Two households can have the exact same home battery installed and end up with very different results on their energy bills. The hardware is identical, but it's their energy plan that determines how the battery operates, who controls it and who benefits financially.
This blog covers how a standard energy plan, a virtual power plant (VPP) and a battery plan each treat your battery, and where Amber fits in.
What a standard energy plan does for your battery
A standard plan comes from a traditional energy retailer. They buy energy on the wholesale market, add a markup and sell it back to you. You pay a fixed usage rate and get a fixed feed-in rate for your exports to the grid.
Most batteries come set up in “self-consumption mode” straight out of the box, and many stay that way on a standard plan. Which means solar charges the battery during the day and your home draws it down at night instead of buying from the grid. It does the basics well and will often lower your bill compared with having no battery at all.
The problem is that the battery doesn’t know what rates you’re on. It can’t see what time is best to top up the battery from the grid or when to export for the best earnings, so it repeats the same charge and discharge routine daily, whatever the market is doing. Exporting doesn’t help much either. Feed-in rates less than 4c/kWh mean plenty of owners decide it isn’t worth the bother and just keep the spare energy as backup.
What a VPP does for your battery
A virtual power plant, or VPP, is a network of individual energy systems (home batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, smart appliances) coordinated to operate like a single, flexible power plant. On a hot summer afternoon when the grid is under strain, a VPP can discharge thousands of home batteries to help meet demand. When excess solar is flooding the system at midday, it can charge participating batteries to soak it up.
For your household, the arrangement often works like this. The VPP operator controls when your battery charges and discharges, based on its commercial contracts with the market or the grid operator. You’re paid a fixed rate or small feed-in bonus for what your battery contributes. Your day-to-day usage and exports typically stay on a traditional plan, with a standard usage rate and a flat feed-in tariff.
Many VPPs earn their money by discharging batteries during scheduled grid events or bidding into market programs that only run occasionally. It can be hard to see how much the operator is making from your battery. A VPP can suit you if you want very little involvement and you’re happy with the share on offer.
What a battery plan does
A battery plan offers a pricing structure that rewards households for charging their battery when electricity is cheaper and exporting stored energy when prices are higher.
Electricity prices often fall when demand is low or there's plenty of renewable energy available, and rise when demand increases, particularly in the evening.
With a battery plan, households can take advantage of these price differences by charging when electricity is cheap, storing it for later and exporting when prices rise. Unlike automated battery optimisation services, battery plans typically leave customers to decide when and whether to charge or export.
Where Amber fits in
Amber is a battery plan, and it differs from a standard plan and a traditional VPP in how it’s set up. We give direct access to the wholesale price of energy with no markup, both when you buy it and when your battery or solar exports it back. Our only margin is a flat monthly subscription, which doesn’t change whether prices are high or low. We don’t earn more when your energy costs go up, so there’s no gap for us to widen.
Our battery automation, SmartShift, watches the wholesale price and makes a personalised plan to export or import in real time. It tops up your battery when energy is at its cheapest or free, holds it, and sells spare energy you’re not using back to the grid when prices peak. It works 24/7 to get the best savings and earnings and you keep 100% of it.
You also stay in control throughout. You set your preferences, such as how much battery reserve you want to keep for blackout protection. SmartShift works in the background, or you can take over manually and charge, discharge or preserve your battery at the press of a button. The app shows what your battery plans to do based on price forecasts, so you can override it if you know something the algorithm doesn’t.
You can check whether your battery works with SmartShift using Amber’s battery compatibility checker.
See what your battery could be earning
If your battery is sitting in self-consumption mode, or handed over to someone else’s control, it’s worth finding out what it could do on a plan built for it. Get a quote with Amber and see what you could be earning on a battery plan like ours.
