4 November

Having a home battery opens up many doors, not just your own use. Amber Electric one of the new companies that allow ordinary people to access wholesale electricity, rather than retail. This can be a way to make big money, if you have a battery (don’t go near wholesale if you don’t have a battery). Wholesale electricity prices are often negative during the day now, due to huge solar production, so it means you actually get paid to fill your battery in daylight hours. Then you can sell it to the grid in peak times, when wholesale prices are much, much higher. For example you could fill your battery during the day, and get paid for that. Then sell anything you don’t need yourself at peak times, at $10/kWh. That’s $100+ profit to you, in a single day. You need the battery because otherwise you’re paying that $10/kWh yourself in peak times for your own home, when with retail rates it might be 40c/kWh. It would send you broke fast. In general wholesale electricity is a dangerous game, but with a battery and the software companies like Amber offer, it’s quite manageable. If you have solar that’s great too, though you don’t want a solar system that exports a lot during the day, because then the negative wholesale rates mean you’re actually paying to export to the grid.