Any way to set Tesla app to Self powered from 8am-noon and TBC-cost saving rest of time?

[Dukeybootie]

...other than doing it manually every day, that is?

I cannot find another way to get the exact behavior I want out of the Powerwalls:

TBC-cost saving from 2pm-8am with peak 2pm-8pm
Use solar to power home and recharge Powerwalls from 8am-2pm, with excess sent to grid
Zero grid use between 8am-8pm

Appreciate any ideas the forum might have.

 

[jhn_]

If you have enough Powerwalls to cover your daily usage and set them to self-powered then this is exactly what happens. They charge in the morning until full then, excess goes to grid while your home runs on solar. If the solar dips you use power from the Powerwalls to compensate. Once the sun goes down you continue to run on the Powerwalls until the sun comes up the next morning and the solar starts recharging the powerwalls. As long as you don’t deplete them through the night then you are good and nothing from the grid.

 

[h2ofun]

If you have enough Powerwalls to cover your daily usage and set them to self-powered then this is exactly what happens. They charge in the morning until full then, excess goes to grid while your home runs on solar. If the solar dips you use power from the Powerwalls to compensate. Once the sun goes down you continue to run on the Powerwalls until the sun comes up the next morning and the solar starts recharging the powerwalls. As long as you don’t deplete them through the night then you are good and nothing from the grid.

So, I am getting ready to use my new PW's also.

So, I had been assuming advanced, time of use was the best. Was going to set for 3 pm to 12 pm.

But, I have 5 PW's, so if there is sun, which not take with clouds, I might have enough to run as you suggest. So is another option to use self-powered, and set lets say to 20%. Then it would only pull from the grid if there is not enough solar, and or batteries?

 

[jhn_]

Yeah, I’m running self-powered on three Powerwalls with a 33% backup reserve. So in practice that means two powerwalls worth of power carry me forward through the night until the next day of solar with one powerwall worth of “backup” power if the grid goes down.

 

[h2ofun]

Yeah, I’m running self-powered on three Powerwalls with a 33% backup reserve. So in practice that means two powerwalls worth of power carry me forward through the night until the next day of solar with one powerwall worth of “backup” power if the grid goes down.

I just changed mine to 20% for the heck of it. What I am seeing from watching my energy use is the house takes very little continuous. But, the heat pumps take a lot continuous. So with a power outage, kicking back on heating, or cooling, would seem to make the batteries last a long time. I like having my heat pumps on a separate gateway and batteries since do not want to lose my refrig as my first priority.

 

[wwhitney]

I cannot find another way to get the exact behavior I want out of the Powerwalls:

TBC-cost saving from 2pm-8am with peak 2pm-8pm
Use solar to power home and recharge Powerwalls from 8am-2pm, with excess sent to grid
Zero grid use between 8am-8pm

The request in your subject line does not match what you listed above. With "self-powered from 8 am to noon" but with cost savings mode set with peak from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., then from noon to 2 p.m., cost savings mode off peak, the system will preferentially run the house loads from the grid, and charge the Powerwalls from solar. So you won't achieve "zero grid use" from noon to the 2 p.m.

If you want zero grid use from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m, and no Powerwall discharge from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., just using the grid, then you want something like self-powered from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and backup only from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. (or cost savings mode, but as that's off peak, the Powerwalls shouldn't discharge either way).

As to the basic question, I don't believe Tesla offers you the ability to set up automatic mode changes based on a time schedule. You could try use Cost Savings Mode but setting the peak time from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m, that should give you "zero grid use between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m."

Cheers, Wayne

 

[Dukeybootie]

If you have enough Powerwalls to cover your daily usage and set them to self-powered then this is exactly what happens. They charge in the morning until full then, excess goes to grid while your home runs on solar. If the solar dips you use power from the Powerwalls to compensate. Once the sun goes down you continue to run on the Powerwalls until the sun comes up the next morning and the solar starts recharging the powerwalls. As long as you don’t deplete them through the night then you are good and nothing from the grid.

I don't want any PW discharge between 8pm-8am so this would not meet my criteria.

 

[Dukeybootie]

The request in your subject line does not match what you listed above. With "self-powered from 8 am to noon" but with cost savings mode set with peak from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., then from noon to 2 p.m., cost savings mode off peak, the system will preferentially run the house loads from the grid, and charge the Powerwalls from solar. So you won't achieve "zero grid use" from noon to the 2 p.m.

If you want zero grid use from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m, and no Powerwall discharge from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., just using the grid, then you want something like self-powered from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and backup only from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. (or cost savings mode, but as that's off peak, the Powerwalls shouldn't discharge either way).

As to the basic question, I don't believe Tesla offers you the ability to set up automatic mode changes based on a time schedule. You could try use Cost Savings Mode but setting the peak time from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m, that should give you "zero grid use between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m."

Cheers, Wayne

Apologies, I should have written "self-powered from 8am to 2pm" as you pointed out.

Otherwise, I still want TBC-cost savings from 2pm-8pm so I can send 100% of solar to the grid for max credits, while running the house off the Powerwalls during that time.

TBC-cost savings starting at 8am would prevent the Powerwalls from recharging, so can't do that.

I tried TBC-cost savings with start times around 11am, but I get unpredictable behavior where the gateway stops charging the Powerwalls before full capacity, even before 11am. Hence my current manual workaround.

 

[wwhitney]

Have you tried Cost Savings with 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. as Peak, and 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. as Off Peak? That makes 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. "Part Peak", and maybe the algorithm will be clever enough to do what you want.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[wjgjr]

If you cannot do it with the Tesla app, search the forums for smartthings or hubitat - there is an app that was developed (by somebody who is also a member) that I believe will allow you to automate the mode changes at specific times. There might also be other code out there, or you can directly access the API to do so if you want to program it yourself. This is not officially supported, so the API could change (and a recent change to the login process is an example.)

 

[getakey]

I don't want any PW discharge between 8pm-8am so this would not meet my criteria.

if you set your Peak to end at 8pm, PWs will not discharge from 8pm to 8am

 

[Dukeybootie]

Have you tried Cost Savings with 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. as Peak, and 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. as Off Peak? That makes 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. "Part Peak", and maybe the algorithm will be clever enough to do what you want.

Cheers, Wayne

That was actually the first thing I tried. Shoulder behavior was super confusing and definitely did not bother recharging the Powerwalls with solar. Anyone out there who can explain shoulder behavior accurately?

 

[Dukeybootie]

if you set your Peak to end at 8pm, PWs will not discharge from 8pm to 8am

Understood, I was replying to a post that suggested using self-powered mode.

 

[getakey]

That was actually the first thing I tried. Shoulder behavior was super confusing and definitely did not bother recharging the Powerwalls with solar. Anyone out there who can explain shoulder behavior accurately?

What I saw with Shoulder is that on Friday's the PWs would discharge during Shoulder to get SOC lower for the longer Off Peak periods on the weekend. There were some other odd things that I don't remember the details. I didn't like this so I just made everything other than Peak equal Off Peak in Cost Savings mode. Now my PWs only discharge during Peak and only charge before Peak starts. My Peak is 2pm to 9pm under EVA-1

 

[miimura]

That was actually the first thing I tried. Shoulder behavior was super confusing and definitely did not bother recharging the Powerwalls with solar. Anyone out there who can explain shoulder behavior accurately?

Did you try TBC-Balanced with 8am to 2pm defined as Part-Peak (shoulder)? If I have enough solar generation, it used to act more or less like Self Powered during that period.

Example from 2018 when I was on PG&E EV-A

 

[bob_p]

Our system has 15.4KW of solar panels and 4 PowerWalls, and provides about 50% of our home power for the year.

We're currently under a Free Nights plan, providing us free electricity between 9PM to 9AM, and charging us $.20/KWh between 9AM to 9PM.

Our system is configured for Advanced Time-Based Control in Cost Saving mode with 35% reserve for unplanned power outages and 9AM-9PM set as peak with 9PM to 9AM as off-peak.

In 2019 (before solar panels), we used 42.6MWh of electricity.

Last year, with the solar panels/PWs, we reduced that to 19.5MWh of grid power (reduced EV charging due to COVID also helped).

Of that, we used only 4.3MWh of grid power during the peak period (9AM-9PM). If we had been under the free nights plan for the entire year, we would have reduced our annual electricity cost from $4.7K to $1.2K.

During the peak period (9AM-9PM), the system will power our house as much as possible from solar or PowerWalls, charging the PowerWalls with excess solar, and then sending excess solar power to the grid when the PowerWalls are full.

During the off-peak period (9PM-9AM), while you would expect the system to stop using the PowerWalls completely - that's not what happens. Instead, the software appears to project how much solar power will be generated the next day, and will draw power from the PowerWalls overnight to make space to store the excess solar power for the next day.

Most of the time, this seems to work OK - and it's probably better to discharge/charge the PowerWalls some each day, than letting them sit at close to full charge for days...

Though I wish there was a setting to turn this "feature" off and run grid-only during the "off peak" period - when the off peak grid power is free...

 

[hslee]

Other than using some sort of automation using the APIs, I don't think you can do granular behavior changes with the PW that some of us would like or think we need. I have tried various ways to get to send power back to the grid and just use the PW, etc. But I couldn't get it to work exactly that way I wanted it to. The nice aspect of the machine learning algorithms is that you don't have to think about it. However, it does feel like a black box. I see patterns of grid usage vs PW that doesn't make a lot of sense to ME at times but it probably does make sense overall.

I suspect some of the "odd" behavior could be related to ensuring the longevity of the battery as well - no proof points around this but it would make sense given that they have a warranty around it.

I have for now just using 1 setting advanced-cost saving-balanced. In general, I get what I need but I am recording and watching it to better understand how it works if possible.

 

[jjrandorin]

If you cannot do it with the Tesla app, search the forums for smartthings or hubitat - there is an app that was developed (by somebody who is also a member) that I believe will allow you to automate the mode changes at specific times. There might also be other code out there, or you can directly access the API to do so if you want to program it yourself. This is not officially supported, so the API could change (and a recent change to the login process is an example.)

Here is a link to the thread which discusses the app / smarthings solution:

Powerwall Manager SmartApp for SmartThings

I happen to stumble upon a Powerwall Manager SmartApp for Samsung SmartThings by Darwin's Den. I installed the app to our home SmartThings hub and it seems to work fine. Tesla Powerwall Manager app for the SmartThings Hub I am tinkering with it to see how well it works with my exisitng home...

teslamotorsclub.com

That thread also includes a link to the thread the creator of the app started, I think. I believe what that app allows one to do is basically automate changing from self powered mode to backup only mode, but I dont know the specifics since I dont use it personally.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Since there's currently no Scheduled Self-Powered mode, we use Advanced TBC Balanced and adjust the scheduled rate periods. We set peak period to be the same as our utility's schedule but set part-peak to be much longer so that that we can programmatically be self-powered about 22 hours a day. We then have off-peak set for a couple hours a day. This allows us to charge a car or two at off-peak rates and power the house via Powerwalls and solar for the rest of the day. Now that the days are getting longer and I'm working from home, we've changed back to charging another car right before solar noon so it is always charged from solar and decreases grid usage even more.

I know there are apps like @jjrandorin mentions above but by just changing our TBC time periods, we're able to accomplish what we want.

 

[Dukeybootie]

Did you try TBC-Balanced with 8am to 2pm defined as Part-Peak (shoulder)? If I have enough solar generation, it used to act more or less like Self Powered during that period.

Example from 2018 when I was on PG&E EV-A

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Thanks for the suggestion -- will try this for a few days. It looks like behavior during peak is what I want (with all solar being sent to grid and the home running off PW) so this may be the best option. Although it looks like there is still some grid use during the early shoulder period? Wonder if it would be possible to nix that as well.