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Post your design. If there is no shade it doesn’t matter if they have parallel strings connected in the roof. If there is, production will not be optimal.

It took months to get them to fix it. It literally took a few $ of extra wire going through the same pipe that was already installed.

Quick update. It tools three+ months of calls every other week and multiple emails with voltage data to get Tesla to fix the design and redo the wiring. Unfortunately, it is a rainy day and I cannot asses the impact it yet.

The inverter only reports what it can see. The stats are combined for the two strings of they are connected in the roof. Because two channels must be used in the inverter due to per channel limit, the single wire from the roof goes to two or more channels. The two channels will be within a few...

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Yes I noticed this too. I think the powerwall used to run some its electronics off the grid and now it is using battery power. Unfortunately I don’t have fine grain data captured before the update.

Up now

https://github.com/jasonacox/Powerwall-Dashboard It is pulling them off the powerwall+.

Exact quote:”We used MCI optimizers so it wouldn't matter if we Y connected on the roof or in the inverter.” In any case something is not quite right. This small amount of shading should not crater production.

Yes 22. 20’. The city will crucify me if I cut the tree. It is about 200’ tall.

Tesla support mentioned something about MCI faults. This was the justification to send it to L2. So there may be a problem with them. Also, the Tesla electrician told me that MCIs are optimizers (in writing). It sounded fishy but I thought they might be acting as bypass diodes at the panel level.

The bottom line is that using a junction box to join two strings in the presence of partial shading is brain dead, especially when there are three unused channels on the inverter.

Half an hour later and production has collapsed to almost half. I think at this point the top MCI of the string that had the five panels partially shaded has taken the string out. Note that the voltage has not dropped to half yet.

Another update with panel pictures this time. Today I caught it as the shading is starting. A tiny amount of shading in two panels is causing more than 10% production loss. The voltage has dropped more than 10% and the amps stayed roughly the same. It will get progressively worse from here.

Yes but current and power drops before the voltage drops. At that time obly three panels were half shaded. Eventually the voltage drops to 200v, but by then it only recovers a small amount of power.

I think so by looking at the currents something funny is going on. The current has been dropping by 2/3 before this happens. At the time when the voltage dropped only 5 out of 22 panels (all on the same string) were shaded and before that even fewer.

In my case I have two strings on the roof connected to a junction box and the inverter is pulling the voltage down in half (210v vs 380v) for both strings as soon as one string starts having shaded panels. If it wasn’t for the junction box the system would perform great.

I seem to be making progress. I just talked to technical support for Powerwall+ (not solar). They agreed there is underproduction and they were able to pull MCI data that showed the MCIs faulting. They escalated to Tier-2 to generate a recommendation and schedule service. We will see how it...

So Tesla designed two strings for my shaded roof and put them both on one optimizer channel using a junction box in the roof. The system was installed in December and at I didn’t notice it until the installation day. Tesla didn’t share the detailed plan with me until then. When I complained to...

Power down the main disconnect and all Powerwall & inverter breakers. There should be an internal cover over the grid terminals. If not be extra careful since they are alive unless you pull the meter out or have a switch between the meter and the gateway.

I think the Neurios are installed by default to connect to the gateway AP, not yours. There is a way to do the latter though

Depends on where you are. In my old house I had standard Ethernet cable running just below the siding on the cement foundation for seven years without a problem. But we don’t get a lot of sun or ice.

I checked the installer menu and it says leave blank for no limit. I think 100A is a bug in the report screen. It is probably a default value but it is not operative if not set. I have recently drawn more than 100A. In my case it is a whole house backup with three powerwalls and the main panel...

Same with mine. Not sure if it matters. I’ve pulled more than 100A from the grid in at least one occasion.

I guess this is highly regional. We got PTO yesterday. Inspection passed a couple of days before Christmas. The utility send me a mail a couple of days later but I didn’t realize it until last week. We scheduled the meter exchange for this week and PTO was granted a few days after the exchange...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

Send them your proposed design and see whether they will accommodate it or explain why it won’t work. Sometimes there are minimum setbacks if you install on adjacent roofs. In my case, I’ve asked for a site survey and they increased the size but it added a few months to the project.

The Neurio RGM disappeared from the system installer page and the vitals. The meter is still there in diagnostics and is reported to work correctly. For a minute I thought something was broken because they were doing corrections in the TEG but it apparently had updated the software. Can anyone...

Time of day is worth it by itself if most of your consumption is off-peak or even mid peak. But any consumption 5-9 hurts quickly. Look at your data and decide. Storage would help to use your production when the grid is most expensive but if you have excess production as you noted you won’t be...

There is an app for FEMA warnings. I presume it taps into an automatic system.

Isn’t the cell modem modular? Last year my alarm company send me a new modem to update my base station exactly for this issue.

The fact that most (all) American utilities have trouble maintaining reliability doesn’t mean that a centralized utility has to have trouble doing so. Obviously, I have personally experienced the problems myself, so I can’t argue that central generation makes sense to consumers today in this...

Well, I was speaking theoretically. My cells would produce much more in an open field than being half shaded by trees half a mile away because the sun stays so low. And if the utilities were well run and kept the lines in good condition I would have no reason to install my own generation. I grew...

Utility-scale solar and storage is the most efficient use of resources. In the PNW, our solar system barely makes 1-2 KWh per day when the skies are cloudy in winter and it has to fight to grab the sun rays through tree branches far away when the sun is shining but is barely above the horizon...