Setting up your system for Amber for Batteries

At Amber we want to help optimise solar and battery systems to return the most value to their owners, and the most value to the grid, so Australia can reach a 100% renewable future faster. With households at the centre of the transition.

Check out our Amber Solar and Battery Guide for more detail on how to ensure you can make the most of Amber for Batteries and our wholesale pricing model with your solar and battery system.

This guide will help:

• If you want to see if your current system (or your customer’s, if you’re an installer) is compatible with Amber
• If you’re starting from scratch designing your solar and battery system and you wish to accelerate your return on investment by joining Amber
• To guide any solar and battery system upgrades you might be considering, if you already have a system installed and want to achieve best compatibility with Amber.

Key principles to ensure best fit with Amber for Batteries

Check Your System is Compatible: 

In short, Amber for Batteries works best if we can control both your solar and your battery. This means we're able to optimise your battery to charge and discharge at the best times, in line with wholesale pricing.

Compatibility is also required for Amber to be able to control your solar production during periods when wholesale feed-in-tariffs turn negative. Negative FiTs happen as a signal from the energy market for energy generators to stop sending more renewable energy into the grid. Usually because there's already lots of renewable energy available and not enough demand at that time.

Check You Have a Big Enough Battery:

To do well with Amber for Batteries, you'll ideally have a battery big enough to cover your homes evening energy needs, with some excess leftover to export. You can still do well if your battery lasts you only through the higher evening peak price period - usually ending at around 9pm. You can then top up from the grid when prices fall overnight.

Check We Would Have Total System Visibility

For best results, SmartShift needs to be able to see the whole picture when it comes to your solar production and energy consumption in your home. Without an accurate picture of this, it can't create an accurate and optimal daily plan for when your battery should discharge. This visibility of production and usage is primarily ensured by making sure we are able to control and monitor your inverter (all of them, if you have more than one). If you have one inverter we can control and one we cannot, this will mean there is solar generation and usage occurring that we can't monitor and therefore will impact the reliability of the plan SmartShift can create for your battery, as well as the possibility you may experience exports during periods of negative feed-in-tariffs. Check the guide for further details on inverter compatibility.

Are You All-In-One?

We tend to see fewer issues with Amber optimisation when customers have one battery and inverter brand. The exception is with the Tesla Powerwall which works well with Amber for Batteries, but can work even better if we can also control the attached solar inverter (this enabled the potential for solar curtailment during periods of negative FiT). Currently we are compatible with SolarEdge inverters and Fronius compatibility is coming soon.

Check out Amber’s Solar and Battery Guide for all the details on how to ensure you're ready to make the most of Amber's wholesale pricing model.