Sundown Home Pilot Program Terms
Version 2026-08-31.3 · effective 31 August 2026
Pilot season: 1 November 2026 – 31 March 2027
These terms apply to your participation in Sundown Home, operated by Daydream Energy Pty Ltd (ABN 11 700 900 483). In these terms, "we", "us" and "Daydream" mean Daydream Energy Pty Ltd, and "you" means the person who enrols a home in the program.
Read this alongside our Privacy Policy and Data Access and Control Authority. You'll accept all three during signup.
1. What Sundown is
Sundown is a small pilot. We connect a limited number of homes with solar batteries in Melbourne's west, and on a handful of afternoons over summer we ask those batteries to discharge so that less electricity is drawn from a part of the network running close to its limit. In between, we help you use your battery better day to day.
We're running the pilot to prove that a group of household batteries can deliver a measurable, repeatable reduction. That evidence is what we need to bid this capacity into Powercor's flexibility market in future years.
This is a pilot, and you should read clause 3 before you enrol. We reserve wide discretion over which homes we dispatch and when, including the discretion never to dispatch your home at all. That's unusual, so we've set it out plainly rather than buried it, along with what we guarantee you in exchange.
Sundown is not an electricity retailer. We don't sell you energy, change your electricity plan, or issue your bill.
2. Who can join
To take part, you must:
- be at least 18 and be the account holder on the electricity bill for the property;
- own the battery system, or have the owner's written permission to enrol it;
- have a supported battery, connected to the internet, registered to an account you control as owner (not as a guest or visitor);
- have a smart meter, and be connected within our pilot area on the Powercor network; and
- not have life support equipment at the premises (clause 2.1).
Places are limited and we choose participants at our discretion.
2.1 Life support — a firm exclusion
If anyone at the address relies on life support equipment, the premises cannot participate in Sundown. There are no exceptions, including with your consent.
We ask this at signup and you can't skip the question. Examples include an oxygen concentrator, home dialysis machine, ventilator, or a CPAP machine where it's medically required. You don't need to be on a life support register for this to apply — most households don't know their register status, and it makes no difference to our answer.
Our reasoning, because you're entitled to it. Sundown never disconnects anything and never de-energises a property. The risk is different: dispatch draws down your battery's stored energy on hot, network-stressed afternoons, which are the same afternoons with the highest chance of an unplanned outage. A household depending on powered medical equipment should have every kilowatt-hour of its own reserve on exactly those days. Raising a reserve floor doesn't adequately address that. Excluding the premises does.
If circumstances change, there's a one-tap declaration in the app, available any time, no explanation required. We withdraw the site immediately, cancel any scheduled or in-flight dispatch, and stop sending instructions. You keep every payment already earned and your enrolment payment is paid in full. We've deliberately removed any financial reason to delay telling us.
We record only that the declaration was made, the date, and how it reached us. Not what equipment, not who for.
2.2 Other programs, and your electricity plan
You must tell us at signup if you're enrolled in another virtual power plant or demand response program for the same meter, and tell us if you join one later. We won't dispatch a battery that another program is also instructing — two systems issuing conflicting commands produce unusable results and an unhappy customer.
Being in another program doesn't necessarily stop you enrolling with us. It does mean we're likely to place your home on standby (clause 3.2), where we monitor your system but don't dispatch it.
Check your electricity plan as well as any VPP. Some retail plans exclude the premises from any other demand response program, including pilots. Whether joining Sundown affects your plan is a matter between you and your retailer. We can't advise you on your plan, we don't know its terms, and we are not responsible for any benefit, discount or credit you lose under your retail plan as a result of enrolling. If you're unsure, ask your retailer before you enrol, or send us the plan name and we'll tell you what we know.
3. Our discretion — please read this one
3.1 What we can do, at any time
We may, at any time, at our sole discretion, and without giving reasons:
- decline to dispatch your home on any particular day;
- move your home to standby, so it isn't dispatched at all;
- suspend your participation;
- end your participation entirely; and
- disconnect our access to your battery and to your electricity account data.
We may do any of these immediately. None of them is a breach of these terms by us, and not dispatching your home doesn't entitle you to a payment for a dispatch that didn't happen there.
This is deliberately broad because it's a pilot. We may need to change the shape of the fleet mid-season, stop dispatching a battery model that's behaving oddly, work around a conflict with your retail plan, or simply find we have enough active sites in your area. We'd rather hold that discretion openly than pretend to a firmness we can't deliver in a first season.
3.2 Active and standby
Your home is either Active — monitored and dispatchable — or Standby — monitored, not dispatched. We set the status, we can change it at any time, and we'll tell you within 5 business days of any change and what it means for your payments.
A standby home may never be dispatched at all. You'd still be monitored, you'd still have your dashboard and your tariff analysis, and you'd still receive your $50 enrolment payment. You wouldn't earn per-dispatch payments or the season top-up, because those are paid for reductions actually delivered.
We're stating this bluntly because it would be easy not to. Some homes will be enrolled principally so that we can learn from their data, and we'd rather you knew that going in than worked it out in March.
3.3 What we guarantee in exchange
Against all of the above:
- We never claw anything back. No liquidated damages, no penalties, no minimum term.
- You keep everything you've earned, whatever the reason participation ends.
- Your $50 is paid in full once your bill data and battery are connected, whatever happens afterwards — including if we un-enrol you the following week.
- If we end your participation for any reason other than your breach of these terms, we pay your season top-up as though you'd remained available for the rest of the season.
- You have the same freedom we do. You can leave at any time, for any reason, without notice and without cost.
4. Season, windows and dispatch
4.1 Season
1 November 2026 to 31 March 2027. October is excluded: it doesn't produce a network peak, so there's nothing to be available for.
4.2 Windows
| Time (AEDT) | |
|---|---|
| Availability window — when we need your system online and dispatchable | 14:00 – 21:00, every day |
| Dispatch window — when an event can actually run at your home | 16:00 – 21:00 |
Residential dispatch starts at 16:00 rather than 14:00 because at 14:00 your solar is still producing and a discharge delivers little measurable reduction at the meter.
4.3 How many events
| Maximum dispatches per season | 10 — up to 6 triggered events plus up to 4 scheduled tests |
| Maximum per calendar month | 3 |
| Maximum per rolling 7 days | 1 |
| Minimum gap between dispatches | 48 hours |
| Usual duration | 3 hours |
| Shortest / longest | 1 hour / 4 hours |
These are ceilings, not targets. In a mild summer there may only be the scheduled tests, and if your home is on standby there may be none at all.
No test dispatch runs between 20 December and 2 January. A triggered event still can if the network needs it.
Tests count and tests pay. A scheduled test settles exactly like a triggered event. A test day is the only day of the season where we control the conditions, so it's how we find out whether the system works before the day it matters.
4.4 What triggers an event
- Network. A Powercor instruction, or our own forecast that the local substation is heading above its agreed limit. During the pilot we use a weather proxy: a forecast maximum of 35 °C or more, or 33 °C or more on a second consecutive day.
- Market. Extreme forecast wholesale prices, or an AEMO reserve shortfall notice for Victoria.
- Scheduled test. Per clause 4.3.
The reference weather station is Laverton, Bureau of Meteorology station 087031. Not "Melbourne" and not Olympic Park — your area runs one to two degrees hotter than the CBD on north-wind days, and an ambiguous reference is how settlement arguments start.
4.5 Notice you'll get
| Stage | When | What |
|---|---|---|
| Provisional notice | 14:00 the day before | Event likely, expected window and duration |
| Confirmation | 12:00 on the day | Confirmed, or cancelled |
| Opting out | Any time, including once an event has started | Stops your battery being dispatched |
If the network instructs us at short notice, or AEMO declares a reserve shortfall, we may call an event with as little as 2 hours' notice. That will happen no more than twice in the season.
A cancellation between provisional notice and confirmation costs neither of us anything and doesn't count against the event budget.
4.6 Commissioning test
Shortly after you connect, we run a one-off 30-minute test on a weekday afternoon between 16:00 and 18:00 to confirm the dispatch path works end to end. It's automatic, doesn't count against the event budget, and isn't settled. We'll tell you when it's scheduled so you're not surprised to see your battery discharge.
If it fails, we'll work through it with you.
5. Operating limits
During the pilot, we will not:
- discharge your battery below your Reserve SOC, 20% by default. You can raise it at any time. You can't lower it below 20%;
- exceed the event budget in clause 4.3;
- dispatch outside 16:00–21:00 AEDT;
- give less notice than clause 4.5 allows;
- operate your battery outside the manufacturer's supported range;
- override an active backup or islanding condition, or change your backup settings; or
- charge your battery from the grid during the hour before a dispatch once a nomination has been issued. That would inflate the baseline we're measured against.
6. Your nomination
Your Nominated Capacity is the reduction in kilowatts your home is expected to sustain for four continuous hours. Your dispatch payments are calculated from it:
the lower of: your inverter's continuous output in kW, or (your usable battery capacity in kWh × 0.8) ÷ 4
A 13.5 kWh battery on a 5 kW inverter with a 20% reserve nominates 2.7 kW. A 10 kWh battery on the same inverter nominates 2.0 kW. The minimum we can accept is 1.5 kW.
If you raise your reserve above 20%, your nomination falls, and so do your per-dispatch payments. The app shows you the effect before you confirm.
If your system consistently delivers well below its nomination, we may revise the nomination down to what it actually delivers, with notice. Not a penalty, and no clawback of anything already paid.
7. How you get paid
Worked examples in How you get paid.
| Component | Amount | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Enrolment | $50 | Your bill data and your battery are both connected |
| Per dispatch | $25 × (your nomination ÷ 2.5) × your performance factor | Up to 6 dispatches, Active homes only |
| Season top-up | Topped up to $200 | Availability of 90% or better, and you took part in more than half of the dispatches called at your home |
| Season maximum | $200 |
All payments are made as gift cards. They come from us, not your retailer, and won't appear on your electricity bill. We don't give tax advice — if you're unsure how to treat a payment, ask your accountant.
Your $50 is paid on connection, once we have both your bill data and a working battery connection. It isn't conditional on anything that happens afterwards.
Performance factor is your best continuous two-hour average delivered reduction divided by your nomination, capped at 1.0. We take your best two hours rather than the whole-event average because it's a first season and we'd rather price what your system can do than penalise one awkward interval.
Availability is the proportion of the availability window across the season for which your system was online and dispatchable. If yours starts slipping, we'll tell you before it costs you anything.
A note on timing. Your first settled dispatch can't happen until we've had about 20 days of clean interval data, because that's what your settlement baseline is built from. That's a technical constraint on measurement, not a condition on your $50.
If your home is on standby (clause 3.2), you receive the enrolment payment and nothing further, because there are no delivered reductions to pay for.
No clawback. We won't recover payments already made, we won't charge liquidated damages, and there's no minimum term.
8. Opting out
You can decline any individual dispatch from the app at any time, including once the event has started. Stopping a dispatch part-way returns your battery to its normal schedule; we don't finish an event you have opted out of. We'll ask for a brief reason, which helps us design next season, but you can skip it.
Opting out is always fine. There's no penalty, no clawback, and it doesn't count against you. The only consequence is the obvious one: a dispatch you sit out is a dispatch you didn't deliver, so it doesn't pay. A dispatch you stop part-way is settled on what your home actually delivered before you stopped it.
The season top-up in clause 7 exists so that an available household isn't left unpaid by a mild summer. It can't do that job for a household that opted out of the summer, which is why it carries a minimum participation condition. That's a condition on a bonus, not a penalty on you.
If you've declared life support at the premises, none of this applies — the site is withdrawn and paid in full.
9. Battery wear and warranty
At most ten dispatches over a season, each drawing a few kilowatt-hours down to your reserve, is a small addition to what your battery already does daily. Small isn't zero, and cycles are what warranties count.
Check your battery's warranty for conditions about third-party control or cycle limits, and ask your installer if unsure. We show in the app how many cycles participation has added. If your manufacturer or installer tells you participation affects your warranty, tell us and we'll stop operating your battery.
10. What you agree to do
- Keep your battery connected to the internet and to your manufacturer account. This affects your availability and therefore your payments.
- Tell us before you change your manufacturer account credentials.
- Don't set conflicting schedules in the manufacturer's own app while enrolled. Tell us what you want instead.
- Tell us promptly if you sell the property, move out, change retailer or plan, join another VPP, replace or remove the battery, or have significant work done.
- Declare immediately if life support equipment comes into the home.
- Give us honest feedback. It's a pilot; that's the deal.
11. What we don't promise
- We don't guarantee any dispatches at your home. See clause 3.
- We don't guarantee your bill will go down. That depends on your tariff, your usage and the weather.
- We don't guarantee the platform, the manufacturer clouds, or your equipment will always work.
- We don't guarantee backup power during an outage. That's a function of your equipment.
- Savings figures and forecasts are estimates, and will sometimes be wrong.
12. Reporting
- A settlement statement after every dispatch at your home, within 10 business days, showing your baseline, what you delivered, your performance factor and what you earned.
- A monthly summary.
- Your full dispatch and settlement history in the dashboard.
If you think a settlement is wrong, tell us. We keep per-interval records of every instruction, response and meter reading, and we'll walk through them with you.
13. Ending your participation
You can leave at any time, for any reason, through the app or by emailing hello@daydream.energy. We stop sending instructions immediately and revoke our access within 5 business days. You keep everything earned.
We can end your participation at any time under clause 3.1, immediately, without notice and without reasons. Clause 3.3 sets out what we pay you when we do.
When it ends, we disconnect from your manufacturer account and handle your data per the Privacy Policy. Your battery keeps whatever settings were last written to it, so check them.
14. Liability
Nothing here excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law, including the guarantee that services are supplied with due care and skill. Those rights sit above anything written here.
Beyond them, our liability is limited to resupplying the services or, at our option, the total payments made to you. We're not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for the acts of your retailer, distributor, installer or battery manufacturer, or for faults in your equipment we didn't cause.
15. Changes to these terms
If we change these terms in a way that materially affects you, we'll give you at least 14 days' notice by email, and you can leave before it takes effect without losing anything earned. We won't reduce the payment rates in clause 7 during the season.
16. Complaints
Email hello@daydream.energy. We'll acknowledge within 2 business days and aim to resolve within 10. If we can't, we'll tell you in writing why, and what you can do next.
Complaints about your bill, connection or meter go to the Energy and Water Ombudsman Victoria. For consumer law matters, Consumer Affairs Victoria and the ACCC.
17. General
Governed by the law of Victoria. If part can't be enforced, the rest still applies. Participation isn't transferable, including to a buyer of your house.
Contact: Daydream Energy Pty Ltd, hello@daydream.energy