6 months with Amber SmartShift – is it actually smart, or is it just me?
Looking for honest feedback from others running SmartShift, particularly those with larger batteries or demand tariffs. I'm an engineer by background, so I may have higher expectations than most — but after six months I'm genuinely questioning whether this product is ready for complex setups inc demand tariffs.
Setup:
Sigenergy 24kWh
3 phase EC 15kW
SolareEdge 5kW AC coupled PV
DC coupled 3.6kW PV
Sigenergy Peak shaving set to 0.5kW during demand period , usually when SOC falls below 35%
Smartshift Minimum Level 40% (trialling at the moment) with Sigenergy backup SOC at 5%. I had them identical at one point.
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**Issue 1 – Telemetry misconfiguration (months 1–4)**
For the first four months, Amber had incorrectly configured my solar telemetry, causing it to double-count my solar production. This made SmartShift's trend analysis and consumption forecasting completely useless during that period. To be fair, that's a business process failure rather than a SmartShift algorithm problem — but what does concern me is that SmartShift didn't detect that something was obviously wrong over four months of bad data. Amber eventually refunded four months of subscription fees, which I appreciate, but it doesn't account for the time spent manually managing the battery every day or the lost FIT opportunities.
**Issue 2 – Battery drained at the worst possible time**
Once the telemetry was fixed and I handed control back to SmartShift, it made a decision I still can't rationalise.
I'd charged my battery earlier in the day ahead of a cold night (high house load expected — oven and AC both running). SmartShift then decided to export the battery down to near-empty in Battery Boost mode, selling at just 15c/kWh — well below the 30c threshold Amber themselves say should trigger exports.
The consequence: with the battery depleted and the house pulling over 3.5kW, I ended up drawing heavily from the grid during the peak demand window. That's triggered a whole month of demand charges — around $20 extra on my bill I'm estimating. Not catastrophic, but entirely avoidable and caused directly by SmartShift's decision.
Amber has responded to my emails but hasn't explained *why* it exported at 15c or why it would drain the battery when house load was clearly elevated. Their only comment was that it shouldn't export in Battery Boost mode unless 30c/kWh is reached — which just raises the question of why it did.
**Issue 3 – Export commands not being acted on**
Just tonight, during a period of volatile spot prices, SmartShift started exporting when the FiT was favourable. Fine. But when prices dropped five minutes later, the app showed a message saying it had sent a command to stop exporting and switch to self-consumption.
Ten minutes after that command was supposedly sent, the system was still exporting. So I manually stopped the export.
With a 24kWh battery exporting at 13kW, ten minutes of unwanted export is not a rounding error — that's a significant amount of energy leaving at the wrong price.
**General observation**
The SmartShift status updates in the app feel like post-hoc rationalisation rather than real-time control. It reads as though it's showing you what it *intended* to do, not what's actually happening — a delayed approximation dressed up as live data.
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Is anyone else seeing behaviour like this? Particularly keen to hear from people on demand tariffs or with batteries over 15kWh. Is this a known limitation, or am I missing something in how I've configured it?