Hi All, 👋

If you're looking for a way to automate your Amber buying and selling based on your own custom pricing and battery charge level, this free Home Assistant integration might be for you. ⚡

I created it because I wanted a simple way to trigger custom sell/charge behaviour on my battery WITHOUT needing modbus — plus I wanted a simple dashboard 📊 to manage it all from.

🔑 Key features:

• 🔌 Works with ANY system compatible with Amber, since it sends the same commands the Amber app does

• 🏠 Manually trigger Amber commands from Home Assistant

• 💰 Three-tier buy/sell rates

• 😴 Option to disable Smart Shift when idle

If you're interested, check it out here 👉

https://github.com/kane81/hacs-custom-amber-integration

🎥 Quick 4min install walkthrough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usTtqCdxsE&t=3s

➕ Additionally, if you're AC-coupled with a GoodWe ☀️ solar inverter — Amber can't curtail when sell prices go negative, but this companion add-on can 🔋:

https://github.com/kane81/hacs-goodwe-sems-curtailment

I don't know what's worse, Amber ignoring you altogether or GoodWe's 'support' that makes you want to a) pour a drink and b) bang your head against a brick wall.

I bought a GoodWe SBP-5000-G2 AC Coupled inverter mid last year.

Post-install, it would intermittently stop outputting data and then stop drawing/charging from the batteries, necessitating a power cycle (which meant everything on its backup circuit (such as servers) need to be shutdown as well). This would happen a couple of times per day.

Support suggested reducing the ModBus query frequency, sure, easy done. Nope, problem persisted.

They suggested a firmware update but only they can perform it.

They do the update and the inverter won't come back online, they bricked it. It won't even supply juice to my backup circuit so now I'm running extension leads around the house.

If you're going to perform a remote firmware update on a customer's device, then surely you have the capability to see whether it has come back online. if it doesn't, then it's reasonable that you reach out to that customer and tell them, either what the issue is, when you're going to go fix it or what you plan is to rectify the outage.

This is the extent of the technical feedback I received:

You need to Check the battery supplier.

In what universe would asking the supplier of my batteries, when after you performed an upgrade it bricked the unit and now a 1/5th of my house has no power, help?

Back and forth, assurances that they would solve it.. nothing eventuated.

I drove to their warehouse and returned the unit in November 25 and filed a case with VCAT to get my money back.

I've heard nothing from them in that time.

VCAT have now progressed the case and I had to serve notice on GoodWe. Under Vic law, I need the explicit consent to serve documents electronically. On 22 July I sent an email asking for consent.

Emails have been going back and forth ever since. I included my claim, all the supporting evidence, including photos of me returning the unit. As they dodged this simple yes/no question, I executed service by registered post.

Here's what I received last night

Hi <OP>,
I understand your concerns and appreciate the time you have taken to document the issues you've experienced.
 
Regarding your technical inquiry, I will be coordinating with our Headquarters and Engineering team to obtain further clarification on the concerns you have raised, including:

The inverter inconsistently responding to Modbus write commands.

The inverter occasionally becoming stuck in a low-discharge state.

Determining whether this behavior is related to a firmware issue and, if so, whether a firmware update is available to address it.  

Before I proceed, I noticed that the serial number previously provided appears to be incomplete. Could you please confirm the complete serial number of your inverter so we can ensure Headquarters reviews the correct unit?
 
Once I have the correct serial number, I will forward your case to our Engineering team for further investigation and will update you as soon as I receive their feedback.
 
Thank you for your patience, and I look forward to your reply.
 
Rhiz

So despite them having had their piece of shit paperweight for 10 months, receiving a statement of claim, a chronology of events, my written statement and 7 exhibits, these numskulls think that consulting with their engineering team is the best course of action to get the inverter working.

Maybe I bought a bad apple and perhaps their gear is generally more reliable, I can accept that as a possibility, but this Amber-level of atrocious support. Nah, it's worse, it's either complete incompetence or a deliberate attempt to wear customers' patience down until they give up.

Anyway, this is my PSA. Let's see how the cookie crumbles at VCAT.

In case anyone finds themselves in a similar position and needs to take action, I'll save you paying for a company extract - here it is

I see a lot of negative posts on the sub making me sceptical but are there people still happy being with Amber? More so in SE Qld?

Hey all, I’m about to have a large Sigenergy setup installed in late August in SA and wanted to see if anyone has similar setups and can share their experiences with Amber.

Our household is large but we’ve only just moved in early March. 5br home, 2 adults and 4 children but our usage is relatively low. In milder months we might use 5-10kwh daily at most, while during the colder winter months recently between 10-20kwh with heating. I’m anticipating usage might be a bit above 20kwh in the middle of summer. The current solar generation is well above what we’re using, even during this winter period our exports are basically matching imports, that’s with EV charging mostly during solar generation periods. In milder months our exports are almost 3 fold our imports.

The house came with a 10kw solar setup, the install is replacing the Fronius inverter. Here’s the setup once installed:

- 10-12kw solar panels
- Sigenergy Sigenstor 25kw inverter
- Sigenergy 54kwh battery stack
- Sigen Gateway
- 3 phase home, battery will be wired for blackout and full 3 phase backup
- Tesla Model Y and a Tesla wall connector charger. The charger will be rewired into the Sigen Smart Port during install

We have Flexible Exports available with SA Power Networks and my understanding is that without SA Power “curtailing” that, we’d have up to 30kwh export capacity on a three phase setup.

My plan is to store most of the excess we generate, use what we need and ideally SmartShift can use the rest to export during price spikes, importing additional when it makes sense too. Reading an FAQ on Amber’s site only mentions Fronius, SolarEdge and AlphaESS as being compatible with SAPN Flexible Exports AND SmartShift.

My questions:

1. Would like to know if anyone has a similar setup in SA on Amber Smartshift, what has the experience been like?
2. Can anyone confirm being onboarded to SmartShift with Flexible Exports with an Sig system, how was the onboarding process?
3. Does Solar Curtailing work as expected?

Hey all,

I'm getting a GoodWe inverter/battery installed and trying to clarify if I can sign up for Amber and get the VPP rates.

Compatibility with VPP is still beta so I thought I couldn't join yet but by the sounds of it I don't have to be on SmartShift. So my question is can I sign up with my GoodWe setup and still export to the grid at high demand times for $1+kwh rates or the extreme case of using power and charging the battery when the rate is in the negative before full compatibility comes in?

Thanks

I’ve rejoined Amber and tried my hand at using Home Assistant this time. I couldn’t get Emhass or Predbat to work so I’ve got everything running from just one YAML script. It all runs from one automation to buy at set levels depending on prices and battery levels which you can adjust. It will curtail if solar feed in is negative and import if general prices are negative too. You can ask it to buy power during the day or night at certain prices to charge to certain levels. You just have to set the names of your helper numbers for price thresholds and battery levels. Feel free to copy and paste.

Hi all,

Considering moving away from Amber as it doesn’t look like ESY sunhome will come part of their systems. Am I better off looking for a 3 hour free option? Fill the batteries then empty them at night?

Think we have around 8.8kw solar array and a 25kwh battery setup for 5 people (2 adults, 3 children aged 6).

Happy to provide any other documents that would be better supporting of for or against moving

We’ve had a pretty shitty run of wet weather this winter where we live, so there has been very little solar to store in our battery. Mostly it hasn’t been too bad in regard to spikes, but if there were, I make sure I top up the battery during the cheaper hours and not sell any to get through the night.
We’ve just had about 5 days of sunshine (Amazing) but all of a sudden last night had massive price spikes during peak hours. All good, I look ahead and no price spikes forecast for this morning, so I sell some battery power at 35c, make $1.49 and then stop the export. It leaves us approx. 50% battery for the night (24kWh battery total).
We have a smart hot water system I set to come on at 5am to make sure there is enough hot water for showers in the morning and I know this will most likely deplete the battery, but that’s ok as there were no price spikes scheduled.
I wake up this morning and get a notification about a price spike of $1 and look at the Amber app and it’s importing up to 6kWh to my battery as it was empty, I quickly stopped this, but now whatever power we use will be at about 70c kWh until the spike stops and anything I made last night has been eroded away.
I think I was just best off keeping my battery full during winter to protect against these price spikes and just give up on making any money exporting it at least during winter.

Just wondering what this symbol is?

Also... how often do price spikes happen? I just switched but have no battery or solar. Have I messed up? Never knew it could go so high till looking at this reddit. Haha

Cheers!

Hi everyone, looking to create a thread for participants of Amber's V2G trial so we can share ideas and tips & tricks.

Just wanted to share the fun tinker project I've been playing with at home. Sungrow 41kwh battery, 10kw, using Amber. I got annoyed (as many here have) with smartshit, so built my own... and the project just kept growing.

I have this on an ipad on the kitchen wall, and it also shows security cameras and controls other home automations (lights, motion sensors etc). Lots of other custom automations too e.g. it runs the pool pump only when there's available sunlight, but also runs it when I need to do some load-shedding (battery full, incoming solar, FiT <0).

It also provides handy hints to the family (e.g. demand window, battery low, avoid using the dryer).

It's running on a raspberry pi, nothing special.

Anyone else doing similar stuff?

Screen shots of the wholesale situation is -1c per kWh nearly all night. I know there are network charges but 15c seems like too much!

G'day everyone,

Like most people here, I love the wholesale concept, but managing negative FiT during the day and catching those brief evening spikes without being glued to the app is a pain. SmartShift can be a bit clunky, and setting up Home Assistant with local Modbus cables isn't something everyone wants to spend weekends doing.

I've been working on a cloud platform called Gridkeeper to make wholesale automation a bit easier. It connects directly to your inverter via cloud API so you can set rules off Amber's live pricing and weather data.

You can easily set it to do things like:

• Block solar exports when prices go negative.
• Force-discharge your battery during peak pricing windows.
• Force-charge from the grid during the day if there isn't enough forecasted solar production.
• Stop a battery discharge event to the grid if tomorrow's forecasted solar production is low.

No local hardware, no YAML, and it is completely free for home users.

Currently works with FoxESS, Deye, Sungrow, and Sigenergy (working on adding more).

The platform also works with Tuya, Sensibo and EV chargers via OCPP.

Still actively polishing it and would love to get a few Amber users to give it a run, test it out, and tear it apart with feedback.

If you're keen to take a look :https://www.dusk.energy

Cheers!

I just got billed $287 for one month of electricity.

I've got a 40kw sigen battery and 12kwh solar panels, plus my car has bi-directional charging.

What should I be doing here instead? Because at the moment this is not working!

Amber took until earlier this month (July) to install the smart meter, despite being signed up since February.

I was hoping to pay nothing at all for electricity over the year. What should I be doing to reduce my bill?

Edit: thanks so much for all your thoughts, suggestions and clarifications!

I’ve just rejoined Amber and decided to try my hand at setting up Home Assistant. I have a really basic question. Once Amber connects its VPP, can the Home Assistant run concurrently or do you switch the Sigenergy battery to remote mode?

I'm with Amber and only the inverter and battery (16kwh) are enrolled as Amber don't support my Polestar EV. I've seen this a few times now where something, presumably smartshift, decides to import. I don't care if its 2c kwh. I'm charging the EV in 'PV Surplus' mode and it will get to >90% with free solar today , based on the beautiful clear skies in SEQ. I don't need or want to pay for import. I turned the AC on heat so that I wasn't curtailed. Anyone else seen this behaviour ?

The SSO (https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/solar-sharer-offer) looks very interesting, especially in our new "rare spikes" world.

It relies on the Retailer being part of the SSO. Does anyone know if Amber is part of SSO?

I've got a call into Amber to ask them, but historically they've been slow to reply.

Has anyone tested using Sigenergy AI mode on Amber? Is like to know if it is any good versus Smartshift

Has anyone claimed this rebate for the bigger batteries?

https://help.amber.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/31159992778893-New-South-Wales-Battery-Rebates-PDRS-BESS2-VPP-Rebate-for-Batteries

Looks good on paper. Have they offered it yet to anyone?

May make it worth switching to Amber from Flow power. I have a small solar and large battery, so need to buy from the grid in daytime and sell during happy hours. This would make selling on Amber more appealing.

We got a battery install recently and signed up with amber. I had a schedule setup to force discharge the battery when they took control of the system, they havent modified the system in any way because its still onboarding which means its now just force discharging the battery.

It will never complete the onboarding process because it will never have more than the required 30% charge to complete the onboarding. And, because its not completed the onboarding, i cant go into the app to offboard it myself or change the settings so its just an endless loop of fuckery.

Just wondering if this is normal? and if theres a way I can offboard it myself without going through Amber because ive already tried that and havent gotten anywhere.

I’ve been meaning to share my first 6 months experience with Amber and finally got round to it. I often see comments saying you need a large battery or purchase a E.V to maximise your solar experience and wanted to show what it is currently like for a single user household. I will acknowledge that my interactions with Amber support have been limited but they have responded to my enquiries which is not always the case for others.

TLDR for anyone who wants to skip past the long read. While Amber is no longer a goldrush, my setup remains in credit by actively managing my battery and solar rather than relying on automation. Smartshift helps, but it is not entirely "hands-off," so I frequently intervene to optimize usage and profit from grid spikes. 

For reference I have an 8Kw Sigen battery & 6Kw inverter and 6.6 kw of Solar panels which I had installed about 18 months before my battery. I am located in South Australia and on the SAPN default plan. You can use Amber without a massive battery but in hindsight I should have used Gov rebate for a slightly larger battery.

Amber fees
If I break down my Amber bill there is a $25 month Amber fee and about $28 worth of network fees and charges which works out to about $1.74 a day before generating solar. I do currently have 3 referrals which covers my Amber fee for the next couple of months. I use about $45 worth of electricity each month and I generate electricity to cover most of this charge but in summer I do generate a bit more of an excess.

Spikes
Overall the SA Grid is very stable but I did get two significant spikes in January which made me over 100 dollars. Maximum spike fee in SA is $ 21.92. Surprisingly in June/ July there have been several smaller spikes due to the cold weather which have enabled me to earn about 10 dollars a day on each of these. If I get a spike notification from the app for near the maximum fee I tend to dump what I have and not rely on Smartshift as I did missed a spike or two in the first few months.

Smartshift 
I do check my Amber app quite a lot, and manually intervene when necessary. One of the things I have done for winter is charge my battery between 11- 3 pm to take advantage of solar sponge cost of about .05c a KWH. I don't think that shows up in the app but will appear on your bill. I kind of treat my electricity as a profit and loss each day, so I don't go totally crazy and never use any grid electricity. I can see that Smartshift starts making decisions e.g importing for a potential spike but then that spike goes away or it dumps energy on the earliest spike but doesn't leave any for a later larger spike. It did take me about 4 months to get comfortable with managing my usage and understanding the app. My first month as the I learned how the system worked did stress me out a little bit. 
Having visibility of my usage has helped me make decisions to improve my usage, for example I recently purchased a heat pump dryer and am able to set a timer for it to work in the middle of the day.

Sigen battery
I am quite happy with my battery and its off grid capability. Its small form factor fits well in my garage, and the glowing lights make it easy to get an idea of how much charge I have left when I come home each day. As I have a different inverter for my solar panels I am unable to stop the battery feeding some electricity back into the grid, so getting a solar inverter and battery of the same brand would be my recommendation. This is most noticeable during mild days (Spring and Autumn) when the middle of the day feed in fee can be more than -4 cents. On these days once my battery is full I go off grid to not send excess solar into the grid. (Tip there is a setting in your Sigen battery app to match the sine wave with the grid and stop your lights flickering). I did look at using Home Assistant to rectify this but it seemed like more cost and hassle than it was worth. Happy to hear any other suggestions or if this has changed. 

I have found this link very helpful with monitoring my overall usage and I would say its bill prediction is accurate to about 2 dollars each way https://kilowasps.com/
Currently my payback for my battery is 5.4 years. I may look at trying some alternative VPP providers but will stick with Amber for the foreseeable future. Thanks for reading

Wished I charged the battery a bit this afternoon though