48kWh battery, small solar: my Amber vs GloBird Zero Hero experience

Hey folks, thought I’d share my experience in case it helps anyone with a similar setup.

I’m on the Ausgrid network in NSW, household of 5, we’ve got an EV, and we use a decent amount of air con in summer. Our current solar is tiny, around 3 kW. It’s an older system which we’ve deliberately not upgraded yet because we’re likely doing renovations next year which will touch the roof, and I didn’t want to install a new system just to pull it up again. The big thing in our setup is our new 48 kWh Sigenergy battery which is 3 months old.

I gave Amber a solid 6 week run because I really wanted wholesale pricing to work for us. But honestly, I found SmartShift not that smart (for my setup anyway). It would do weird stuff and often undercharge the battery, so I’d roll into the evening peak with like 10 to 15 kWh left, even when it felt obvious I should’ve charged earlier in the day for a few cents and gone into the evening full.

The bigger issue (imho) was the effort. I ended up babysitting the app multiple times a day, checking prices, second guessing what it was doing, switching modes, trying to predict whether there’d be a spike or not. After all that mucking around, over my 6 weeks on Amber I was basically about $2 in credit, and the battery worked very hard, discharging sometimes 20 kWh per day into the grid for very average FIT. Not the end of the world, but the effort to reward ratio felt cooked, and it genuinely started stressing me out, especially telling the family they could / couldn’t use power during expensive times.

So I switched to Glowbird Zero Hero about 6 weeks ago. This is my first full bill month with them and I’m kind of shocked how much easier it is. The 3 hour free window is simple to explain to the family, “smash power in this window, then chill”.

We now do the obvious stuff in the free window, dishwasher, washing, EV top up when needed, and we charge the battery. The battery plus our small solar system then carries us through the rest of the day, and most nights we still have plenty left to export. With our setup I’m usually exporting roughly 10 kWh overnight, even after covering the house. There were only 2 days this month I didn’t hit that, both were 35 degree days where I decided we’d need the full battery for the house (which we didn't actually need in the end).

The other part I like is the little incentives are actually easy to hit. Glowbird’s “don’t use grid power 6 to 8 pm” thing is $1/day, and I’ve hit it every single day since switching. Then there’s also the 15c rebate when you export 10 kWh, and that’s what really tips my month into profit most days. Between the free window and those two, it’s been pretty set-and-forget.

My first full bill came in at $31.29 credit for 28 days (after the $1.23/day supply charge), which works out to a bit over $1/day in the green. If it stays roughly like this, it’s about $405/year profit, and our energy feels is entirely “free” day to day. For context, last year pre-battery our power bill with AGL was about $3,500, so this feels wild.

Not here to dunk on Amber. I can totally see it suiting people who like actively playing the wholesale market, or if your large solar and battery setup lines up better with spikes. For my family though, set-and-forget wins. I’d rather have boring and predictable than feel like I’m day trading electricity.

Genuinely curious though, if you’re on Amber with a big battery + small solar, did SmartShift ever actually “learn” and get better over time for you? Any settings you changed that made a real difference? I could switch back to Amber they subscription fee drops or if they actually get some customer service. I could see a situation where it could potentially be more profitable, but its the stress that is my tipping factor right now.

Anyway rant over. If you are thinking of trying Zero Hero, here is my link (a pineapple for both you and me i believe) https://quote.globirdenergy.com.au/quote?pcode=refer&ref=0YJ57O