We’re still waiting for all the Solar Sharer Offers to come out, especially Flowpower. Covau though have updated their website with clearer rates. Here’s my quick comparison with Globird
I can see them for both export/import, but only for certain times in the forecast. Which one is the number most relevant to me, and what accounts for the (often small but can be several cents) discrepancy? Anyone else have them?
It appears they’ve changed the price forecast down the bottom to their own.
This should be much better than the sometimes wild numbers shown previously, which were AEMO generator bids.
I think it’s just what the purple section was in the plan screen showed anyway.
Before I list, I have tried look into this, including this post from 4 months ago.
It seems 1Komma5 have improved and are more kindly recommended.
I am considering:
6.44kW solar
41.93kWh battery
10kW inverter
Currently quoting $27,000 --> I said I'd only accept it if it were $23,000.
We have a lot of trees around us, but the main goal is charging cheaply off the grid and selling back during the evening.
Any wisdom? Are they still not worth it?
South Australia had a $20k price event on the evening of 21 June. Most batteries weren't ready for it.
Watch the SOC row at the bottom. Every battery starts the day with charge. By mid-morning they're near empty across the board. The price spike doesn't arrive until the evening, by then, many have nothing left to give.
Some seemed to see it coming, recharging through the afternoon and had meaningful SOC heading into the event. The bid heatmaps show positioning shifted through the day while others stayed flat.
Five SA batteries, five different approaches to the same day. The video is built from open AEMO data via NEMPulse.com.au
Would you expect the fleet to be this depleted before a price event?
2 years ago I thought Amber was amazing, and told everyone who would listen, plus a few who had no choice.
Since then it seems to have slowly moved to the "Trump" approach, getting worse and worse almost as if they're trying to see how much we'll put up with.
Examples:
- Frequent 'app failures' and / or 'behind.-the-scenes' failures
- Very inaccurate forecasting. Today, for ex. in NSW the forecast for the next 5min is 23c (been similar all morning), but when the actual rate comes along is >35c (i.e 50% higher)
- Smartshift. I have had to take to manually instructing the battery to charge to 100% by 3pm because I can see the rates will be higher in the evening. Why can't Smartshift even manage that no-brainer? [My solar is low, but I charge from the grid at a low rate to offset the evening higher rate).
- "Smartshift has sent a command to your battery" Yay! Any chance of knowing what tf that command was?
</rant>
You don't need to reply to this. I just had to get it off my chest.
Definitely not sustainable, but nice to finally make some money out of it.
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?
The big boy grid batteries are squashing the price. Looks like Amber is not so lucrative given spikes are mitigated day after day.
If you happen to request a change of tariff and it doesn't appear in the app, it hasn't changed.
Someone at Amber *confirmed* with SAPN the tariff change I requested had been completed and that it was just "cosmetic".
Over six months later I find out I was lied to and have been charged the old rate the whole time.
SA on RTOU. Was supposed to be on RESELE. Very frustrated.
I bought an SMA inverter when I bought my panels, and it has been rock solid. A great device with an ethernet port and supports ModBus over IP.
I bought some (48v) batteries and a GoodWe hybrid inverter. When support ran a firmware update, they bricked it, washed their hands of it and am waiting for a VCAT hearing date to get my money back.
The Deye hybrid inverter I bought 6 months ago shit itself yesterday at 0845. The power switch is illuminated but the unit is otherwise dead. I'm waiting on a response to my warranty claim. I like it as a unit, plenty of features, ModBus all figured out, but I guess while I wait, I'm keen to hear opinions on brands, what you like/dislike about them, and if you'd recommend them (in the instance I get refunded, instead of a replacement)