Unlocking Value in GloBird Energy's Best Plans: How to Automate 'ZeroHero' and 'Wholesave'

The Australian energy market is evolving rapidly. With the AER’s 2026–2027 Default Market Offer (DMO) and Victoria's Default Offer (VDO) taking effect on July 1, the landscape for solar and battery owners is undergoing a massive national reset.

Across the National Electricity Market (NEM), standard solar feed-in tariffs are plummeting due to an oversupply of daytime solar. Simultaneously, new network regulations—like mandatory DNSP two-way tariffs and the government's push for "Solar Sharer" style plans—are aggressively penalising peak exports while heavily incentivising households to shift their energy loads into the middle of the day.

Retailers like GloBird Energy (operating across VIC, NSW, QLD, and SA) are leading the charge with innovative retail plans like Wholesave and ZeroHero. On paper, getting free electricity for a few hours a day or accessing ultra-cheap wholesale rates sounds like a dream. But in reality, unless you want to spend your life setting alarms to manually turn on your high-draw appliances or constantly monitor live wholesale spot prices, these plans are practically impossible to fully exploit without automation.

These automations don't exist by default. To actually survive the July 1 price changes and make money on these complex pricing structures, you need aggressive, reliable control. While many tech-savvy users start out coding custom YAML templates in Home Assistant to pull AEMO spot pricing, the bottom line is that Home Assistant is difficult and time-consuming for the average punter to set up and maintain.

Here is exactly how you can use the cloud-based Gridkeeper platform to effortlessly automate GloBird’s most lucrative plans, ensuring your solar, battery, and heavy loads work in perfect harmony—without the technical headache.

1. Conquering the 'ZeroHero' Plan

GloBird’s ZeroHero plan is designed specifically for battery owners and perfectly aligns with the incoming AER "Solar Sharer" framework pushing across the country. It features blocks of completely free electricity, rewards for avoiding the grid during peak times, and massive bonuses for exporting when power is most valuable.

The biggest mistake homeowners make is assuming their standard inverter settings will capture this value. They won't. You have to actively build automations to exploit the specific windows.

The Gridkeeper Strategy: Force Charging and Load Dumping

Instead of writing complex code or dealing with local servers, Gridkeeper allows you to map out custom automations in minutes using a dead-easy Advanced Mode interface.

• ZeroCharge Grid Charging: The ZeroHero plan gives you an energy usage rate of $0.00 between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM every day. You can easily build a simple time-based automation in Gridkeeper instructing your Deye, Sungrow, or Sigenergy inverter to pull maximum power from the grid during this window. Because the rate is $0.00, your system will automatically charge your battery to 100% for free, saving your stored solar for the expensive evening peak.

  
  

• Heavy Load & HVAC Activation: Gridkeeper doesn't just control the inverter. By setting up a quick rule using the built-in Tuya integrations, you can automatically activate your heavy household loads during this 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM free window. This means your smart switches can fire up hot water systems, run pool pumps, control spas, and activate HVAC systems to pre-cool or pre-heat the house using 100% free energy.

• ZeroHero Peak Rewards: GloBird pays you $1 a day if you draw virtually zero grid power (less than 0.03kWh per hour) during the local evening peak (e.g., 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM). You can map an automation to aggressively preference battery dispatch over grid import during this precise window to ensure you lock in that daily $1 reward.

  
  

• High-Premium Export: ZeroHero also features a "Super Export Credit" for the first portion of energy exported during that same evening peak window. Gridkeeper can be configured via a simple rule to aggressively discharge your battery to the grid at the exact minute this premium tariff begins. If you are running a large setup, you can cap this discharge at a specific State of Charge (e.g., 40%) to ensure the house has enough power to get through the night without importing.

  
  

2. Automating the 'Wholesave' Plan

GloBird's Wholesave retail plan exposes you directly to the volatile 5-minute AEMO spot price. However, you aren't simply paying or receiving the raw wholesale rate. GloBird passes through the wholesale energy cost but adds or subtracts fixed margins, local distributor network tariffs, and environmental costs to calculate your final bill.

With the July 1 changes bringing new tariff structures across major distributors (like Ausgrid, Powercor, SAPN, and Energex), your control system needs to know your actual retail costs, not just the raw market data. Here is how the math breaks down on your bill:

1. Imports (Usage): The raw spot price is multiplied by a Marginal Loss Factor (MLF) markup (usually 4% to 8%) to account for transmission heat loss, and then your local DNSP's fixed network/environmental tariff is added.

   
   

2. Solar Exports (Feed-in): GloBird takes a percentage "allowance" cut (around 10%) on your exports. When spot prices are positive, you get the spot price minus 10%. When they go negative, you are charged the negative spot price plus 10%.

The Gridkeeper Strategy: Custom AEMO Spread Automation

Previously, matching these exact math formulas required complex, brittle local scripting. Gridkeeper’s latest feature update completely solves this by introducing direct AEMO Spot Price integration with custom spread configuration.

To mirror GloBird Wholesave perfectly inside Gridkeeper, you simply navigate to:

Settings > Grid Connections > Edit > Check "Enable AEMO Prices"

Once enabled, a new AEMO Prices tab appears at the top of your console. Here, you can build your exact retail spread on top of the live wholesale feed tailored to your state:

• For the Buy Price: You can add your specific network tariff as a fixed cents/kWh amount and input your MLF multiplier as a percentage markup.

  
  

• For the Sell Price: You can subtract GloBird’s 10% allowance factor directly from the live feed.

Once saved, these modified values are instantly mapped across your system as live variables, allowing you to build highly accurate, tiered automations based on what you are actually paying or earning:

• Negative Feed-in Protection: From July 1, the combination of plummeting daytime demand and two-way network export charges across Australia means exporting solar will frequently cost you money. The moment your calculated real-time feed-in rate crosses below 0c, your custom Gridkeeper rule automatically curtails your solar generation, stopping your inverter from exporting into a negative market.

  
  

• Tiered Spike Exporting: When a supply crunch hits the NEM and prices climb towards the $17.50/kWh ceiling, you can implement a sophisticated tiered sell method to protect your battery bank:

  
  

  • Tier 1: If your calculated real retail sell price hits 15c, discharge the battery down to a 60% State of Charge (SOC) to bank easy gains.

    
    

  • Tier 2: If the price hits higher threshold marks, resume discharging the battery down to a lower State of Charge.

    
    

  • Tier 3 (The Spike): If a true market spike occurs, your rule can instantly execute a critical load-shedding command—switching off non-essential loads (like heavy HVAC or pool pumps via the Tuya integration) and discharging the battery down to its absolute minimum safety level to capture maximum profit while protecting your household baseline.

3. Predictive Weather Defence & Grid Charging

The ultimate vulnerability of any Time-of-Use or wholesale plan is a string of rainy days. If your battery relies solely on solar generation, a cloudy week means you will inevitably be forced to buy expensive peak power.

Gridkeeper integrates natively with Solmon weather forecasting to protect your bottom line by allowing you to automate your grid charging exactly when it is required.

While these rules don't exist by default, they are super easy to build. You can map a custom automation rule that tells Gridkeeper to look at the predicted solar production for your site and subtract your average household consumption. If the math shows a deficit, your rule instructs the system to take immediate action:

• It triggers a grid charge during the cheapest hours of the morning or during GloBird's free windows to pre-fill your battery bank with low-cost or free energy.

  
  

• This ensures you comfortably get the house through the high-tariff evening peak without ever pulling from the grid at a premium.

  
  

• If the market dictates, the rule will also pause scheduled evening exports to safeguard your remaining reserves for the household loads.

Ditch the Code, Maximise the ROI

Energy retailers are getting smarter with their pricing structures, which means your home energy architecture needs to be smarter too.

With the July 1 network reset set to penalise households that don't adapt to the new daytime solar dynamics, relying on manual habits or trying to manage a complex local home automation server is no longer viable. Gridkeeper by Dusk Energy connects to your inverter and smart devices seamlessly via API, doing all the heavy lifting in the cloud once your rules are set. It takes the friction out of energy trading, allowing you to switch between GloBird’s aggressive plans and instantly map out the automations required to exploit them.

Best of all, Gridkeeper is dead easy to set up, these custom rules are incredibly simple to build, and the platform is completely free for home users.

Take total control of your energy strategy and start optimising your system today.

• Explore cloud-based automation at www.dusk.energy

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