Can I charge my EV from my home battery?

By default, Amber is set up to prevent your home battery from discharging into your EV. That's deliberate, the standard configuration prioritises solar and cheap grid energy for EV charging, and the "don't charge from battery" protection also helps stop your home from exceeding its import limit (which can trip a circuit breaker). For most setups, that's the safer and more efficient default.

If you specifically want to charge your EV from your home battery, here's how to set it up:

1. In your Amber app charging controls, untick the "Don't charge from battery" option.
2. Set your EV's max charge rate to slightly below your battery's discharge rate. For example, if your battery exports at 5 kW and your house typically uses around 500W, set the EV to around 18 amps on single phase.
3. Use scheduled or manual charging, and run it for long enough to move the energy you want. 
    

A few things to keep in mind before you switch this on:

• Expect 10 to 20 per cent energy loss in the battery-to-EV transfer. That's just the nature of moving energy from one battery to another.
• SmartShift should supply the power in Self-Consume mode if it can see the EV load, but if you want to make it more reliable you could run an export command.
• Without the "don't charge from battery" protection in place, there's a real risk of exceeding your home's import limit during charging, so worth keeping an eye on the first time you do it.