Search results

I agree, call the installer. A clamp meter on one core of the mains cable will quickly reveal whether or not power is flowing. If it is then there's the need to understand why. It if isn't then sign up to a tariff which pays for export!

What does the Powerwall think it is doing? Does the Tesla app also show this constant export? Alternatively log into the gateway and see what that shows. There used to be a problem with some smart meters recording power inflow even when there wasn't any. Perhaps you have the same in reverse.

Unless the inverter is connected to the household WiFi.

My first Powerwall was wall-mounted with the bottom a couple of inches off the garage floor in case a leak from a nearby tap made the floor wet. A second Powerwall was added last year and placed on some wood of suitable thickness to match the first PW. So far, no problems. In reality the load...

It's more a case that the local distribution networks have been designed around a voltage drop between the nearest transformer and the users. If the power flow is reversed due to lots of solar generation then there might be unacceptable voltage rise at the users' end of the line. Usually the...

I too would like on option to set a maximum charge level. One workaround is to shorten the period of cheap electricity in the app. There would be a bit of trial and error but looking at my historic data suggests that one hour at 5kW charge rate increases the battery charge level by 30%.

I know from previous winters that the 3.7kW charging rate isn't quite enough to fully charge an empty Powerwall in 4 hours.

The installers said that's the way they do the configuration although there was correspondence between the installer and the DNO prior to installation. The grid code used is 50Hz_230V_1_G99_2018_UK. I note that the National Grid G99 guidance document differentiates between generation capacity...

Last April I had a 2nd PW installed along the a backup gateway (not available when the 1st PW was installed in April 2018). Since then the winter charging in time-based mode has been at 5kW per PW until the charge level reaches 95% whereupon the charge rate reduces. Previously the single PW...

If you've also got solar panels then the system will be looking at the solar generation forecast and, when a sunny day is forecast, may be leaving some battery capacity available for the solar generation. That's what my system does.

I agree that it could well be a metering problem and recall that some SMETS 2 meters co-exist with Powerwalls better than others. When my SMETS1 meter was replaced by a SMETS 2 meter a couple of years ago I got the installer to double check with his tech support that the meter he was about to...

There's a significant difference between the Powerwall being able to survive a wide temperature range without permanent damage and being able to operate efficiently throughout that temperature range.

What is the mains voltage at your house when the PW disconnects from the grid? The voltage drop on the supply will increase as the total load increases and I would assume that the PW is programmed to switch to battery when the mains voltage drops excessively in order to protect household...

I've also noticed that solaredge reports higher generation than either Tesla or a kWh meter. I suspect that solaredge is measuring DC power into the inverter and both the kWh meter and Tesla measures AC power out of the inverter. The difference is the inverter conversion loss and, for total...

I'm due to have a 2nd PW installed next month (ordered last year when TEP was available) which will give me spare storage capacity for half of the year so time-based export will earn me a bit of money (and help the grid). My research suggested that Tesla needed to enable the feature after which...

My Powerwall (now 5 years old) has progressively behaved much more intelligently as Tesla improved the available features. I reckon it started considering the solar forecast about one year ago although that feature wasn't officially launched until several months later. I suspect that the ability...

I'm using time-based control but with the Octopus Go tariff and the rates define clearly that it's financially worthwhile to charge at night using cheap electricity to power the house (with the help of solar power) for the rest of the day when mains electricity is more expensive. I wonder if you...

Time-based control tries to minimise your overall cost. If the export rate is lower than the off-peak charging rate then the algorithm tries to figure out how much off-peak charging is needed to ensure that export is minimised and the battery doesn't get drained before the next off-peak period...

My Powerwall has averaged 85% over nearly 5 years. I suspect that Tesla's efficiency figure excludes the power overhead consumption with operation of the battery and the gateway. The lower the power flow into / out of the battery then the bigger the proportional effect of this power...

Another sign of the changed charging algorithm: My Powerwall did some charging last night which, given the recent very sunny weather, is contrary to past behavior. However, my interpretation of today's forecast is less sunny, not continuous cloud, so I'm doubting that this top-up charging was...

The Solar Edge data are for my house. The inverter sends the output via my wifi to the Solar Edge server (my installer set up an account for me) and the data can then be viewed on the www or using the Solar Edge phone app. PV Output also gets the data from that server. One thing I've noticed...

Solar Edge isn't monitoring my Powerwall. Perhaps you are being confused by the PV Output site which consolidates data from both devices as explained here? I pay AU$20 per year for the data hosting but reckon it's well worth the money as I see get solar and battery data in one place with a...

Same here.

I provided a link to the SolarEdge data so you can directly see the changes in solar generation and particularly a big change after several days of fairly consistent output. You can then look up that day at PVOutput and see what happened before and after. The next test will be to see what...

The weather has been stable except for Wednesday when it rained all day and my panels generated less than 1kWh. Past behaviour has shown that the battery would not have fully charged itself before that day and would have charged itself afterwards. This time it anticipated the weather and behaved...

I'm in contact with someone else who has had a pair of PWs for nearly 3 years and he's also seeing more intelligent charging behaviour during the last few days so it might be a matter of the time needed to roll out the new feature. Keep fingers crossed! You might end up with somewhat less than...

Perhaps your PW is still at the learning stage? Mine has been in use for a few days over 4 years. However, it's plausible that Tesla is quietly rolling out this feature starting with the oldest. Manual intervention may be needed to turn an address into coordinates input into the solar generation...

I'm wondering if Tesla is finally looking at the UK weather forecasts. I was surprised when the battery fully charged itself early yesterday as if it had seen the weather forecast of solid cloud and rain. The previous behaviour would have considered that with some excess solar generation had...

Followed zero off-peak charging last night with today's weather forecast showing solid sunshine. It's looking promising but there will be plenty of sunny / cloudy days when forecasts of solar generation will never be very accurate.

My Powerwall surprised me last night by charging to 100% as if it knew that today's solar generation would be abysmal. On the previous night it had only done a small top-up to 75% with no off-peak charging on the night before that. Has Tesla started looking at the weather forecast?

Load juggling isn't easy. When the kettle needed replacing I got one that was nearer 2kW and not 3kW to reduce the kettle load spikes. The 16A limit, however, becomes less significant if the sun is shining and some/all load is supplied directly by solar generation. The 16A limit will become a...

I don't have the option of using the reserve level to control the off-peak charging as I bought my PW nearly 4 years ago when the backup gateway wasn't available. I haven't written off the possibility of having one fitted in the future should I get a second PW to support heap pumps. The other...

The forecast for today was rain which followed two sunny days. I therefore increased the peak rate to 25p from 15p and the battery fully charged itself during the off-peak period. Historic Powerwall behaviour suggests that if I hadn't made this change then it would have expected today to be also...

After I cut back the peak rate to 15p and export rate to 4p the enthusiasm for full charging has disappeared and behaviour is similar to that observed previously. Nonetheless, the facility to change the rates is a big step towards manual control over the charging behaviour when a significant...

I noticed this morning that I can now set rates in the Tesla app and wait to see if £0.05 for off-peak and £0.25 for peak plus £0.05 for export encourages the battery to be generous in the off-peak charging and not be seduced by the occasional sunny day into thinking that summer has arrived.

I agree that it's rational that the PW should be able to supply 5kW for the household without being subject to the 16A limit on export to the grid. It appears that Tesla, for all its infinite skills and wisdom, haven't considered what is the normal operating condition. As we get pushed towards...

That's not implausible. It's a heavy beast and needs two people to get it in place plus some minor items (cables, isolator ... ) to connect it then add on the overheads that a DNO will add to the basic costs. A smaller company would probably have lower overheads.

If the battery discovers that it can't get get through to the next off-peak period without hitting empy then it should learn to not discharge during the off-peak period. However, if the sun shine and avoids it getting empty then it won't learn. In my experience we are currently in the transition...

Much as I said earlier in this thread almost three years ago Tesla: we need more control over our PowerWalls and I sent a request to Tesla at that time. It must be near the bottom of the bin into which Tesla put these requests.

Until a month ago Powerwall has done its off-peak charging at about 3.45kW so the 4 hours of Octopus Go is just about enough to get it full charged so I'm surprised if you are seeing 1.7kW charge rate unless Tesla has sabotaged something in a recent firmware update. However, I completely agree...

I had my meters changed from SMETS1 to SMETS2 on Thursday. The new electricity meter is a Kaifa MA120 which previously had created phantom power drain when connected to a Powerwall battery. However, yesterday's half hourly data is now visible in my Octopus account and is consistent with what I...

Octopus invited me to apply to have my SMETS1 meters upgraded to SMETS2 and I said OK but make sure that the electricity meter was compatible with the Powerwall battery. One reason for agreeing the change was that my half hourly gas consumption had stopped showing up as of June. The installer...

Only one PW and plausible import / export data. That for the battery says: energy_exported: 5958950 energy_imported: 6990200 which is consistent with the overall 85% efficiency I calculated a year or two ago (my battery has a relatively easy life particularly during the summer half of the year...

https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/api/system_status (xxx being the gateway IP address) works fine for me on 21.13.2. The field: last_toggle_timestamp "2021-05-10T19:15:43.007331823+01:00" confirms when the last software update was applied.

My PW has been updated to 21.13.2 within the past 24 hours. I see no obvious change in behaviour.

See my reply to your other post on this subject in the SMETS meter thread. When I prepared my own spreadsheet calculation of the costs and benefits of the Octopus Tesla energy plan I factored in my observed long term battery / gateway efficiency of 85% which might have been a little cautious as...

Don't forget there's the battery round trip energy efficiency which Tesla claims to be 90% plus the operating overhead of the battery + gateway (this overhead might be included in Tesla's number under the test operating condition). So your 1.5kW/day is quite plausible. Over three years my...

I'm happy that I didn't go ahead with this power plan. I had originally assumed that Tesla would tap into some solar generation forecasting to shift the solar export to the grid to later in the day and then, if necessary do some compensatory night time charging from the grid. The grid charging...

There's some discussion of the Octopus /Tesla Energy Plan here. I initially thought it was a good idea but my calculations suggested it would earn me about £50/year at the expense of greater battery wear. However, I am on the Octopus Go 5p/kWh tariff which is my main source of power during the...