Any way to keep Powerwalls from charging without turning off their breakers?

[sorka]

Have you tried BALANCED mode and configure peak hours much earlier in the day? Once you hit peak hour the batteries should discharge to maximize the NEM credits (as it assumes you were in peak period). If you set it peak early the batteries may never have enough time to get to 100%. Never tried this myself. I previously was going into the app making daily changes and trying to minimize NBC's and keeping the time the PW's were at 100% charge to a minimum by flipping the different modes. I found that Balanced closely mimic'd what I was trying to do. From my review, Balanced tries to maximize self consumption but with an end goal to get to ~100% right when non-peak ends.

Ultimately if advanced balanced mode won't do the right thing after a few weeks of learning, I'm going to automate this through the API to switch to self consumption during the day when the sun is shining off peak and then switch back to advanced when peak starts. Additionally, I'll monitor the SOC through the API and then through the API lower the start peak time if the SOC reaches 80% before my actual peak start to prevent that battery from charging to full.

 

[charlesj]

...

All of this breaker switching talk reminds me of my father (bless him) who still puts his cars in neutral at stop lights, despite them being modern automatic transmission cars, because he thinks it reduces wear and tear on the transmissions...

Poor soul. My wife's Avalon went 300k in 20 years without such issues.

 

[sorka]

All of this breaker switching talk reminds me of my father (bless him) who still puts his cars in neutral at stop lights, despite them being modern automatic transmission cars, because he thinks it reduces wear and tear on the transmissions...

....which will of course just accelerate wear.

 

[sorka]

Poor soul. My wife's Avalon went 300k in 20 years without such issues.

We sold my wife's first lexus at 334K miles without ever having a single repair. Our first Prius, which we still have, has 320K repair free miles. My P85D has been pretty good but has had more repair costs than any vehicle I've ever owned. I tend to keep cars to 300K+ miles when they are trouble free which means we've owned mostly Toyota products.

 

[aesculus]

All of this breaker switching talk reminds me of my father (bless him) who still puts his cars in neutral at stop lights, despite them being modern automatic transmission cars, because he thinks it reduces wear and tear on the transmissions...

Back in the day it really did make a fairly large difference in gas mileage to put automatic transmissions in neutral at stoplights. I once showed this to a girlfriend who started doing it but then she got distracted one time and put the car in reverse instead of forward when the light turned green.

Needless to say that was the last time she did that and her thought of my ideas after that too.

 

[getakey]

Back in the day it really did make a fairly large difference in gas mileage to put automatic transmissions in neutral at stoplights. I once showed this to a girlfriend who started doing it but then she got distracted one time and put the car in reverse instead of forward when the light turned green.

Needless to say that was the last time she did that and her thought of my ideas after that too.

A lot of newer ICE cars automatically turn completely off when stopped

 

[jrweiss98020]

We haven't actually got a powerwall yet, but do have one on order.
We are on a tariff where we get very little for any solar we export, so my objective is always to export as little to the grid as possible. We have very cheap rate power over night and flat (expensive) rate during the day.
What I would really like is for the car to take all the solar until it goes out, and then the solar to charge the powerwall.
What I don't want is for the power wall to grab all the solar when the sun comes up, then the power wall becomes fully charged at about the time the car goes out. I can see a scenario where the car doesn't get charged first thing in the morning as the powerwall is charging, then the powerwall becomes full at about the same time as the car goes out and then we export to the grid until the car comes back as we have nowhere to put the surplus power.

The best way round it I can think of is to manually force a charge of the car first thing in the morning so there is no solar left over to charge the power wall.

I am assuming that time based control and balanced mode is how I should have it set up, but do correct me if I am wrong on that.

You don't need any manual override; the system will pretty much do that automatically, as long as the charging circuit is one that is backed up by the Powerwalls.

First, you can set it up with the TOU schedule so it will minimize grid use during peak periods.

Then you can set it up for "self-powered", so the house load will draw from the battery until it gets down to the level you select.

Then you can set the car on a "Scheduled Charging" or "Scheduled Departure" time so it will be charged and heated/cooled when you're ready to leave. You can also set the car to NOT draw from the Powerwall if the Powerwall is below a set level of charge.

 

[charlesj]

... I once showed this to a girlfriend who started doing it but then she got distracted one time and put the car in reverse instead of forward when the light turned green.

Needless to say that was the last time she did that and her thought of my ideas after that too.

Oh, an ex girlfriend.

 

[h2ofun]

It was 25% until last night when I lowered it 15%. Today it's still 100% of solar into battery. I'm at 87% and will hit 100% soon. 100% of all house usage has been from grid today since off peak started at midnight. On the assumption that the system will learn, I'm trying to encourage it to use a lower SOC range by lowering the reserve. So far today there is still no change.

Mine always charges to 100%

 

[sorka]

Mine always charges to 100%

Mine does too during this time of year but now keeping it on advanced mode, it's hitting 100% around 1 pm and then sitting there for hours rather than hitting 100% near peak time. I'm consuming more kwh from the grid and less from the the sun. But folks here are saying I need to leave it this way for a while and let it "learn".

 

[h2ofun]

Mine does too during this time of year but now keeping it on advanced mode, it's hitting 100% around 1 pm and then sitting there for hours rather than hitting 100% near peak time. I'm consuming more kwh from the grid and less from the the sun. But folks here are saying I need to leave it this way for a while and let it "learn".

I hit 100% on all the batteries at like 12. At that point, the solar was doing 100% of the house and rest went back to grid. Now at 3pm, for my peak setting, 100% of solar is going back to grid, and I am 100% running off batteries for 12 to 15 hours. Now, if I were on ev2-a, seems this is idea. Sending solar back at .50kwh. And when I needed some grid, it was .18. What is there not to like?

 

[skepticcyclist]

I hit 100% on all the batteries at like 12. At that point, the solar was doing 100% of the house and rest went back to grid. Now at 3pm, for my peak setting, 100% of solar is going back to grid, and I am 100% running off batteries for 12 to 15 hours. Now, if I were on ev2-a, seems this is idea. Sending solar back at .50kwh. And when I needed some grid, it was .18. What is there not to like?

I hit 100% by 9:00am this time of year. Most of my panels face east because I have a hill to my west and fire code wouldn’t allow them to put more panels on the west side, so my morning production is higher than afternoon.

I also currently have mine on cost savings and moved my peak time to begin at 5:30 instead of 4:00 (1.5 fewer hours of battery use) because the sun is still hitting my panels at 5:30. My battery usually only needs to charge from 80% to 100%. That 20% doesn’t take long.

 

[h2ofun]

I hit 100% by 9:00am this time of year. Most of my panels face east because I have a hill to my west and fire code wouldn’t allow them to put more panels on the west side, so my morning production is higher than afternoon.

I also currently have mine on cost savings and moved my peak time to begin at 5:30 instead of 4:00 (1.5 fewer hours of battery use) because the sun is still hitting my panels at 5:30. My battery usually only needs to charge from 80% to 100%. That 20% doesn’t take long.

capacity of panels? number of batteries?

Mine face south and west, with shade in morning, so I do not get going tell like 10. I just do not see the issue with battery use. Never has crossed my mind.
I get them to 100% as fast as I can. THen solar does house and sends back to grid. At 3 100% batteries and 100% PV back to grid. Sometimes I get some grid in morning, others the batteries continue to do the house 100%. So, I am off grid most of the time. What is there not to like?

 

[skepticcyclist]

capacity of panels? number of batteries?

Mine face south and west, with shade in morning, so I do not get going tell like 10. I just do not see the issue with battery use. Never has crossed my mind.
I get them to 100% as fast as I can. THen solar does house and sends back to grid. At 3 100% batteries and 100% PV back to grid. Sometimes I get some grid in morning, others the batteries continue to do the house 100%. So, I am off grid most of the time. What is there not to like?

I have nineteen 315 watt panels.
7 face south
8 face east
4 face west

1 Tessa battery

here was yesterday’s production and use at 9:00am first image. And total whole day production and use second and third image

 

[Big Dunc]

You don't need any manual override; the system will pretty much do that automatically, as long as the charging circuit is one that is backed up by the Powerwalls.

First, you can set it up with the TOU schedule so it will minimize grid use during peak periods.

Then you can set it up for "self-powered", so the house load will draw from the battery until it gets down to the level you select.

Then you can set the car on a "Scheduled Charging" or "Scheduled Departure" time so it will be charged and heated/cooled when you're ready to leave. You can also set the car to NOT draw from the Powerwall if the Powerwall is below a set level of charge.

Thanks

 

[jhn_]

You can also set the car to NOT draw from the Powerwall if the Powerwall is below a set level of charge.

This setting is only for when there is a grid outage.

I wish there was a setting like this for when grid was available as well...

 

[evmusic]

Mine does too during this time of year but now keeping it on advanced mode, it's hitting 100% around 1 pm and then sitting there for hours rather than hitting 100% near peak time. I'm consuming more kwh from the grid and less from the the sun. But folks here are saying I need to leave it this way for a while and let it "learn".

I read the whole thread and I was thinking on couple of solution. If your battery breakers is in a different load panel than the solar breakers you can install Contactor with your preferred MC (ESP32, R Pi, Arduino etc) with a simple custom code to control it using your mobile phone.

Something like this:

Building my own pseudo(Powerwall)

You have contactors on the DC side to disconnect the battery when the voltage gets too low or too high, that's not overkill. That's best practice to prevent killing your batteries. Are you getting the discharge rate of 280A because the battery is 280Ah? If so, that is incorrect. Ah is a...

teslamotorsclub.com

Also, you can combine your new battery AC disconnect with your car charging setting up some custom modification to the wall charger by synching up with the Solar production.

I am totally in agreement with you that you want to have more finials control of your battery and I think you can have with some tinkering.