Expert Insights on Solar, Batteries and Power Bills

We've grown a lot recently, and a lot is happening behind the scenes. This page is updated regularly with what's changed and what it means for you.

You’ve seen the ads - "Get $ off the price of your battery", "Enjoy this $ credit on your first bill". All you have to do is connect your battery to their Virtual Power Plant (VPP) - a little side hustle where retailers pool thousands of home batteries together and control when they charge and discharge for additional financial gain.It feels like a win. For the first year, maybe it is. Then the fine print in your VPP starts earning its keep, and you realise the deal was never really built around you.Here's how the play works, so you can spot it before you sign.

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, 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.

You did the smart thing. You got a battery, you're generating your own power and you're sending the excess back to the grid for a bit of cash. You're not just another household at the mercy of an energy retailer anymore. You're ahead of the game. Trouble is, a battery doesn't make you immune to the loyalty tax. You've done the hard part, your bill's already dropped and switching feels like one more job you'll get to later. Retailers know all that, and they're counting on it.

It's been a big 12 months at Amber. More households are getting solar, adding batteries and switching to EVs, and that means more people coming to Amber to make the most of it. We grew fast last year, faster than our support team could keep up with, and some of you waited too long to hear back from us. So we invested heavily in the team, tools and systems to fix that.

Amber is expanding its V2G program to 1,000 Australian homes - the largest residential V2G rollout this country has ever seen, backed by an additional $13.6 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

As part of our ARENA-funded trial, 50 V2G bidirectional chargers are being installed into Aussie homes across NSW and SA. Each month from here we'll share results from the fleet - a real-world look at how Amber customers are using their EVs to power their homes and send energy back to the grid. We're just getting started, and what's already happening tells a good story.

From 1st May 2026, the battery STC factor for home batteries dropped from 8.4 to 6.8 per kWh. STCs (Small-scale Technology Certificates) are government certificates that translate into an upfront discount off the cost of your battery, usually applied by your installer at the point of sale. The lower the factor, the fewer certificates generated, the smaller the discount. For batteries above 14kWh, a new tiered structure cuts the support further - the government says the tiers are designed to maintain around 30% off the upfront cost across battery sizes.