Does Amber offer any kind of price protection?

We've got you covered with our Wholesale Energy Price Cap.

We pass through the 30 minute wholesale electricity prices to you directly, and over the long-term this is typically a competitive offer, but to give you peace of mind we guarantee that over the course of each quarter you'll never pay more than our Wholesale Energy Price Cap rates on average for the base wholesale price (Generation Costs) component of your c/kWh usage price, or we will credit you the difference.

Please note that the base wholesale price does not include any of the other wholesale pass-through charges that make up your c/kWh usage costs such as hedging costs, network charges (per kWh and per day), metering charges, and environmental costs.

The price cap has always provided protection from a period of high wholesale prices, and acts to reduce the base wholesale component on your c/kWh usage price. You can see this component under “Detailed Charges” on Page 3 of your bill, labeled as “General Usage Wholesale (Av. Price)”. If you have a controlled load, the cap will also cover the wholesale component of this channel, labeled as “Controlled Load Wholesale (Av. Price)”.

A couple of weeks before the start of each quarter, we will share and calculate the Wholesale Energy Price Cap directly against this component so you can see the maximum average price you will incur for the “Wholesale (Av. Price)” part of your bill for the quarter. Winter months tend to have slightly higher and more volatile prices on average, so the cap rates that cover winter months will likely be higher than those that cover summer months.

You can find the Wholesale Energy Price Cap rates for the current quarter here.

There’s nothing you need to do to take advantage of this additional protection as we monitor it all for you in the background. We need to wait until the quarter has concluded, to work out your average usage rate and then our team will process the final calculations.

If you become eligible for a credit under our price cap, we will apply this credit to your account approximately one month after the end of the quarter and it will appear in the credits section on your subsequent bill as ‘Amber Wholesale Energy Price Cap’.

Similar to last financial year, our Wholesale Energy Price Cap rates that are set quarterly will be the same no matter how much power you use (there are no usage thresholds). 

You can use Wholesale Energy Price Cap rates as a benchmark for the maximum base wholesale price you'd pay with Amber on average over each quarter, but over the long term you should expect to pay much less on our wholesale prices, especially if you make efforts to avoid high usage in peak price times.

For more information on how the price cap works if you have solar or export to the grid, read our guide here.