“Pretty massive:” Melbourne retail upstart to roll out its smart solar battery tech in the UK

Australian renewables focused energy retailer Amber Electric has snagged a major international partnership in its first foray outside of Australia, sealing a deal to share its home battery management smarts with UK gentailer E.ON.

Amber, which is Australia has made a name for itself helping households to make money from their home solar and batteries, says the partnership will give E.ON Next customers access to the Melbourne-based company’s battery automation technology.

The technology automates batteries to charge when energy is cheapest, through renewables, and then discharge when energy is most expensive. It can likewise manage batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) and other loads to use more renewable power when its available – saving money and cutting emissions.

Amber’s technology also allows solar households to sell their excess renewable energy back into the grid at the same price as the bigger generators are making.

In Australia, this approach has been a big success. In October 2022, Amber said customers using the company’s SmartShift home battery management platform had earned a combined total of $60,000 over the past quarter, simply from exporting their stored solar energy. And that was using the beta version of the technology

More recently, Amber has collaborated with network companies like Ausgrid, in New South Wales, to see how the technology can be used to respond to price signals from the grid that reward solar exports when they’re needed and self-consumption when they’re not.

Partnering with E.ON Next will give Amber access to more than 5 million new homes and businesses across the United Kingdom.

“This is pretty massive for us at Amber Electric – lifting our ambition from Australia to the rest of the world,” said the company’s CTO, John Barton, on LinkedIn on Monday.

“E.ON are UK’s 3rd biggest provider (Energy Australia is pretty reasonable local comparison) and getting them on board is a huge vote of confidence in our tech,” Barton said.

“At Amber, we’re passionate about transforming the way people interact with energy, and our partnership with E.ON Next is a significant step in that journey,” said Dan Adams, co-founder and co-CEO of Amber.

“This collaboration goes beyond providing consumers with the tools to unlock more value from their home battery and EVs – it’s about putting households at the centre of the energy transition.”

The news comes just over half a year after Amber concluded a “very oversubscribed” Series C funding round which brought in $29 million.

“We actually set out to raise $20 million and ended up very oversubscribed, which was great,” CEO of Amber Dan Adams told TheDriven at the time.

“We’ve doubled our customer numbers in the last six months and we’re pretty excited about the opportunity in Australia as battery and EV sales continue to accelerate.”

E.ON Next hopes to integrate Amber’s battery automation technology into its existing services, further expanding its solutions designed to help customers meet their energy goals.

“This is another clear example of the playmaker role we have in making new energy work so that it is not only more affordable but also an asset for our customers and communities,” said Chris Norbury, chief of E.ON UK.

“By empowering consumers with real-time data and flexible pricing, we are helping to create a more sustainable and economically beneficial energy system for all.”