Freaky Friday

[ChrisMPK]

Single PW2 installation about 3 weeks old since PTO, existing solar. I'm in TBC cost saving running 1.15.8 and Monday - Thursday things work exactly like they should, with grid usage (critical load panel only) until off-peak (1st screen shot). Starting on Friday for some reason the PW2 refuses to discharge to cover usage during peak, part-peak or off peak. On the weekends it also doesn't cycle and on Monday it's back to usual. Does anyone else have experience with this?

 

[cwied]

Yes, it seems pretty common to run into weird issues on Fridays and weekends with cost-savings mode. I tried adding a fake peak period on weekends (my weekends normally only have off-peak and partial-peak), and it seemed to work better after that, but that could have been coincidence. I believe @arnolddeleon has it working without any artificial changes to schedule. I think both of us reported the issue to powerwall support, so it's also possible Tesla did something to fix it. The other apparent solution is to use Balanced instead of Cost-Saving mode.

Note that my symptoms were a little different than yours. My system actually started charging one Saturday when part-peak started after idling all morning during off-peak.

 

[arnolddeleon]

Yes, it seems pretty common to run into weird issues on Fridays and weekends with cost-savings mode. I tried adding a fake peak period on weekends (my weekends normally only have off-peak and partial-peak), and it seemed to work better after that, but that could have been coincidence. I believe @arnolddeleon has it working without any artificial changes to schedule. I think both of us reported the issue to powerwall support, so it's also possible Tesla did something to fix it. The other apparent solution is to use Balanced instead of Cost-Saving mode.

Note that my symptoms were a little different than yours. My system actually started charging one Saturday when part-peak started after idling all morning during off-peak.

@cwied is correct, I have been running with a straight configuration (PG&E E-6, no fake entries), cost saving mode for almost two weeks now and it has been running pretty well. The first week or so I when I got TBC I experienced the weird Friday/weekend issues. I reported my issues to Tesla and things have been pretty good since. It's unclear if they changed anything or not. Minor issues that I've seen. Starting to discharge during part peak instead of waiting for peak (this I suspect is just a forecasting challenge, there are days where it would make sense to discharge early to maximize savings and there are days when it make sense to hold on to the charge until peak). There are days where it seems that the PW2 don't charge fully. It's hard to be sure because I don't have a log of the state of charge yet. This is also a bit a of a forecasting challenge. If the PW doesn't full charge during the off peak it has to decide if it is worth charging during part peak. It doesn't make sense to charge during part peak if you are doing to discharge the same juice during the other part peak window.

 

[lance.cazeault]

I had similar issues and it looks like after several weeks that TESLA finally figured out where the bug was and an resolution to get the system to working normally.

I received the call from a TESLA rep on Friday afternoon on what they finally found (after this had been going on for over 4 weeks.

I was told that they found a bug in how you need to edit the times for the weekend. For whatever the reason is, if you enter the weekday schedule and weekend schedule at the same time, it will act all screwy.

From what the rep advised me to do, enter your weekday schedule, save and exit the app (exiting may not be absolutely required here, but better to do more than less)
Then go back into the system, and make the changes to the weekend time schedule, save and exit the app. (exiting is required this time)

Once I followed those procedures, this past weekend worked perfectly.

FYI (for comparison to the issues)
The way my system was operating:

On Fridays, PW would start charging at sunrise and charge until the start of my Shoulder (Part Peak) period (0800)
It would charge a little bit more later in the day during the Shoulder period (1300-1530) -- may or may not reach 100%
AT 1530 (start of my PEAK period) - it would not discharge

On Saturdays, the PW would not discharge during the Peak period - in fact, it would start charging during the PEAK

On Sundays, the PW began discharging at 0000 and would continue to discharge until it reached the RESERVE level. The PW would not charge at all on Sundays.

Mondays - Thursdays: System operated as designed.

As I said, this weekend the system worked as I expected it to work, will continue to monitor and advise if there are further issues.

 

[cwied]

I can confirm that what you described would explain why my system is working now. The last thing I did was to change just the weekend schedule.

 

[ChrisMPK]

This pretty closely describes what I'm seeing. I'll try editing the weekend schedule and see if it is resolved this Friday.

 

[ChrisMPK]

I edited the TOU pricing during the week and Friday worked normally, then on Saturday the battery refused to charge despite an abundance of excess solar during part-peak. The battery actually discharged at the beginning of part-peak until it hit the reserve limit. Looks like it is doing the same thing today (Sunday). I'm switching to backup to see if I can convince it to charge today.

 

[Sherlo]

Realize this thread is dated but came up with search that seems to match problem having with PWs.

Weekends, particularly Sundays PWs will start discharging during off peak...today at noon instead of 3 pm. Just seeing if this is still a known issue or if anyone has any recent similar problem. Thanks