Key points:
- SmartShift is a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) that lets you keep full financial benefits from your battery's energy exports.
- Your battery may switch to VPP mode disabling manual schedules, but you can override via the Amber app.
- Deregistering from SmartShift resets controls but you lose access to real-time optimisation, automated solar curtailment, and our battery automation support.
What makes SmartShift different from other VPPs?
"VPP" means different things depending on the provider, and the differences matter. Most VPPs take a cut of the value your battery generates, trigger events across the whole fleet at once, and give you limited visibility or control over what's happening.
SmartShift works differently – here's what sets it apart:
- It responds to prices in real time. SmartShift charges your battery when energy is greenest and cheapest, and exports when prices peak. This kind of dynamic response to wholesale prices is difficult to replicate through manual scheduling alone.
- There's no limit on potential earnings. When SmartShift exports your stored energy to the grid during high-price periods, you earn the wholesale market rate in full. If your bill is in credit, you can withdraw this from your account or save it for a rainy day.
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Decisions are made at your site, not fleet-wide**. Most VPPs trigger the same event for every connected battery at once. SmartShift's algorithm works at an individual site level – taking into account your battery energy, solar, your household's usage patterns, the wholesale price to optimise.
**If you have a Tesla Powerwall, there are occasions when we have to group commands during periods of high demand due to API limits. Learn more: Changes to how SmartShift works for Tesla battery customers - It includes automated solar curtailment. For DC-coupled systems, SmartShift automatically prevents your system from exporting during negative feed-in tariff (FiT) periods, protecting you from being charged for energy you send to the grid.
- There's no lock-in. You can deregister at any time (more on that below).
What happens to your battery app when you register for SmartShift?
When your system is enrolled in SmartShift, your battery manufacturer may change the system's mode to VPP mode which disables manual scheduling controls in their own app. This is to prevent your manual settings and SmartShift's automated commands conflicting with each other, which could otherwise cause irregular or unstable battery behaviour.
If you're currently setting charge/discharge schedules directly in your battery's app (e.g. FoxCloud, mySigen, or PVHub 2.0), those features will be blocked while your system is enrolled in SmartShift. That said, you still have control via the Amber app.
The Control My Battery function allows you to temporarily override SmartShift at any time and direct your battery to charge, discharge, or preserve charge. This replaces the manual schedules or controls you'd otherwise use in the battery's app.
SmartShift is disabled, why can't I access manual controls?
The Control My Battery feature in the Amber app is designed as a temporary override to a plan that SmartShift has for your battery. Without the automation enabled, there is no plan to override so your system will operate in its default self consumption mode – charging from excess solar and discharging to supply your home.
Disabling SmartShift also does not allow you to access the manual schedules or controls in your battery's app as it will remain in VPP mode while the system is enrolled in SmartShift. If you'd prefer to manage your battery entirely on your own, you can request your system be removed from SmartShift.
Once deregistered, the mode will reset and you'll regain full manual control through your battery's own app. It's worth knowing that manually scheduling a battery can be tricky to get right – wholesale prices change throughout the day, and static schedules can't respond to those changes in real time whereas SmartShift handles this automatically. We highly recommend getting to know SmartShift better before making that decision.
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