Where do I go to find "Tesla chat"? I don't have the charge from grid option stillThank you for your comments. I was just able to get Tesla Chat to "fix" my settings too and it immediately showed up in the app while we were chatting (it actually set itself to everything which I will monitor).
At first I confused the Tesla person because I claimed I did not have Permission to Export, which they confirmed that I should NOT have it, since I had PTOs. Then when I explained what I wanted to do they stated I needed the Energy Exports option and then went off to investigate why my system did not show the option. Based on many other comments in this thread I was sweating bullets they would come back and tell me why I was not going to get that option. After about 3 minutes they came back asking me to verify it was on the app, and it was.
So now in theory I have all the tools I need to maximize my Powerwalls and solar systems to provide reliability, environmental stewardship and lowest cost (at least some reasonable combination of the three).
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New Powerwall Advanced Options [Toggles for charging from and discharging to grid from powerwalls]
- Thread starter dailo
- Start date
I'm skeptical (no pun intended) that you will get that function tomorrow, but I hope you do
skepticcyclist
Member
skepticcyclist
Member
Yeah. I'm not holding my breath. At least I know they activated it on their end. Now it is just a matter of their system allowing it to go through
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
Some superficial observations from my very limited testing today:
Going forward though I am going to have to watch this closer and see if Time Base Control can actually figure out how to keep me from drawing power during peak.
- I have two PW2s and when set to Export Everything, the drain at 9.9 kW no matter what, all the way to the reserve
- I am running Time Based and I know it generally takes several days to learn your patterns. Based on the above statement I don't think these two modes communicate with each other. When my PWs hit the reserve I was left with nothing to power the house so it used grid power
- Changing the reserve value took about 1/2 hour to actually be adopted.
- Toggling Export Everything/Solar happens immediately
Going forward though I am going to have to watch this closer and see if Time Base Control can actually figure out how to keep me from drawing power during peak.
Wouldn't it be nice if it could calculate the discharge rate so that it would hit your Reserve at the end of the Peak window? Alternatively, ask you to give a kW discharge rate?
I noticed the same thing as well, except mine will discharge up to the limit of the breaker. 80A breaker in my case so it will max out grid and PW up to about 14.4kW. I use the API to toggle the setting so that it switches back to solar once it gets below 60%. Not currently using the feature as I should have enough credit to last me to my true up.
Interesting, I have (2) PW2s and they discharge maxing out solar plus PWs at about 3 kW. How much solar do you have? I wonder if the PWs are limiting the export to the max solar only rate. I have only 2.7 kW of solar.
I see the same behavior, but I'm on NEM1. If you're on NEM2, then that's less efficient that exporting less and never importing. I see that in the rate plan set up you can set different buy/sell rates; one would hope that making the buy rate higher than the sell rate would get the algorithm to export less to avoid the later peak grid imports, but I haven't checked.
Cheers, Wayne
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
I'll give that a try. Maybe change them by 10% to factor in the losses. I am thinking maybe I should bring down the sell rate vs increasing the buy rate. The buy rate is correct, but the sell rate is actually lower because that is where the losses occur. But then of course there are no losses for the solar component ...
I suspect the algo they are using is very limited. Hopefully it will improve over time.
SoundDaTrumpet
Member
I have (2) PW2s as well. The discharge to grid for my system is limited to 3.9kW which rounds out to match the 3.86kW SMA solar string inverter. Pre-existing solar from 2016 and in 2019 Tesla installed PW2s & original gateway.
Having a small PV array, nowhere near the max output capability of 10kW. The PW2s will discharge >3.9kW to power the home. Grid rate shows a solid -3.9 kW.
I am curious about the technical reasons for the 3.9kW limit. Did PG&E think I’d never discharge the PWs beyond feeding in PV? Did Tesla when I called help desk go on the assumption that PG&E didn’t size the transformers for a larger feed-in current? Maybe Tesla can set me to 10kW if requested? SGIP incentive program reward dollar amount is calculated based upon discharge rate capability for 2 hours at 10kW and reduce incentive from 2-4 hours. All this doesn’t match up, but might never will nor need to.
I customized the Utility Rate Plan from 2-9pm (EV-A) to a narrow window of 5:30-9pm to keep the SOC as high as possible into the night. I figure it’s better to hit the reserve (20%) at end of peak period than hitting the reserve before I had chance to finish dinner for fear of a power outage. 20% reserve should be enough to put the family down to bed. Despite voluntarily giving away backup power, it’s a win-win as I’m not going full throttle discharge (3.9kW vs 10kW), likely stressing the batteries, and this strategy pretty much eliminates the guesswork that I am maximizing cost savings — because I will be at my reserve without a doubt by 9pm. If all goes well, I will not owe PG&E anything at true-up for the 1st time AND my small PV + PW system pays for itself in under 7 years. (SGIP Step 2 recipient here.)
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skepticcyclist
Member
Those advanced options still haven’t appeared. Looks like the system won’t allow me access.
Totally guessing I suspect it has to do with the PTO agreement, and transformer sizing limitations. PGE may not have evaluated the transformer for the combined backfeed of the PV output plus the Powerwalls at 5 kW each.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
Both my total max solar and the 2 PWs are both around 10 kW. No idea what is regulating the output but I am pretty sure its the Tesla Gateway as PG&E can only tell you what size system they will support. They cannot control your PW outside of emergency Rule 21 shutdowns which I don't think they have ever used to my knowledge.
Interesting, not sure whether its regulated by the system size or export control. It would be interesting to see if the commissioning wizard shows something about this.
I've been using it for weeks. I guess technically I'm not allowed to via ITC. I'm still confused if NEM2 explicitly prohibits it. Oh well, on EV-TOU plan, don't see how they would know it's PWs charging at 12:00AM vs my car
skepticcyclist
Member
skepticcyclist
Member
On with Chat again. They said it is activated on their end. Don't know why it isn't showing up on my APP
ETA; That guy on chat talked to the dev team and he told me that there is a software issue they are aware of that prevents some from seeing these advanced settings. They are working on it.
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Congratulations. I'm still waiting to hear from Tier 2, but maybe I should try the Chat door.
Did you happen to get the name of the chat agent who helped you? At least that is one person who knows how to do it!
SW