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New Powerwall Advanced Options [Toggles for charging from and discharging to grid from powerwalls]

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#521
I'm eagerly awaiting tomorrow (June 1st) to see how the switch to summer pricing changes my behavior.
Since the roll out of the Utility Rate Plan (PG&E TOU-B) settings my Powerwalls have not been cycling.

Also, with the recent app update, VPP got it's own line on the home screen. Clicking into the settings now reads:
"Participating in the California Emergency Load Reduction Program during load reduction events helps clean and stabilize the grid and can help emergency power shutoffs. During these events, you earn $2 per additional kWh sent from your Powerwall to the grid."

Also also... the app crashes a lot right now.
 
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#522
holeydonut said:
OHHHH NNOOOOEEESSSS, it's now 3pm and shoulder time for PG&E EV2A. And my batteries are not discharging. Normally they discharge to cover home consumption while all the solar generation is pushed to the grid.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Click to expand...
Same thing happened to me as well, but should kick in by 4PM. I think the next day or maybe a few days later it started discharging during shoulder again. It should discharge during evening shoulder though.
 
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#523
MJ_CA_2019 said:
I'm eagerly awaiting tomorrow (June 1st) to see how the switch to summer pricing changes my behavior.
Since the roll out of the Utility Rate Plan (PG&E TOU-B) settings my Powerwalls have not been cycling.

Also, with the recent app update, VPP got it's own line on the home screen. Clicking into the settings now reads:
"Participating in the California Emergency Load Reduction Program during load reduction events helps clean and stabilize the grid and can help emergency power shutoffs. During these events, you earn $2 per additional kWh sent from your Powerwall to the grid."

Also also... the app crashes a lot right now.
Click to expand...


Yeah, this is an iffy one. I just need to enable 'export everything' a few extra minutes a day in the summer to offset that EV charging that is causing me to not NEM-out. Maybe like 10 kWh each day for the 120 peak days. That'll be about $200 worth of extra NEM credit; which I expect to be my deficit considering my wife's Model 3 Performance takes 300 watt hours per mile and she's driving about 10,000 miles a year.

Shifting solar export from off-peak to peak is not going to help me enough if this Cybertruck ever comes out :(

EV2A is so confusing lol.
 
#527
skepticcyclist said:
It’s called “energy exports”. You can choose to export only solar or everything.
Click to expand...
Are you sure?
VPP = Virtual Power Plant (beta) = PoCo driven events, Energy Exports is a daily thing. I ran that for a trial and it just runs the battery down to reserve each day.

Other states had varying degrees of extra compensation for VPP export, where Energy Export is going to be purely NEM rates.
 
#531
skepticcyclist said:
VPP was only Beta and was stopped months ago. You should not have that
Click to expand...

I'm aware of the Beta and participated. I was calling out the change in location of the feature as well as the change in the description.
Previously it was described as being no compensation. The name "California Emergency Load Reduction Program" was also unfamiliar to me but I found this link: Emergency Load Reduction Program
 
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#532
holeydonut said:
OHHHH NNOOOOEEESSSS, it's now 3pm and shoulder time for PG&E EV2A. And my batteries are not discharging. Normally they discharge to cover home consumption while all the solar generation is pushed to the grid.
Click to expand...
Mine went twonky yesterday too. It wouldn't discharge even during peak. So I reset the gateway, and that didn't fix it. An hour or so later, it started working normally again. Go figure. I'm wondering if Tesla rolled out new firmware or something.

Even more interesting is that the behavior of Export Everything was different once it started working again. I'll have to see what it does today, but yesterday the export rate slowed down as the PW got close to the reserve setting. As a result, it kept the grid flow near zero until peak period ended at 9, with the PW at the reserve SOC. Previously it had simply dumped at full rate (3.5kW in my case) down to reserve well before peak ended, and started importing to run the house. It did this even after I had set sell price 3 cents lower, at least for a couple days.

So, just maybe, Tesla is already tweaking the algorithm. Or maybe PW is re-learning my solar and consumption patterns. In an case, more observation is in order.
wwhitney said:
it took Tesla almost 4 years to introduce Export Everything, it's possible the algorithm isn't clever enough yet, and it will take another year or two before that works.
Click to expand...
Wayne, If what I saw yesterday proves to be the new normal, Elon's latest new project, the Time Machine, may be further along than we thought. He may have just jumped your projected year or two ahead yesterday. Fingers crossed....

SW
 
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#533
MJ_CA_2019 said:
I'm aware of the Beta and participated. I was calling out the change in location of the feature as well as the change in the description.
Previously it was described as being no compensation. The name "California Emergency Load Reduction Program" was also unfamiliar to me but I found this link: Emergency Load Reduction Program
Click to expand...

The PG&E VPP pilot program last year definitely paid out. I got a check from Tesla few months ago for my participation.

Looking in the app now, I see a "Virtual Power Plant" card in the settings with an on/off toggle (currently on), as well a "Virtual Power Plant" card on the main screen, which informs me there are "1,204 Fleet Homes" participating, and there is currently no VPP event scheduled.

I am not sure how the VPP would interact with the other grid charging / grid export functionalities that are the subject of this thread. (FWIW I have the grid charging option, but I have left it turned off.)

Bruce.
 
#534
bmah said:
The PG&E VPP pilot program last year definitely paid out. I got a check from Tesla few months ago for my participation.

Looking in the app now, I see a "Virtual Power Plant" card in the settings with an on/off toggle (currently on), as well a "Virtual Power Plant" card on the main screen, which informs me there are "1,204 Fleet Homes" participating, and there is currently no VPP event scheduled.

I am not sure how the VPP would interact with the other grid charging / grid export functionalities that are the subject of this thread. (FWIW I have the grid charging option, but I have left it turned off.)

Bruce.
Click to expand...
Unless the check got lost in the mail... I did not receive any payment for 2021.

My Card says "2,128" fleet homes.
 
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#535
Anyone else having issues with TOU mode today? Wanted to try out the options now that it is summer rates, but for some reason my PW isn't discharging during peak periods regardless of what setting I use. Looking at the API I see the alert below on both my PWs, but not sure what it means.

POD_w110_SW_EOC
 
#536
bmah said:
The PG&E VPP pilot program last year definitely paid out. I got a check from Tesla few months ago for my participation.

Looking in the app now, I see a "Virtual Power Plant" card in the settings with an on/off toggle (currently on), as well a "Virtual Power Plant" card on the main screen, which informs me there are "1,204 Fleet Homes" participating, and there is currently no VPP event scheduled.

I am not sure how the VPP would interact with the other grid charging / grid export functionalities that are the subject of this thread. (FWIW I have the grid charging option, but I have left it turned off.)

Bruce.
Click to expand...
Which firmware version is your PW running? I’m still on 22.9.2.
 
#538
Man, this math is complicated...

What is the best way to arrange it so that I can intelligently try to send a total kWh back to the grid at peak time per day? Since my solar is undersized, I'm at an annual kWh deficit of about 1,500 kWh per year due to my wife's Tesla.

With the price-gap between EV2A peak/off-peak and a 8% efficiency lost, I feel like I need to push 1,500 kWh extra to the grid at EV2A peak time during the "Summer" (PG&E says that's June 1 to Sept 30).

That's 12.5 kWh per day I need to push on average to the grid during these Summer 120 days to compensate for PG&E having blocked me from adding 2-3 extra solar panels. But how do I intelligently set it up so I push 12.5 kWh? The all-or-nothing approach on the app now just exports until the reserve is hit, which is problematic since the batteries stop exporting completely and my home will take power back from the grid under EV2-A peak time.

It's almost like I need a double reserve... a first reserve for this "export everything" and a sub-reserve where the batteries will only discharge down to this sub-level to power home loads under the normal time-based-control.

If the 8% conversion losses weren't an issue, then it wouldn't matter if my batteries just discharged down to the reserve every day. But losing 8% of the Powerwalls each day is worth almost 350 kWh over the summer 120 days.

Edit, but now that I think about it, if I export at peak and then take power back from PG&E a few hours later in that day at the shoulder rate, technically I come out ahead? Maybe? AAaaahhhhh @miimura and @Redhill_qik set me straightttttt. Should I just "export everything" down to a reasonable reserve during EV2A summer and just say eff it?
 
Last edited:
#539
I think the algorithm will change over time. There's a element of usage forecasting going on there too. Should it blindly discharge from the start at max rate down to the reserve, or just pump out a little more than needed to reach reserve around the same time as end of peak power, or wait until the last 30 mins and pump out at the max speed to reach reserve.
Me with only one PW, at the end of peak I'm already at around 30-40%, so hitting my reserve at 15-20% means it can only export an additional 2-3kW.

Setting a target amount of export in kW might be easier to use and to automate if you want to modulate your in-house usage vs exports.
 
#540
swedge said:
Even more interesting is that the behavior of Export Everything was different once it started working again. I'll have to see what it does today, but yesterday the export rate slowed down as the PW got close to the reserve setting. As a result, it kept the grid flow near zero until peak period ended at 9, with the PW at the reserve SOC. Previously it had simply dumped at full rate (3.5kW in my case) down to reserve well before peak ended, and started importing to run the house. It did this even after I had set sell price 3 cents lower, at least for a couple days.
Click to expand...
FWIW I just turned mine on for a few minutes and it was exporting at 11 kW, so no change for me. But I have never really run it long enough to "learn" that it would run into my reserve way before my peak period ended.

Waiting to see if you and others systems behaves in this enhanced manner over time.
 
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