Wholesale (Amber-style) electricity tariffs: worth it in 2026? Only if you can actually shift your load.
Wholesale or “pass-through” plans charge you the real 5-minute wholesale price plus a fixed monthly fee, instead of a flat rate. Amber Electric is the main Australian example. It can beat a standard plan — but only if you can move usage away from the evening peak with a battery, EV or automation, and stomach a bill that changes month to month. This is the honest version: how it works, who it suits, and the spike risk nobody puts in the ad.
Reviewed by the Mission Green Energy Team · Updated July 2026
Is a wholesale plan
worth it for you?
The short, honest answer before the detail.
Only if you can shift load. A wholesale plan can genuinely be cheaper than a flat or time-of-use tariff — but the saving is earned, not given. It rewards households that can move consumption away from the expensive evening peak (roughly 4–9pm) using a home battery, an EV charger, or automated and timer appliances, and who can tolerate a bill that swings from month to month.
If you’re a set-and-forget household — you use power when you use it and want a predictable bill — a wholesale plan is probably the wrong fit, and a good fixed or time-of-use plan will serve you better. This isn’t an endorsement of any retailer, and no wholesale plan guarantees savings. It’s a model that suits a specific kind of household. The rest of this guide helps you work out whether that’s you.
Spot price plus a fee,
not a flat rate.
The mechanics are simple once you strip away the marketing.
On a normal plan, your retailer buys electricity on the wholesale market and sells it to you at a fixed c/kWh rate, keeping the margin. On a wholesale or pass-through plan, the retailer instead charges you the real-time wholesale spot price and makes its money from a fixed fee rather than from your usage. Amber Electric — the main Australian example — charges a flat $25/month subscription (its current fee) and states it passes the wholesale cost through as its only margin, so it doesn’t profit from how much power you use.
The catch is what “real-time” means. The national market settles in 5-minute intervals (5-minute settlement has been in effect since October 2021), so your energy rate tracks the spot price, which re-prices every five minutes (though the rate you’re actually billed averages those 5-minute prices over each half-hour settlement period). That’s why the plan rewards households that can respond — charge the battery or the EV when prices are low, ease off when they’re high — and why it punishes a household that can’t.
Live wholesale price
Your per-kWh cost tracks the NEM spot price, updating about every five minutes. It varies continuously by state, network and time of day — there is no single fixed number to quote.
A fixed monthly fee
The retailer earns from a flat subscription (about $25/month for Amber at the time of writing), not from your usage. Fees change over time, so confirm the current figure before you sign up.
Cheaper, but volatile
Most of the time wholesale prices sit well below flat retail rates. The trade you’re accepting is exposure to the exception — the occasional spike — in return for cheaper ordinary hours.
Great for some homes,
wrong for others.
Be honest about which one you are — it decides everything.
Battery owners
A home battery lets you store cheap or solar energy and draw on it during the expensive peak — and export at high-price windows. This is the single biggest lever that makes a wholesale plan pay.
EV & automation households
If you can schedule the big loads — EV charging, pool pump, hot water, dishwasher — to run when prices are low, you capture the plan’s upside without lifting a finger each day.
Set-and-forget homes
If you use power when life demands it, can’t move usage off the 4–9pm peak, or need a predictable bill for budgeting, a wholesale plan adds volatility without a reliable payoff. A fixed or ToU plan is the safer call.
The heatwave that
can sting your bill.
This is the honest downside the ads skate over.
Because you’re paying the real wholesale price, you’re also exposed to it when it climbs. On extreme days — a heatwave with low wind and solar and a generator out — the spot price can surge toward the market’s ceiling. That ceiling, the Market Price Cap, is the maximum the wholesale market can reach in any interval, and it steps up every year: it was $20,300/MWh in 2025-26 and rises to $23,200/MWh (about $23.20/kWh) from 1 July 2026 for the 2026-27 financial year. An unhedged pass-through customer using power in those minutes pays that rate.
Keep it in proportion, though. Across the whole market, prices exceed $1/kWh in a relatively small share of intervals in a typical year — infrequent, but real when they land, and the frequency varies year to year with market conditions. And wholesale retailers offer optional, opt-in price-protection features that limit your per-kWh exposure during these events. Treat any such cap as a variable, opt-in extra to check the terms of — not a guaranteed shield — and never assume you’re protected by default.
Where solar export
actually pays on a spot plan.
The mirror image of the spike risk — and it’s the good news.
On a wholesale plan your solar export is also paid at the wholesale spot price rather than a flat feed-in tariff. That cuts both ways. In the middle of the day, when everyone’s panels are flooding the grid, the spot price can fall to near zero or even go negative — the solar glut in action — so midday export earns you little. But during the evening peak, when spot prices are highest, export can be paid well above a typical flat feed-in tariff.
This is exactly why a battery is the key to making the model pay: store your cheap midday solar and export it into the evening peak, and you’re selling at the best price of the day instead of the worst. Without storage, a wholesale plan’s export value largely evaporates at the very time your panels produce most. If you’ve already noticed your bill behaving oddly since going solar, the timing of when you export is a big part of the story.
How to test it
without getting burned.
A few habits make a volatile plan far less nerve-wracking.
Compare the fixed baseline first
Before switching, price the best fixed and ToU offers for your address on the AER’s free, independent Energy Made Easy (NSW, ACT, QLD, SA and Tas). In Victoria, use the state’s own Victorian Energy Compare. That baseline is what a wholesale plan has to beat.
Watch the app before you rely on it
Wholesale retailers show live and forecast prices in-app. Spend a few weeks actually shifting load — and reading how your household responds — before you cancel your old plan or judge the saving. Contracts are typically no-lock-in, so you can leave if it doesn’t suit.
Read the bill by the hours
A volatile bill makes sense when you break it down: most of your cost usually lands in a few peak-price hours. If one bad month spikes, check whether it was a genuine price event or simply usage you could have moved — that’s the lesson the plan is teaching you.
So — wholesale,
or leave it alone?
The call we’d give a friend, in order of situation.
If you own a battery or EV, or you can genuinely automate your big loads, a wholesale plan is worth pricing properly — the household that can shift consumption off the evening peak and export into it is the one this model was built for, and the savings can be real. If you’re curious but cautious, keep your current plan, watch a wholesale retailer’s live prices in-app for a few weeks, and only switch once you’ve seen how your household actually behaves — most are no-lock-in, so there’s little downside to testing. If you’re a set-and-forget household, or a volatile bill would genuinely stress your budget, don’t force it: a well-chosen fixed or time-of-use plan is the honest answer, and you should ignore any pitch that a spot plan is simply “cheaper” — it isn’t, unless you do the shifting. Whichever way you lean, compare it first against the best fixed offer for your address on Energy Made Easy (or Victorian Energy Compare in VIC). We don’t sell electricity plans and we’re not endorsing any retailer — we’d just rather you switched on the maths than on the marketing.
Wholesale electricity plans
your questions, answered.
It is a plan that charges you the real-time wholesale spot price of electricity instead of a fixed c/kWh rate, and makes its money from a fixed monthly fee rather than from your usage. Amber Electric is the main Australian example, charging a flat subscription of about $25 a month (its current fee) and passing the wholesale cost through as its only margin. Because the national market settles in 5-minute intervals, your rate tracks the spot price, which re-prices every five minutes (though the rate you’re actually billed averages those 5-minute prices over each half-hour settlement period). This means the plan can be cheaper than a flat rate during ordinary hours, but exposes you directly to price spikes on extreme days. It suits households that can shift usage away from expensive periods and tolerate a variable bill.
Not automatically. A wholesale plan is only cheaper if you actively shift your usage away from the expensive evening peak, typically around 4 to 9pm, using a battery, EV charging or automated appliances. For most ordinary hours the wholesale price sits below flat retail rates, but you are exposed to spikes on extreme days, and a set-and-forget household can easily pay more, not less. No wholesale plan guarantees savings. The honest test is to compare a wholesale plan against the best fixed and time-of-use offers for your address, using the AER's free Energy Made Easy site (or Victorian Energy Compare in Victoria), and to be realistic about whether you can genuinely move your load.
On extreme days the wholesale spot price can climb toward the Market Price Cap, which is the maximum the market can reach in any interval. That cap steps up each year: it was $20,300 per MWh in 2025-26 and rises to $23,200 per MWh, about $23.20 per kWh, from 1 July 2026. If you are using power during those minutes without any protection, you pay that rate. In practice these spikes are rare, prices exceed $1 per kWh in a relatively small share of intervals in a typical year — infrequent, but real, and the frequency varies year to year with market conditions. Wholesale retailers offer optional, opt-in price-protection features that limit your exposure, but you should check the terms rather than assume you are covered.
Households that cannot shift their usage away from the evening peak, and households that need a predictable bill for budgeting, are generally a poor fit. If you use power when daily life demands it, have no battery or EV and cannot easily automate big loads, a wholesale plan adds bill volatility without a reliable payoff. A well-chosen fixed or time-of-use plan will usually serve you better and protects you from spike days. If a volatile bill would genuinely stress your finances, that certainty is worth paying a little more for. Be wary of any pitch that a wholesale plan is simply cheaper, because it is only cheaper for households that actively move their load.
Your solar export is paid at the wholesale spot price rather than a flat feed-in tariff. In the middle of the day, when many homes are exporting at once, the spot price can fall to near zero or even go negative, so midday export earns very little. During the evening peak, when spot prices are highest, export can be paid well above a typical flat feed-in tariff. This is why pairing a wholesale plan with a battery is what makes it pay: you store cheap midday solar and export it into the evening peak, selling at the best price of the day. Without a battery, most of your solar exports at the very time it is worth the least. Whether that timing benefit is enough for you depends on your usage.
First, price the best fixed and time-of-use offers for your address on the AER's free, independent Energy Made Easy site, which covers NSW, ACT, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania; in Victoria use Victorian Energy Compare. That gives you the baseline a wholesale plan has to beat. Then, because these plans are typically no-lock-in, sign up and spend a few weeks actually shifting load while watching the live and forecast prices in the retailer's app, before you judge the saving. Read each bill by the hours rather than the total, since most of your cost lands in a few peak periods. If a month spikes, check whether it was a genuine price event or usage you could have moved.
Where these figures come from.
Figures on this page were current as at mid-2026. Wholesale prices, caps and fees change — confirm at the source before relying on any number.
- AEMC — Market Price Cap update for 2026-27 ($23,200/MWh from 1 July 2026)
- AER — Energy Made Easy (free, independent plan comparison)
- AEMO — live NEM wholesale price data dashboard
- SolarQuotes — Amber Electric review (who a wholesale plan suits)
- Amber Electric — How it works (wholesale pass-through, $25/month)