If you're anything like us, there's nothing more satisfying than watching your battery bring down your energy bill.
But unless you work at Amber (or you’re an energy nerd like us), that's probably where your interest in energy pricing ends. Unfortunately that's exactly what your retailer is counting on.
Every year around May, the Australian Energy Regulator quietly publishes a document called the Default Market Offer. It's dense, it's dry, and it sets the benchmark for what retailers can charge.
Between June and July, retailers around the country quietly go about letting customers know how much their energy rates have changed. And we mean quietly! The notice arrives in an email with about five business days' notice, buried in rate tables you didn't ask for and weren't meant to read closely and most people don't catch it before the rates change.
Every year you leave it, you fall a little further behind and the savings you bought a battery for start quietly disappearing into your retailer's margin.
We're here to make the boring stuff worth knowing, here's how the July reprice works, why it hits battery owners harder than most and how to make sure you're not caught out this year.
How the July reprice works
That Default Market Offer sets the benchmark price cap for electricity in NSW, South East Queensland, and South Australia. Victoria has an equivalent called the Victorian Default Offer (VDO). They set the ceiling for what retailers can charge, and they also influence the feed-in tariffs retailers choose to offer.
Retailers are required to give you notice before the new rates take effect on 1 July. In practice, that notice period is often as little as five business days. The email typically arrives mid-to-late June, when you're busy with other things (like tax time). It lists new rate tables in small print. It's not designed to be read carefully, and most people don't.
Then the new rates kick in. Your usage charges might go up, your feed-in tariff almost certainly goes down, and your battery (which you probably bought to earn money from your excess solar) quietly starts earning you less.
What this looks like for a battery owner
If you have a battery connected to a traditional virtual power plant or retailer plan, here's the pattern you've probably seen play out:
Your feed-in tariff (the rate you're paid for energy your battery exports to the grid) gets reviewed at each annual reprice. Year on year, the minimum FiT requirements set by regulators have been falling. In Victoria, the minimum FiT for 2025-26 was set at 0.04 cents per kilowatt-hour - less than half a cent. That's not a typo. Down from 3.3 cents the year before.
In Queensland, some regional feed-in tariffs dropped by around 30% in July 2025.
Australia’s new, low feed-in-tariffs reflect the success of rooftop solar and large scale renewables generating energy during the day. This is a signal that the grid doesn’t need heaps more energy coming in and the market prices that solar accordingly. But, if you have a battery, you’ll typically export energy in the evening, when demand is high and solar has dropped off. That energy is valuable - genuinely valuable - as people are using it. But the rate your retailer pays you for it is fixed, set once a year in a May document you probably didn't read, and it's been falling.
Meanwhile, the ACCC's research into the loyalty penalty - the gap between what new customers are offered and what long-standing customers actually pay - found that loyal customers are paying around $221 per year more than they should be. That's money staying in the retailer's pocket. For battery owners, you get slugged with the loyalty tax twice: once on what you pay to import energy and again on what you earn for the energy you export.
Your battery is doing real work for the grid. The question is whether you're getting paid what that work is actually worth.
The gap between what your battery earns and what you're paid
Evening peak periods, roughly 5pm to 9pm, are when wholesale energy prices spike. The sun has set, everyone's home cooking dinner, running appliances and heating or cooling the house at the same time. Coal and gas generators know this, and they bid accordingly. During some events, wholesale prices reach $3, $10, even $19 per kilowatt-hour.
Your battery has stored energy during the day when it was cheap, or free from your rooftop solar. Evening is the time to export that energy when it's most needed and when you can get paid a premium. That's exactly what a smart energy system is supposed to do.
But if you're on a traditional retailer plan with a fixed feed-in tariff, your battery may not be exporting at all during those peak windows. A large proportion of batteries on standard plans export nothing when in self-consumption mode, unless you're on a plan that offers scheduling and automation, or you've set it up yourself. The opportunity is there, but without the right setup it sits untapped.
Amber doesn't engage in the reprice
Amber's model works differently. There's no annual FiT set in May and announced in late June. There's no loyalty tax, because there's no margin being taken on your energy.
When your battery exports to the grid through Amber, you're paid the actual wholesale price at that moment - updated every five minutes, the same way the market moves. When the grid is under pressure and prices spike, you earn more. When there's an abundance of solar and prices are low, your battery knows to hold off.
You keep 100% of what the grid pays for your energy. Amber's only revenue comes from your monthly subscription fee. And this year, we're not increasing our subscription fee. It’s staying at $25 a month.
There's no annual reprice trap, because there's no fixed rate to cut.
Want to see what your battery could be earning? Calculate your potential savings with Amber.
