One Melbourne company now runs more than half of all the automated home batteries in Australia. It is Amber, founded in 2017 by Chris Thompson and Dan Adams.
How it works
Most households pay a flat retail tariff. Amber customers get access to the wholesale electricity price instead. Its SmartShift software combines price forecasts with each home’s solar and usage data, charges the battery when power is cheap and sells back to the grid when the price spikes. In effect, a suburban garage is trading the national electricity market on its own.
The number
Amber says it has over 50% market share of automated home batteries in Australia, which makes it the country’s largest battery automation provider. It also optimises rooftop solar and EVs, and customers can sell surplus energy back at the price big generators receive.
The raise
Amber closed a €49M Series E led by 1GT, the climate private equity strategy of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. E.ON, one of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, also came in. The money is for growth and for expansion into Europe.
My read
This is exactly what we should be exporting. It was built and proven in Aussie homes first, in one of the most solar-heavy markets in the world. So Europe is getting something that already works, not a pitch. Having a major European energy company in the round suggests they think so too.