SolanIQ on Amber Electric
Amber gives you the real wholesale electricity price, updated every 5 minutes. SolanIQ trades it for you — charging your ESY Sunhome battery when power is cheap and selling when it's expensive.
How it works
Amber Electric is a retailer that passes the AEMO wholesale price straight through to you instead of a flat rate. That price swings all day — it can fall below zero when the grid is flooded with solar, and spike to many times the normal rate on hot evenings. A battery that understands those swings earns its keep; SolanIQ is the brain that makes it happen.
1. Forecast
SolanIQ forecasts your solar generation from satellite imagery, weather data and your own production history, and learns your household load patterns — how much power your home uses, and when.
2. Watch the market
Amber passes through the live AEMO wholesale price, which changes every 5 minutes. SolanIQ tracks those prices in real time — the quiet periods, the negative-price middays and the evening spikes.
3. Buy low
When prices are cheap — or negative, when you can be paid to consume — SolanIQ charges your ESY Sunhome battery from solar or the grid, and avoids exporting into negative feed-in prices.
4. Sell high
Through the evening peak your home runs from the battery instead of the grid, and surplus energy is exported when feed-in prices are high. When the market spikes, SolanIQ sells into the spike automatically.
What you can expect
A typical day
Overnight and midday, when wholesale prices are low, the battery fills up — from your solar first, and from the grid when it’s cheap enough to be worth it. From late afternoon the plan flips: your home runs off the battery through the expensive 5–9pm window, and anything spare is sold back at peak feed-in prices.
Price spikes are the payday
Most days the wholesale market is calm, but a handful of times a month it spikes — sometimes to dollars per kWh instead of cents. Those few hours can earn more than an ordinary week. SolanIQ holds charge in reserve when a spike is forecast, then exports hard into it, with no button-pressing from you.
Bills can go negative
In months with good solar and a few price spikes, export earnings can exceed everything you bought from the grid — a negative bill, where Amber owes you. One SolanIQ home went five consecutive months in credit; see the case study below. Results depend on your system size, usage, location and the weather, so no two homes look the same.
Fully hands-off
Amber’s own SmartShift automation doesn’t support the ESY Sunhome battery. SolanIQ fills that gap: it re-plans around the clock and controls the battery for you. You just watch the results in the app — no Home Assistant, no local server, no manual switching.
Being on wholesale prices means your usage rate moves with the market, up as well as down. SolanIQ's job is to make sure the battery is on the right side of those moves.
Getting connected
- Be (or become) an Amber Electric customer — SolanIQ works with your existing Amber account.
- Generate an API token in the Amber developer portal at app.amber.com.au/developers (it starts with
psk_). - Paste the token during SolanIQ sign-up, pick your site, and connect your ESY Sunhome battery with your ESY app login.
- That's it — the optimiser takes over from there. The full walkthrough is in the user guide.
See it in the wild
Five consecutive negative Amber bills from a real SolanIQ-optimised home — screen-recorded straight from the Amber app.
Read the case studyFirst 30 days free with promo code FREETRIAL.