Amber Electric, VPPs and wholesale-linked plans.

What these plans are

Wholesale-linked plans, such as Amber Electric's, pass the wholesale market price through to you, so your price changes through the day. Use power when the market is cheap and you pay less; use it at a price spike and you pay more.

A virtual power plant (VPP) links many home batteries so a retailer or provider can draw on them together, usually in return for credits, a better rate or a share of what your battery earns.

Why they're hard to compare

A flat-rate plan is easy to price: multiply your usage by the rate. These are not. What you'd pay depends on when you use power, when your solar exports, how big your battery is, and how it's charged and discharged, all against a price that changes every five minutes. A comparison that uses one average price misses the point of the plan.

What the Wizard does

• Models Amber Electric's wholesale-linked pricing against your home, using the Wizard's own forecasts of the wholesale market.
• Works out how a home battery could be charged and discharged against those prices, with an optimiser built for the job.
• Shows the result beside the ordinary plans in your Reading, so you can see whether the market suits your home.

Why you see a range, not a promise

A bill tells the Wizard how much you used, not exactly when. For a wholesale-linked plan, the "when" is everything. So the Wizard shows these plans as an estimate with a range around it, rather than one confident figure. It's an indication of whether the plan is worth a closer look, not a quote.

BillWizard is independent of Amber Electric and every other retailer, and takes nothing from any of them. "Amber Electric" is named so you know which plans we model; it isn't an endorsement in either direction.