Over the past five months, we’ve been sharing regular updates about what’s been happening in the energy market. Back in early April we highlighted that international factors were likely to drive increased prices and volatility. In May we saw these factors accelerating, and by June and July we were sharing updates on the unprecedented situation impacting the Australian energy markets.
Since our last update, we’ve seen the market settle down somewhat (finally!). So here’s the latest on what’s happened, what we see going forward, and how we’ve been working to help.
A recap of what’s been happening
The factors driving wholesale prices over the last several months mostly peaked in June and July, and have settled somewhat over August and early September, taking some of the intensity out of the Australian energy market.
We’ve seen many more periods of cheaper, greener energy, and while prices in the evenings have often still been higher than in previous years, they haven’t been anywhere nearly as elevated as they were in June and July.
In short:
- As Australia enters into Spring we’ve seen the rebound of renewables from their winter lows. Longer and sunnier days, plus record levels of wind, mean more green energy coming into the grid.
- Combined with reduced demand from milder weather, this has massively reduced the pressure on the grid, helping to lower prices
- We’ve also seen a reduction in some of the acute coals shortages (caused by flooding disruptions) and outages that pushed crisis in early months
- By contrast, international coal and gas prices have continued to set new records as Russia’s energy war continues and much of the northern hemisphere sweats through record-breaking heat waves across China, Europe and North America.
Going forward
From here we expect the more positive trends seen in August to largely continue. However, given the continued stress on fossil fuels generators we don’t expect prices to drop to the levels seen in 2021, but we expect to see lots of cheap green periods mixed with higher priced peak periods.
How we’ve been working to help
While we’ve seen an easing of the sustained high prices of the last few months, what remains is the definite need for more cheap renewable energy to enter the grid as a way to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels that has been at the heart of this crisis.
We’ve been working on some exciting new updates to our SmartShift battery automation technology this year. By harnessing the battery storage flooding into households we can accelerate the renewable transition, reward battery owners with higher wholesale feed-in tariffs and make sure the grid has access to more cheap renewable energy to share around too.
If you’ve got solar and a battery and would like to try out SmartShift, you can sign up here. If you’re interested in buying solar and/or a battery and taking advantage of automation to get more value out of your system, get a free quote via our partners here.
To learn more about how battery automation can help us reach 100% renewables faster, check out this interview with my co-founder Dan, as part of the upcoming Purpose conference.
Further ahead
Amber customers are still well protected through our price guarantee and we’ll continue to work with you to help you reduce your bills, maximise your energy earnings, and accelerate the transition to 100 per cent renewables. You can find out more about our 2022-23 bill guarantee here.
Lastly, with wholesale prices starting to stabilise, we’ll now be sending these updates out quarterly, rather than monthly. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us and we’d be more than happy to help.
