Need help on how to best configure PW to take advantage of TOU in Florida ?

[thevaibhav]

Background. I have 11.6KWH Solar and now 2 powerwalls. have FPL service and now am on TOU.. Current peak during weekdays is 6am to 10 am and then 6pm to 10pm.. I have had solar for about 2 years and was paying 0 to FPL for power ($9 connection charge only). Bought a used 100 D Model X in August 2019 and have seen consumption go up from 40KW per day to about 55Kw (Average)

My Solar production average is about 45Kw

What I am trying to accomplish : Trying to be self sufficient but if i have to take power from the grid, use that ONLY during off peak rates..

What i have tried so far :

Option 1 : Using advanced setting on the Powerwall to setup peak and off peak times
Issue 1: Powerwall will not allow to set 2 peak times, so peak will have to be setup as 6am to 10Pm
Issue 2: Powerwall wont charge from excess solar during peak.. which in my case is the full time solar is producing.
Issue 3: Powerwall will not charge from the grid during off peak
So this option is pretty much useless in my case.. It wont charge from the sun and wont charge from the Grid..

Option 2: Using advanced setting on the Powerwall to setup peak, Shoulder and off peak times
Per documentation, Powerwall will charge during shoulder and also use PW power to support demand. i tried this today, i setup 6am to 6pm shoulder and 6pm to 10pm Peak and 10Pm to 6 am off peak. But with this setup, it still consumed power from the grid at 6 am while the PW was at 100% so dont know what i am doing wrong !!

Option 3: Self consumption mode : this works best until i plug my car in to charge.. i can plug the car only after work so 7Pm or later, when i do that it first pulls power from the PW and only once its down to reserve levels will it pull from the grid. Now come 6 am the next day, i am again paying peak power rates

 

[d21mike]

I feel your pain. The Tesla App settings need a "true" Advanced Mode. Maybe call it Power User Mode. Or a Self-powered Advanced Mode.

Regarding the Advanced Mode. At least here in the USA I believe they are useless. We are not allowed to charge our power walls from the grid unless during a Storm Watch. Maybe if you only had Power walls and NO SOLAR and you did not get the 15% discount there are other options but I am not sure. Like you I have Solar 12kw and 2x Power walls. I get SCE (here in Los Angeles) PTO around Dec. 28, 2019 but did some testing while waiting for city approval.

My use case is this.

I would like to power the home from the Power walls during PEEK and some shoulder. Never during OFF PEAK. I charge my 2x Teslas during OFF PEAK via a Schedule. It would be simple for me if I could just say do not discharge the batteries during OFF PEAK unless a power failure. And during a power failure the app should disable automatic scheduled charing of my Teslas until the power comes back on. Unless I manually over ride that.

The only option I have found to do what I want it so use "Self-powered mode". Then I set my reserve to 70% (will have to adjust during summer with AC but for now 70% seems pretty close). I.E. I use about 30% of the power walls from when the sun goes down until about mid-night. My cars are scheduled to start charging around 1am. I use TeslaFi Schedules to help with the scheduling. But I think you can easily set the 1 schedule to charge like around 3am. In your case you just want to make sure the charging is complete well before 6am which is where your second PEAK happens. I only have 1 PEAK so mine is easier. During the day my Solar can easily support the house and recharge my batteries and also add enough to the Grid to cover charging my cars from the Grid (with credits). I work from home and my wife just retired so we do not commute which means we use less energy than others. This means the credits I generate at the higher cost during the day easily offsets my charging during OFF PEAK.

Some might say I should just put the 60amp circuit I use to charge my car in the main panel so it is not backed up my the power walls. I considered this because the APP is not smart enough to do what I need done. Even Elon replied to someone that part of what I need (power failure to turn off auto charging) will be addressed in a future update but who knows when that will happen.

 

[Dan123]

Option 2: Using advanced setting on the Powerwall to setup peak, Shoulder and off peak times
Per documentation, Powerwall will charge during shoulder and also use PW power to support demand. i tried this today, i setup 6am to 6pm shoulder and 6pm to 10pm Peak and 10Pm to 6 am off peak. But with this setup, it still consumed power from the grid at 6 am while the PW was at 100% so dont know what i am doing wrong !!

s

Here is what I tried. The on-peak is from 6pm until 10pm. The shoulder period is from 10pm until 6am. And the off-peak is from 10am until 6pm. This works well for the 6pm - 10pm, and the powerwall charges fine between 10am and 6pm.

However, the problem is that it often wants to keep discharging during the shoulder period after 10pm. So to prevent it, I have to set the reserve number relatively high, at like 85% or 70%. And I have to check it.

Betweeen 6am and 10am, the solar production is usually sufficient to exceed my consumption.

 

[miimura]

If you want to use Time Based Control to try to manage your situation, you have to keep in mind that it takes a few days for it to learn your generation and usage pattern to work optimally. That can explain the grid usage during the Shoulder period. However, Tesla really needs to allow people to set two Peak periods in order for it to really work the way people expect when they have that kind of rate plan.

People in Arizona that also have a dual Peak rate schedule have found that they need to use additional automation to make it work like they want. There is a SmartThings app that was developed by a forum member that will make changes to your settings on a schedule.

Tesla Powerwall Manager app for the SmartThings Hub - DarwinsDen.com

Here are a few possible strategies to cover your situation:

1. Self Powered Mode. During each peak period, use a low Reserve setting. During times when you don't want the battery to discharge, like overnight hours when you want to charge your car, set a high Reserve setting, like 100%.

2. Schedule modification. Set the system to Time Based Control with the morning Peak configured. Depending on your relative generation and consumption, the middle of the day could be shoulder or Off-Peak. Sometime in the middle of the day, change the schedule so the evening is now defined as Peak. After the evening Peak hours have passed, change the schedule back to the morning Peak.

3. Mode change. Set the system to either Self Powered or Time Based Control during the Peak times, then change it to Backup mode when you want to block discharge.

 

[JayClark]

If you want to use Time Based Control to try to manage your situation, you have to keep in mind that it takes a few days for it to learn your generation and usage pattern to work optimally. That can explain the grid usage during the Shoulder period. However, Tesla really needs to allow people to set two Peak periods in order for it to really work the way people expect when they have that kind of rate plan.

People in Arizona that also have a dual Peak rate schedule have found that they need to use additional automation to make it work like they want. There is a SmartThings app that was developed by a forum member that will make changes to your settings on a schedule.

Tesla Powerwall Manager app for the SmartThings Hub - DarwinsDen.com

Here are a few possible strategies to cover your situation:

1. Self Powered Mode. During each peak period, use a low Reserve setting. During times when you don't want the battery to discharge, like overnight hours when you want to charge your car, set a high Reserve setting, like 100%.

2. Schedule modification. Set the system to Time Based Control with the morning Peak configured. Depending on your relative generation and consumption, the middle of the day could be shoulder or Off-Peak. Sometime in the middle of the day, change the schedule so the evening is now defined as Peak. After the evening Peak hours have passed, change the schedule back to the morning Peak.

3. Mode change. Set the system to either Self Powered or Time Based Control during the Peak times, then change it to Backup mode when you want to block discharge.

I'm in Arizona, and have the two peak periods (morning and evening) in the winter. I use Darwins Powerwall Manager and a SmartThings Hub to manage the situation since the Tesla app doesn't support two peak periods (yet... hopefully eventually they have to solve this).

In the Tesla App I set one peak period from the start of my morning peak ending after my evening peak. I use either the TBC-Balanced or TBC-Cost Savings (explained below). Then I use the Powerwall manager to schedule the Reserve to bump up to between 75-90% right after the morning peak period which prioritizes charging the Powerwall first (in the case of "Cost Savings"), or running the house and charging the powerwall with the remainder (in the case of "Balanced", without tapping the PW due to the high reserve).

Then about 15 minutes before the evening peak period I have a second Powerwall Manager schedule to bump the reserve back down to like 5 or 10%. I do set this about 15 minutes before the evening peak starts to insure all the switching the gateway and pWs seem to do complete before my evening peak.

On weeks where we're all sun here, I generally set it to Balanced as I have enough solar to run the house and charge the batteries with the remainder between the morning and evening peaks - but on weeks where clouds are in the forecast I change it to "Cost Savings" to insure the PWs charge first to be ready for the evening and next morning peaks.

Works great, but does require SmartThings Hub, but since I already had that for home automation and for controlling AC units to avoid/limit peak period AC usage, it was easy to install Darwins Powerwall Manager on it.

 

[thevaibhav]

I'm in Arizona, and have the two peak periods (morning and evening) in the winter. I use Darwins Powerwall Manager and a SmartThings Hub to manage the situation since the Tesla app doesn't support two peak periods (yet... hopefully eventually they have to solve this).

In the Tesla App I set one peak period from the start of my morning peak ending after my evening peak. I use either the TBC-Balanced or TBC-Cost Savings (explained below). Then I use the Powerwall manager to schedule the Reserve to bump up to between 75-90% right after the morning peak period which prioritizes charging the Powerwall first (in the case of "Cost Savings"), or running the house and charging the powerwall with the remainder (in the case of "Balanced", without tapping the PW due to the high reserve).

Then about 15 minutes before the evening peak period I have a second Powerwall Manager schedule to bump the reserve back down to like 5 or 10%. I do set this about 15 minutes before the evening peak starts to insure all the switching the gateway and pWs seem to do complete before my evening peak.

On weeks where we're all sun here, I generally set it to Balanced as I have enough solar to run the house and charge the batteries with the remainder between the morning and evening peaks - but on weeks where clouds are in the forecast I change it to "Cost Savings" to insure the PWs charge first to be ready for the evening and next morning peaks.

Works great, but does require SmartThings Hub, but since I already had that for home automation and for controlling AC units to avoid/limit peak period AC usage, it was easy to install Darwins Powerwall Manager on it.

interesting.. ill look into IFTTT to see if someone had built something for PW.. I have Wink..

I should have a Pi, so was considering using that to connect to the gateway to send the requests too..

 

[JayClark]

interesting.. ill look into IFTTT to see if someone had built something for PW.. I have Wink..

I should have a Pi, so was considering using that to connect to the gateway to send the requests too..

There are some folks on these forums that have written some python code to trigger the APIs the way Darwins Powerwall Manager does, and the python scripts can be scheduled on the Pi I would imagine.