Got two PWs last month, thank god for flashlights...

[NuShrike]

Well this morning my powerwalls started discharging at 4am, just because I said in a post they didn't do this.

On TBC-balanced, I've been seeing random pre-drain before the sun gets up. I've set my shoulder to start at 6am -- e.g. off-peak is 1am to 6am,.

I've seen TBC start discharging (in off-peak) starting randomly between 4am to 5am. Generally it's been okay as it seems to be predictive to empty the PWs enough to full-recharge by 12pm.

Yup. You were previously on TBC-CostSavings. Did you switch to TBC-Balanced?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Knowing nothing about Powerwalls......I bet yours went down super low overnight during the outage, then something was triggered at 9am when the AC tried to flip on for the first time that day.

Something like this shouldn't require you to do a full house/battery reboot, but these are early days I guess. Thanks for sharing the details on Tesla's default customer service platform.

 

[Electricfan]

Yup. You were previously on TBC-CostSavings. Did you switch to TBC-Balanced?

No, I was pretty happy with cost savings until this morning. We'll see if I lose anything because of the premature discharge...

At some point I may experiment, especially if it goes crazy and gets totally unpredictable or something. But other than ramping my reserve up to 25% I haven't changed it.

 

[Electricfan]

Knowing nothing about Powerwalls......I bet yours went down super low overnight during the outage, then something was triggered at 9am when the AC tried to flip on for the first time that day.

Something like this shouldn't require you to do a full house/battery reboot, but these are early days I guess. Thanks for sharing the details on Tesla's default customer service platform.

When the power company came to my house to replace a blown transformer in my backyard I told the guy that I had noticed they were trying to get the power back on because I'd seen my power in the house come on briefly three or four times since it initially went out. His eyes kind of went wide and he said really? Like he didn't understand how that could be. I now think that they were NOT efforts by the power company to restart the power, but rather what I was seeing was the powerwalls coming on briefly to check for solar power. If so, they checked about 4 times, then turned themselves off such that I had to do the complete house/solar panel breakers reboot, with high load items cut out by breaker. Hopefully with my new higher reserve level the powerwalls will see the sun again before they can't search for it anymore and die completely.

 

[Hugh-SG]

Unfortunately there is no current way to tie in cloudy weather predictions, so that it charges to a higher level the day before a day of low solar input.

I do think that there needs to be a "Programable Timer Mode" so you can set the PW to cut in and out when you want it to, not when it feels like doing it.

It would also help if AC control units could detect a Grid Power Failure, and do an auto shut down, to let the PW keep the rest of the house running during an outage.

With only 13.5kW in each PW, sounds like you need to move your high draw loads off of the Back Up panel to the Main Panel.

Everyone has different priorities for their power needs, good luck with getting it configured to what you need.

 

[Dan123]

Is there a way to tie powerwall into a home automation system, like Alexa or Smartthings? So that it automatically adjusts AC temperature?

 

[Jigglypuff]

If I knew a hurricane was coming, I'd just up reserve to 100% ahead of time.

There is no in-built method to adjust AC temps. You can probably automate it if you know how to do scripting and can interface with your thermostat/smarthome and power wall APIs. THere may be an app somewhere that does this, but I haven't seen it. Niche market.