The setup
An Australian home with rooftop solar and an ESY Sunhome battery, on Amber Electric’s wholesale pass-through pricing — a battery Amber’s own SmartShift automation doesn’t support.
Case study · Amber Electric
Five months.
Five negative bills.
From September 2025 to February 2026, this SolanIQ-optimised home didn’t pay for electricity — Amber paid it. $444.23 in bill credits across five consecutive billing periods, screen-recorded straight from the Amber app.
- Bill credits
- $444.23
- Consecutive negative bills
- 5
- Days covered
- 153
The bills
Straight from the Amber app.
A negative bill means exports earned more than everything the home bought from the grid that month — including Amber’s supply charges.
| Billing period | Days | Bill total |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Sep – 8 Oct 2025 | 30 | −$98.40 |
| 9 Oct – 8 Nov 2025 | 31 | −$87.06 |
| 9 Nov – 8 Dec 2025 | 30 | −$106.72 |
| 9 Dec 2025 – 8 Jan 2026 | 31 | −$72.02 |
| 9 Jan – 8 Feb 2026 | 31 | −$80.03 |
| Total | 153 | −$444.23 |
By February the account sat $258.77 in credit after earlier withdrawals — the recording catches another withdrawal to the bank being submitted. Not a discount, not a rebate: the retailer transferring money to the customer.
How it was done
No switching. No watching. Just the optimiser.
The optimiser
SolanIQ forecast the home’s solar and load, then traded the 5-minute wholesale market around the clock: charging on cheap and negative prices, running the home from the battery through the evening peak, and exporting into price spikes.
The result
Export earnings outran the cost of every kilowatt-hour the home imported — five billing periods in a row. No manual switching, no Home Assistant, no market-watching.
The honest fine print: this run covers spring and summer, when solar is strong and price spikes are common. Your results will depend on your solar and battery size, household usage, location, weather and wholesale market conditions — negative bills are a real outcome, not a guaranteed one.
Want bills like these?
Put your battery to work.
Try SolanIQ free for 30 days. $10/month after that, cancel anytime.