPP providers if you are weighing a few up.
Where these facts come from
We checked Amber for Batteries with SmartShift against Amber Electric's own published pages and documents in Sep 2026. VPP offers get repriced often, so treat this as a starting point and read the current offer before you sign.