How to add Tesla Gateway?

[vinny84]

I own solar panels installed on my roof. It is a 12 kWh system (37 LG panels). I have enlighten envoy that tracks production. I am wondering if there is a way for me to track production of my system under Tesla app. Is this done by adding Tesla gateway? I figured Tesla doesn't install standalone gateway. Will I be able to order a 1 kWh system from Tesla and monitor all my existing panels along with the new Tesla panels?

 

[carterm2]

I have Tesla Solar... they gave me a little black box... 1/2 of the system is installed and working. Long story.

Absolutely no idea why the Tesla App does not show anything. No help from Tesla.

I am using M Professional, an iPhone app made by Delta, the maker of the inverters that were installed.

Delta's app works.

 

[BrettS]

I own solar panels installed on my roof. It is a 12 kWh system (37 LG panels). I have enlighten envoy that tracks production. I am wondering if there is a way for me to track production of my system under Tesla app. Is this done by adding Tesla gateway? I figured Tesla doesn't install standalone gateway. Will I be able to order a 1 kWh system from Tesla and monitor all my existing panels along with the new Tesla panels?

It’s a little confusing because tesla actually installs two devices called gateways. One is a little black box for solar only installs. This tracks the solar usage by talking to the inverter. So if you installed a tesla solar only system it would only report production for the inverter that tesla installed.

The other gateway is a big electrical panel looking thing and that is used for installs with powerwalls. That uses CT’s to monitor solar production and that would track production for all of your solar, however the only way to get that gateway is to have powerwalls installed.

However, that said, why do you want to track production using the tesla app? To be totally honest the tesla app isn’t really the best monitoring platform. You can’t see per panel data and it’s proprietary, so there’s no way to tie it in to other systems. There are much better systems to use for tracking solar production.

 

[vinny84]

It’s a little confusing because tesla actually installs two devices called gateways. One is a little black box for solar only installs. This tracks the solar usage by talking to the inverter. So if you installed a tesla solar only system it would only report production for the inverter that tesla installed.

The other gateway is a big electrical panel looking thing and that is used for installs with powerwalls. That uses CT’s to monitor solar production and that would track production for all of your solar, however the only way to get that gateway is to have powerwalls installed.

However, that said, why do you want to track production using the tesla app? To be totally honest the tesla app isn’t really the best monitoring platform. You can’t see per panel data and it’s proprietary, so there’s no way to tie it in to other systems. There are much better systems to use for tracking solar production.

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

I guess I will drop the tesla gateway idea and stick with enphase for now.

 

[carterm2]

It’s a little confusing because tesla actually installs two devices called gateways. One is a little black box for solar only installs. This tracks the solar usage by talking to the inverter. So if you installed a tesla solar only system it would only report production for the inverter that tesla installed.

The other gateway is a big electrical panel looking thing and that is used for installs with powerwalls. That uses CT’s to monitor solar production and that would track production for all of your solar, however the only way to get that gateway is to have powerwalls installed.

However, that said, why do you want to track production using the tesla app? To be totally honest the tesla app isn’t really the best monitoring platform. You can’t see per panel data and it’s proprietary, so there’s no way to tie it in to other systems. There are much better systems to use for tracking solar production.

What systems are best for tracking solar production? (I have a solar panel system being installed by Tesla.)

 

[charlesj]

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

I guess I will drop the tesla gateway idea and stick with enphase for now.

Enphase has an iPhone app you can download and monitor. I have it.

 

[niveknow]

It’s a little confusing because tesla actually installs two devices called gateways. One is a little black box for solar only installs. This tracks the solar usage by talking to the inverter. So if you installed a tesla solar only system it would only report production for the inverter that tesla installed.

The other gateway is a big electrical panel looking thing and that is used for installs with powerwalls. That uses CT’s to monitor solar production and that would track production for all of your solar, however the only way to get that gateway is to have powerwalls installed.

However, that said, why do you want to track production using the tesla app? To be totally honest the tesla app isn’t really the best monitoring platform. You can’t see per panel data and it’s proprietary, so there’s no way to tie it in to other systems. There are much better systems to use for tracking solar production.

Re: that little black gateway. I have a solar + PW system and was provided the little box, but it's literally sitting unplugged on my desk and I'm still getting full data from the Tesla app on my system. I now know that's because I'm communicating directly with the GW2 that came with my PWs. If that's the case, what is the real use/need for the black box?

 

[BrettS]

Re: that little black gateway. I have a solar + PW system and was provided the little box, but it's literally sitting unplugged on my desk and I'm still getting full data from the Tesla app on my system. I now know that's because I'm communicating directly with the GW2 that came with my PWs. If that's the case, what is the real use/need for the black box?

In a powerwall only system I don’t think it’s necessary. In fact, mine has turned off and disconnected since the day after they installed my system. The little black box gateway will report solar production to tesla directly from the inverters, but it’s not available to you through the tesla app at all if you have a powerwall system. With a powerwall system the app gets it’s solar production data from the big grey electrical panel gateway which has it’s own CT’s to measure the solar production data.

At one point Tesla would also forward the data from the inverters (through the little black box gateway) to SolarEdge so you could get a SolarEdge account and see your inverter data there, but it seems like recently Tesla stopped sending that data to SolarEdge, so if you want to get your inverter data through the SolarEdge app you need to connect your inverters to an ethernet connection.

 

[wjgjr]

In a powerwall only system I don’t think it’s necessary. In fact, mine has turned off and disconnected since the day after they installed my system. The little black box gateway will report solar production to tesla directly from the inverters, but it’s not available to you through the tesla app at all if you have a powerwall system. With a powerwall system the app gets it’s solar production data from the big grey electrical panel gateway which has it’s own CT’s to measure the solar production data.

At one point Tesla would also forward the data from the inverters (through the little black box gateway) to SolarEdge so you could get a SolarEdge account and see your inverter data there, but it seems like recently Tesla stopped sending that data to SolarEdge, so if you want to get your inverter data through the SolarEdge app you need to connect your inverters to an ethernet connection.

The only thing it might be useful for is some diagnostics it potentially collects either differently or in the case of an issue with the TEG. In any case, Tesla did ask us to plug it in (and we have a Delta inverter) so we did. I agree that it does not provide any obvious benefit when a TEG is present and does not appear to be necessary for normal operation.

 

[jjrandorin]

Re: that little black gateway. I have a solar + PW system and was provided the little box, but it's literally sitting unplugged on my desk and I'm still getting full data from the Tesla app on my system. I now know that's because I'm communicating directly with the GW2 that came with my PWs. If that's the case, what is the real use/need for the black box?

I was told that the little black box is how they communicate directly with the inverters for things like firmware updates, etc. They will likely still want it plugged in.

Somewhat interesting fact about the "little black monitoring box". On my street, both me both my neighbors have solar city / tesla systems on our roof. I had the solar city "little white box" and the power brick went out on it. I decided to call tesla and let them know, mostly because I just wanted a new one (I am fully aware I likely could have just asked them to send me a power cord).

Anyway, during the 3 weeks or so it took them to send it to me, I still received data in the app (of course, I have powerwalls, so was expecting this).

What I was NOT expecting was the difficulty of getting the new box synced up with my inverters. Turns out that, the system is designed that it will look for "the closest" connection on that zigbee box. My neighbors connection box might have been closer to my system than my own, so my system jumped on my neighbors zigbee to keep connecting. Even after I activated my own new tesla zigbee little black box gateway, it still connects to my neighbors. Even after i verified with tesla that my own is activated, and even after. I relocated it to within about 10 feet on the inside wall from my inverter.... still on my neighbors.

The "interesting" thing is that the inverters look for any connection they can join, and since its a zigbee connection, it will jump on one it can see, even if its not "yours".

I havent been able to get it to sync back up on my gateway at all, even after working with tesla and power cycling it a certain way (and them even power cycling my neighbors zigbee gateway during my powercycle, since it wants to jump on the first one it finds after reboot.).

shrug... lol

 

[BrettS]

What I was NOT expecting was the difficulty of getting the new box synced up with my inverters. Turns out that, the system is designed that it will look for "the closest" connection on that zigbee box. My neighbors connection box might have been closer to my system than my own, so my system jumped on my neighbors zigbee to keep connecting. Even after I activated my own new tesla zigbee little black box gateway, it still connects to my neighbors. Even after i verified with tesla that my own is activated, and even after. I relocated it to within about 10 feet on the inside wall from my inverter.... still on my neighbors.

That’s really interesting. I guess I assumed all along that the two devices were manually paired with each other. I didn’t realize that the inverters just connected to the first device they could find.