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So the (very) recent ongoing power outages in NSW raise questions about our choices around Battery and Solar Energy syst...
26/11/2025

So the (very) recent ongoing power outages in NSW raise questions about our choices around Battery and Solar Energy systems.

Those of us with:-

Solar
House Batteries
Consumption monitoring and automation
Sunshine

Are surviving and (in my case) continuing to work more or less as normal.

It’s a sad position for others.

Whilst the NSW battery subsidy exists it might be time to have a think.

14/07/2025

Virtual Power Plants
Who’s using your battery and how much is it earning YOU ?

With the 1st July comes the new Federal government domestic battery rebate, which makes home battery installation much more affordable and attractive.

One of the conditions is that the battery must be compatible with a connection to a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) although at this stage there is no mandate to actually have such a connection. It’s not Rocket Surgery to work out the thinking behind this plan though.

So what is a VPP and why should you care about which one (if any) that you connect to ?

Because your home is (usually) connected to the Electricity Grid electrons (i.e. Electricity or power) can flow in any direction, at any time. That’s how Solar Exports work as well. Generally you are importing power from the grid, and sometimes (during excess solar production periods) you export power to the grid and get paid a piddling amount from your Energy Company (more correctly your energy billing entity, they don’t actually provide power).

When you have a domestic battery installed, it stores energy during this solar excess period, and allows you to use it when your solar production is below your energy demands. This might be during the evening peak (5:30 pm to 8pm) or in the morning peak (6:30 am to 9:00 am) or just when you need more power than your solar currently has available (cloudy days etc.). Batteries can also charge from the grid (more on this later).

Just like your Solar setup, a domestic battery can export power to the grid as well. Different batteries have different mechanisms to do so, but they pretty much all have the capability.

A VPP means someone else controls your battery remotely, decides when and how much it exports and how often. This is often sold as a “convenient” way to utilise your battery’s potential. The truth is a wee bit different.

For those who’ve not been keeping up to date with Energy (I don’t blame you tbh), we buy and sell Energy in an open trading market. Suppliers (energy producers) offer their energy for sale and billing companies buy the energy on behalf of their customers (that’s you btw). The price of the energy is driven by market forces and is set dynamically based on supply offerings and demand purchasing every 5 minutes, all day every day.

For example, let’s say the weather is fine, it’s cool and we’re in the middle of a weekend, we’ll call it Saturday afternoon. Businesses are generally closed, heating and cooling demands for houses are low, and BBQ’s have taken over from electric cooking for the most part. All these factor lead to very low electricity “demand”. Because Solar Panels (Both roof mounted and commercial) are low in temperature and high in sunlight, output of Solar power is quite high. The Coal generators are idling for the most part. So “Supply” is pretty high, relatively speaking. In this scenario, electricity (at least wholesale electricity) is basically free. Retailers add their various bits and pieces, the poles and wires charges (Daily supply charges) are added, and the retail price could be about $0.10 / Kilowatt Hour (Kwh). Because most people are on some sort of fixed Energy price contract with their billing company , the price is more likely about $0.28 / Kwh. The billing companies are making money to the tune $0.16 / Kwh.

This last Saturday (June 28th 2025) the demand at this time was 7800 MW (that’s 7,800,000 Kw) if we assume that this set of market conditions persisted for say 4 hours, the billing companies are up circa $5M for that 4 hour period. Pretty good money for moving other peoples electrons around.

Today (June 30th 2025) is a different kettle of fish, however, and it looks like tonights (6 pm) retail price will be $1.49 / Kwh and demand will be around 11,800,000 Kw and that price condition is likely to be around for roughly 2 hours, the billers are down $1.21 / Kwh or $28.5M over the 2 hours, if they are selling to you at $0.28 / Kwh. . Ouch !

So these peaks and troughs carry on and the billers are likely ahead on balance, but there’s no guarantees. That’s the way the Energy market works and EVERY day is very different. Storms, Cold Snaps, Heat Waves, power generators off-line (actually or apparently) all contribute to the ways the money flows during each day (well each 5 minutes actually).

So why is that important ?

Well, if we assume you’re NOT on a fixed price contract for selling energy and you could participate in the market selling energy from your battery tonight at 6 pm, you could do ok. Taking the average 12 Kwh Battery and keeping 20% in reserve for your own use later tonight (not all VPP’s do this by the way !), you could theoretically sell 9.6 Kwh at $1.45 or $14, just for having that energy available in your battery. Trouble is you are prevented from participating in that market for practical reasons (there’s too many of us and these individual transactions and settlements would clog up everything).

Now $1.45 / Kwh sounds high, and it is, but last week we saw some very big numbers and my average sale price of my Battery and solar power for the week was $0.92 AVERAGE !. I earned $80 selling energy in a week. Not every week is like that, but some are. The highest number last week (albeit briefly) was about $28.00 / kwh.

So because of the practical issues around settlements and billing etc. the Energy Billers can pool all of their (subscribed) customers batteries into a pool and sell big chunks of energy at suitable times, whilst managing the individual batteries with clever software. A virtual price power plan, VPP. They do the heavy lifting of managing when to buy and sell and use your battery as a resource in order to do that. Sounds cool, and it is. Yes, there’s a “but”.

Almost all the VPP deals going around offer you a fixed discount on your bill each month for signing up. It’s typically about $500 per YEAR, but some pay bonuses on “export events”. The highest I could find was “up to” $0.90 / Kwh exported. So the Billers use your battery and sell your electrons, and you get (in reality) a tiny amount of that as energy credits. No wonder they love the VPP concept. The offerings in the VP space are complex and varied (they like it that way) and difficult for the average consumer to understand.

So you invest (say) $10,000 in a battery, which has lots of benefits to you (blackouts, night time supply, helping the planet etc.) and the energy guys are possibly making quite a deal more than you are form your investment because they offer the “convenience” of managing your battery for you. Added to that, the battery cycles used (charging and discharging) ultimately have a minor shortening effect on your battery and it’s warranty (in some cases).

There’s no question that the VPP idea is great, and using energy excess stored in batteries in houses (and soon cars) is a major winner for the grids stability, and will ultimately allow for renewable energy to cover the VAST majority of daily usage across the state and the country. This is why the state government is so keen on VPP compatibility. The only question is who’s paying for the batteries and who’s making the money ?

So What’s the AMBER deal then ?

Weird is the best summary, but very interesting. Full disclosure I’ve been an Amber customer since their launch (I think 2019 ish), but I have no other financial interest in their business. As far as I know, Amber is the only billing retailer with this model. There might be others.

Amber charge a fixed (but rising) amount per month to be an Amber customer. I think it’s $22 now. For that you get “exposed” to the market. That means in the above scenarios, you might pay $0.05 / Kwh or $1.45 / Kwh and that price changes every 5 minutes. Almost a full-time job managing your usage against the prices. It’s certainly not for the faint hearted.

You have control, but Amber does too. Basically they have some software called SmartShift which tries to optimise your battery exports (and imports !!!) so you get the best possible outcome. They ONLY make money from the subscription meaning that if they don’t do a good job after looking after you and you leave, they’re toast. They have ONE source of income and it’s loyalty based.

Is it a good model ?

It is for me, it might be for you, but it’s complicated and scary if you want to just use Energy anytime of the day or night and not care a hoot about the market. Thing is, the market is reflecting in part the usage effect on the environment, so it does pay to care about it.

The Amber model can pay you HANDSOMELY for your energy and they do manage pretty good balancing act on your behalf. It’s never perfect and neither are they. I’m always hassling about why the software made certain decisions etc. But here’s the kicker, I can control my battery as part of the VPP directly via the Amber app. I can tell it to charge from the grid if there’s no Sun, I can tell it to sell (or not sell) based on my interpretation of market conditions, and my plans for the day and/or week. I have control, if I want it, but otherwise I leave it to them

Today was a good example. I awoke to find that I had used $9 worth of energy overnight, turns out SmartShift charge my battery from the grid at about $0.25 in the wee hours (my home automation also turned on the heating as power was cheap, so not all that energy went into the battery). At 7:00 am the price went up very high and I made $2.50 in 15 minutes from that stored Energy, still leaving me enough for my coffee and toast, and setting me up for the day. Tonight we’ll see another spike and I’ll probably leave it to SmartShift to sell at the best time. Solar has topped up the battery well to about 50% but I just checked, and SmartShift is importing from the grid now as well, even though the prices are circa $0.46. That’s a gamble SmartShift is taking on my behalf, which I can override, but I probably won’t.

So what should YOU do ?

Well I don’t know, it all depends.

There’s no question that the battery rebate makes home batteries a lot more attractive. There’s no question (in my mind) that there are major benefits for YOU in having a home battery, particularly, but not exclusively, if you have solar. Other than those of us who are running the white knuckle ride of the open market, I think the jury is still out on VPP’s and the benefits vs the costs of membership.

As I stated earlier, there are so many different VPP deals and models, you can’t actually compare them. Like many things in life it’s a risk vs return exercise as to how far you want to push things vs make your life easy.

17/12/2024

The current discussion about energy is not about energy production, efficiency or cost. It’s actually about control.

The primary reason that some political groups are in favour of nuclear (and other) centralised generation is about maintaining control over supply and therefore maintaining control over economic factors, households, businesses and individuals by controlling that supply.

It’s clear that renewable energy has the ability and indeed the probability of pushing control more towards each of these consumer groups as they generate their own electricity either directly or within community groups.

Obviously for some political groups the loss of centralised control means that it’s one less political lever that can be pulled against or in relation to those groups. Given the nature of losses in transmission, the nature of the economics and project delays of these large central generation plans there are obvious issues. It’s relatively clear that incremental localised generation through renewable sources such as wind, solar and micro hydro have the potential to invert the control structure of the grid. As a result the grid becomes a customer of the customers rather than a controller of the supply, the connection regulations and everything to do with the use of electricity.

As more and more devices such as houses and cars (and soon trucks) rely more and more on electricity and less and less fossil fuels, the control which is currently exhibited by the centralised distribution of fossil fuel is potentially watered down by the emergence of locally generated renewals.

In order to re-establish that central control it makes sense politically to try and promote (even inferior business case) technologies which are virtually impossible for users to use individually as generation methods.

So if we see the nature of the electricity grid become such that current customers become suppliers and the current suppliers become essentially customers, and the poles and wires which exhibit control today are merely linking mechanisms between customer generators of electricity in relatively low volumes, then the instance of control, the mechanism of control and the power of control is switched in such a way as certain political groups find unpalatable.

It’s true that renewable energy sources rely entirely on the weather, on other nature and by their nature are a fluctuating source. It’s also true though that the rapid expansion of batteries, and other storage mechanisms like pumped hydro, gravity systems and countless other developments that many have been working around the world, can change or have the potential to change that fluctuating nature supply into a more permanent and reliable supply. When that happens, it's not really an if, then the horse will have bolted, as they say. The opportunity to regain and retain centralised control will have been lost.

We can see in Australia for instance the utilisation of price signals in the wholesale market, and for a limited number of us in the retail market who have access to the wholesale pricing structures, this means that not only do we have the ability to tune demand to match renewable supply, we have storage increasingly be used as an economic weapon.

Again with storage becoming available much more locally in such a way as we are protected from some of those fluctuations or indeed can profit from those fluctuations as has been the case in New South Wales particularly in the last two or three weeks. Evening price spikes in the wholesale price ramping up to dollars per kilowatt hour instead of cents, allows those with localised battery storage or community battery storage to dispatch that energy at massive profits.

The looming emergence of vehicle to grid dispatch from electric vehicles is an even bigger threat to the centralist models being promoted because if we merely replace 35% of the fossil fuel vehicles on the roads (7.35 M) with battery electric vehicles in Australia for instance we’re talking massive amounts (441 GWh) of battery storage available potentially to be dispatched at a moment’s notice.

When mere mortals can buy electricity for cents and sell it for dollars when demand outstrips supply, prices by nature go up. So it's clear that the politics of EVs and battery storage has very little to do with the reality of energy generation or energy security for the economy or the climate but much more about political control of those elements of the economy.

The nature of localised generation and storage for households now and businesses in particular means that those households and businesses have their own localised energy security which again is not favourable for the control model.

We’re not even talking now about particularly wealthy households being able to afford substantial solar generation and relatively substantial energy storage. In fact, some quick maths shows that for a similar price to the proposed nuclear development in Australia we could supply every single house (and I’m talking actual dwelling houses, not business or apartment blocks) with a consumer battery of saying 10 kWh of storage entirely funded by the government. The sum total of that storage would exceed 75 GWh, combined with the emerging vehicle to grid battery storage which is much, much larger, and this would provide suitable stability for the grid and more importantly energy security and stability at the localised level.

So let’s just think about how best to utilise the big free Nuclear Reactor in the sky, instead of wasting time and money on outdated, expensive and very slow to deploy technologies. Let’s face it, it’s all about who’s in control, and I for one, prefer that to be me.

11/12/2024

Did you know that sometimes, in the right (wrong) conditions and with the appropriate energy retailer, you could sell energy from your household (and soon vehicle) battery for 100 times what the energy cost you when it went into that battery.

11/12/2024

Thanks for visiting the Energy Nerds page. We want to help you understand and optimise Energy usage. We want to do that using commonly available technologies like home automation systems.

We think its important for you to become as Energy smart, and Energy independent as you can reasonably be.

We started this business after our own journey with a new house, where we now save roughly $800 a month over the original spend on energy (total) when we moved in.

11/12/2024

Think about what's most important to you in the midst of this major Energy market transition:-

Energy security and independence
Helping to save the planet
Saving money on your energy spend
Using your energy more wisely
Being ready for E-Transport

11/12/2024

The Energy retailers want control of your usage and spend. We want you to take control instead.

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