TL;DR: Amber charges a $25 monthly subscription and passes through raw wholesale prices that change every 30 minutes. If you have a battery that can respond to price signals, it is the best plan on the market. If you have solar and no battery, it is a coin toss. If you have neither, do not.
How does Amber Electric's wholesale pricing actually work?
Amber passes through the wholesale spot price set by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which resets every 30 minutes, and charges a $25 monthly subscription instead of a retail margin. It operates in NSW, VIC, QLD, SA and the ACT.
Every other retailer buys at wholesale, adds a margin to cover the risk of price spikes, and sells you a fixed rate. You are paying them to absorb the volatility. Amber removes the margin and hands you the volatility.
The range is wider than most people expect. Midday prices routinely fall below 10 cents per kilowatt-hour and go negative when rooftop solar floods the grid. Evening peaks on a hot day can reach several dollars per kilowatt-hour.
One Queensland customer's bills smoothed out to 23c/kWh and then 19c/kWh across two periods, having seen prices between 6c/kWh and $4/kWh within them. Local competitors were offering 26c/kWh fixed.
That is the shape of it: cheaper on average, unpredictable in any given half hour.
What happens to solar exports on Amber?
There is no fixed feed-in tariff. You are paid the wholesale price for exports, changing every 30 minutes exactly like the import price.
The consequence is that export is worth a great deal at some moments and nothing at others. When the grid is short in the evening, your exports can earn many times a standard feed-in rate. At midday, when every rooftop in the state is exporting at once, wholesale prices frequently go negative and your exports earn nothing or cost you money.
For a solar household without storage, that is a genuine problem. Your generation peaks at exactly the hours the market values it least, and you have no way to move it.
Amber's environmental position is strong: 7 out of 10 and eighth of 47 providers in the 2022 Green Electricity Guide, with all plans carbon neutral by default. The pricing model itself is arguably the green feature, because it pays people to consume when renewable generation is abundant.
Is Amber Electric worth it if you have a battery?
This is where the model earns its keep, and it is the only case where it is clearly better than a good fixed plan.
A battery lets you buy when wholesale prices are low or negative and sell or self-consume when they spike. That is arbitrage, and on a volatile market the spread is far wider than the peak-to-off-peak gap any time-of-use tariff offers.
The requirement is automation. Manually watching an app and pressing buttons does not work over a year; the price events that matter are short and often overnight. Your battery needs to be one Amber can control directly, or one with an energy management system that responds to price signals.
Check that before switching. Amber supports a specific list of solar batteries for automated control, and if yours is not on it, you have taken on the volatility without the tool that manages it.
What does living with Amber actually involve?
More engagement than a normal energy plan, even with automation handling the battery.
The app shows live prices and a 12-hour forecast, which is what you use to decide when to run the dishwasher, the pool pump or the car charger. Households that adapt their routine to it do well. Households that sign up and change nothing get the volatility without the savings.
Support is predominantly online with no published phone hours. For a self-directed customer that is fine. For anyone who wants to ring someone about a bill, it is a real drawback.
There is also a psychological dimension worth being honest about. Some people find watching prices engaging; others find a bill they cannot predict stressful. A hot week with sustained evening spikes will produce a bill noticeably higher than a fixed plan would have, and knowing that it averages out over the year does not make that month easier.
Current offers
Amber runs a welcome offer until 31 July 2026 giving CommBank customers up to $210 in credit across 12 months. Referrals give both parties $120 off over 12 months.
Treat these as what they are. A sign-up credit does not change whether the underlying model suits your household, and the model is either right for your setup or it is not.
Who should switch?
Switch if you have a battery Amber can control automatically, or an energy management system that responds to price signals, and you are comfortable with a bill that varies month to month.
Consider it carefully if you have solar without storage and flexible daytime consumption. You will benefit from cheap midday imports and lose on midday exports. Which dominates depends on your consumption pattern.
Stay away if you have no solar, no battery, no flexibility in when you use power, or you need a predictable bill. The subscription plus the volatility will cost you more than a competitive fixed plan.
Key Takeaways
- Amber charges $25 a month and passes through raw wholesale prices that reset every 30 minutes, in NSW, VIC, QLD, SA and the ACT.
- Feed-in is wholesale too, which means midday exports frequently earn nothing because everyone is exporting at once.
- The model is clearly best for battery households, and only with automation that responds to price signals.
- Check your battery is on Amber's supported list before switching, or you take the volatility without the tool to manage it.
- Support is online only, and bills vary month to month. Both matter more than the sign-up credits.