06/09/2026
Until LocalVolts partner access came through in late August, our battery AI was guessing.
It ran on estimated wholesale prices — a decent model of what the market was probably doing, but still a model. Now, with a customer's explicit authorisation in their own LocalVolts account, we can read their actual live prices and meter data through the partner API and run their battery against the real thing. Read-only on the price feed: we place no trades, and they keep their own account and their own retailer relationship.
It's been running on our own house for months — charging when power is cheap or negative, holding it back for the expensive end of the evening. The first customer home is now on their own real prices too. One house at a time, carefully, because a battery controller that gets it wrong is worse than none at all.
The honest catch: it only makes sense on a spot plan, where the price actually moves. On a flat Aurora tariff there is nothing to trade against — a battery there is self-consumption and blackout backup, full stop.
Would you hand your house over to a price that changes every five minutes, or is a flat tariff worth the certainty to you?