Misbehaving Powerwall2?

[oleboyredw]

I’ve had new behaviour on my Powerwall2 today, and possibly yesterday, but not checked out the later properly yet. I emailed Powerwall support for advice, but had no response as yet so I thought I’d ask to see if anybody else has seen this?

Config is a Powerwall2 and a gen 1 gateway, not a backup config. Peak time is 07:30-02:30.

So, this morning during my Peak Time period the sun was shining, the app was reporting the battery was at 1%. Solar array was generating more than my house was using so I was expecting the battery to charge. However, instead of going to the Powerwall2 the excess was going to the grid. This continued for at least three hours then switched to charging the Powerwall. I believe a similar thing happened yesterday looking at the graphs, although it might have been longer.

Over the weekend I’ll download the detailed data and check to see if I’m right and the durations.

Part way thought the morning I powered cycled the gateway and Powerwall to see if that made any difference. There was not an immediate effect.

Any suggestions? Most irritating as this results in me sending power to the grid at 4p a unit (that could have been stored in the battery) then buying sone back later at four times the price!

I have a suspicion this has happened since going to 1.41.0, which added to losing wifi connection at 1.40.1 and lack of response from Powerwall support on both problems is wearing a bit thin.

I’ve attached a screen ahot of what I saw on the app (I watched this for quite a while).

 

[miimura]

If you click the bars at the top right of that screen you will see the power flow chart. The intra-day chat will show exactly what the system was doing though the day. Your system may be stuck in Standby and not working properly. If you have a Reset button on your Gateway, I would try that. Definitely ring Powerwall Support to get it sorted.

 

[jakestgermain]

I’ve had new behaviour on my Powerwall2 today, and possibly yesterday, but not checked out the later properly yet. I emailed Powerwall support for advice, but had no response as yet so I thought I’d ask to see if anybody else has seen this?

Config is a Powerwall2 and a gen 1 gateway, not a backup config. Peak time is 07:30-02:30.

So, this morning during my Peak Time period the sun was shining, the app was reporting the battery was at 1%. Solar array was generating more than my house was using so I was expecting the battery to charge. However, instead of going to the Powerwall2 the excess was going to the grid. This continued for at least three hours then switched to charging the Powerwall. I believe a similar thing happened yesterday looking at the graphs, although it might have been longer.

Over the weekend I’ll download the detailed data and check to see if I’m right and the durations.

Part way thought the morning I powered cycled the gateway and Powerwall to see if that made any difference. There was not an immediate effect.

Any suggestions? Most irritating as this results in me sending power to the grid at 4p a unit (that could have been stored in the battery) then buying sone back later at four times the price!

I have a suspicion this has happened since going to 1.41.0, which added to losing wifi connection at 1.40.1 and lack of response from Powerwall support on both problems is wearing a bit thin.

I’ve attached a screen ahot of what I saw on the app (I watched this for quite a while).

What is powerwall supports email?

 

[eml2]

I also saw the same thing this week, except it happened during partial-peak. My PW was set to TBC-Balanced. My partial-peak is between 7a-11a (and 7p-11p). At 8 am, when solar > load, I expect the excess solar goes to PW, and it did last week. But this past Tues, it exported to grid instead. At that time, SoC was about 30%. After exporting excess solar to grid for more than 1 hour, I decided to switch to Self-powered and it charged PW shortly after.

It happened again the next day and I had to switch it to Self-powered for it to charge PW with excess solar.

My PW is on 1.41.0.

 

[miimura]

What is powerwall supports email?

Go to the Tesla web site under support and you should be able to find the support contact information for your country. I have never received a response to e-mail so I just go old school and call them on the telephone.

 

[JohnRatsey]

During the past week I've seen the same behaviour of solar generation going to the grid before the battery is fully charged. It happened on a large scale on 15th / 16th Oct and on a small scale before / since. I wonder if the PW had been confused by several days of very low solar generation.

You should be able to loot through the plots at PVoutput if you select extended data (right-most blob under the date selector).

On 16th I phoned Tesla support and eventually got through to a lady who said that the PW was working correctly but the firmware had just been updated. I insisted that it wasn't working correctly and she agreed to refer the case to the technical people. I note that jack77 in Australia has observed similar misbehaviour.

I had first tried to send an email and the old address of [email protected] bounced back. I mentioned that to the lady and she said that the UK support email address is now [email protected] .

This misbehaviour reminded me to apply for the Octopus Go tariff (I'm already with Octopus but was on Economy 7). The switch was very straightforward and the low tariff should help the battery justify the cost.

 

[JohnRatsey]

After exporting excess solar to grid for more than 1 hour, I decided to switch to Self-powered and it charged PW shortly after.

After seeing the same problem today of solar generation going to the grid even though the battery is half empty I took your advice and at 10.30 switched from Advanced to Self-powered. The battery immediately started charging (as I read somewhere else, there is no longer a sgnificant delay in applying changes made in the app). At 10.45 I switched back to Advanced and the battery and export to the grid resumed so at 11.10 I switched to Self-Powered.

This isn't simple misbehaving but a serious bug in the Advanced mode.

 

[oleboyredw]

So, I’d emailed [email protected] the details I shared here.

I also emailed them a couple of weeks ago because the Powerwall Gateway had stopped being visible on my wifi. That means my PVoutput info no longer contains the extended data. I’ll place a telephone call to tge UK support number on Monday.

My ‘misbehaving’ was meant as a bit of an understatement as I was not sure if it was just my system or the app. I’m convinced this behaviour has changed significantly very recently.

 

[JohnRatsey]

My ‘misbehaving’ was meant as a bit of an understatement as I was not sure if it was just my system or the app. I’m convinced this behaviour has changed significantly very recently.

Looking at my PVOutput graphs there has been some unexpected export every day since 6th October although 15th/16th were the worst. I'm wondering if low solar generation and consequent off-peak charging have been a factor in getting the PW confused. Firmware 1.41 might be the cause. I see that the release notes say:
"Added support for utility grid connections in Switzerland.
Improved energy performance."

 

[JohnRatsey]

I sent an email to Tesla energy support last Saturday with more info about what I consider to be misbehaviour. I mentioned switching the mode to Cost-Saving in order to get the battery to charge from solar and then switching back to Advanced at the end of the day. This resulted in the following advice:

Please note that this is not recommended by Tesla, since it will confuse the Algorithm of the program for the Time Based Control.

Tesla recommends to change the mode after setting Advanced – Time Based Control only once or twice a year. The reason is that the program is basing its decisions on household habits as studied in the last four months.

If the mode is constantly changed, it will confuse the algorithm to start collecting data again each time the mode is changed.

I can see no justification for clearing the historical data if the mode is switched. If the user considers that circumstances have changed and the learning should restart then it would make more sense to provide a button for this. The advice also reveals another deficiency in the solftware as household consumption changes seasonally but the algorithm will be biased towards the past, eg still thinking winter when spring arrives.

 

[JohnRatsey]

I see that my firmware is now at 1.41.2. I'm sure it was it 1.41 earlier today. Have Tesla rolled out a bug fix?

 

[oleboyredw]

Just spotted my powerwall2 has been upgraded to 1.41.2. Hoping Powerwall gets priority over grid back again. Sadly, due to it being a rainy miserable day I’ll have to wait to see.

 

[Pale_Rider]

During the past week I've seen the same behaviour of solar generation going to the grid before the battery is fully charged. It happened on a large scale on 15th / 16th Oct and on a small scale before / since. I wonder if the PW had been confused by several days of very low solar generation.
View attachment 467769 View attachment 467770
You should be able to loot through the plots at PVoutput if you select extended data (right-most blob under the date selector).

On 16th I phoned Tesla support and eventually got through to a lady who said that the PW was working correctly but the firmware had just been updated. I insisted that it wasn't working correctly and she agreed to refer the case to the technical people. I note that jack77 in Australia has observed similar misbehaviour.

I had first tried to send an email and the old address of [email protected] bounced back. I mentioned that to the lady and she said that the UK support email address is now [email protected] .

This misbehaviour reminded me to apply for the Octopus Go tariff (I'm already with Octopus but was on Economy 7). The switch was very straightforward and the low tariff should help the battery justify the cost.

How are you getting your Powerwall info into pvoutput?

 

[JohnRatsey]

How are you getting your Powerwall info into pvoutput?

By follwing the instructions - probably these and/or these. I'm using an old Windows tablet which runs the software to interrogate the Powerwall's API and upload the values to PVOutput. There might now be a version which runs on other hardware such as the Raspberry Pi.

It also costs AU$20 per year to host this extended data at PVOutput but I consider this to be money well spent if only for the timed-based graph of battery charge - the Tesla app only shows the instantaneous value of SoC (after the application of the fudge factor which turns 5% in battery into 0% in the app - the point where the battery goes into standby).