IMHO, the guy with Free Nights power should use TBC Balanced with Off-Peak set to his free hours and no Peak hours. So, the Price Schedule screen should be only blue and gray. The shoulder period (neither Peak nor Off-Peak) should behave like Self Powered, depending on state of charge and solar generation, while the Off-Peak should block discharge. I've never tried this, but I think this has the best chance of doing what he wants.
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New Powerwall experiences
- Thread starter oleboyredw
- Start date
eml2
Member
In my experience, my powerwall does exactly what the Tesla L2 rep said. Here is the graph from yesterday
My TOU rate is as followed:
Peak: 11a - 7p
Part-Peak: 7a - 11a and 7p - 11p
Off-peak: 11p - 7a
However, I only want my PW to stop discharging when I charge my car (at 4 am), so I set my PW in TBC-Balanced as followed:
Peak: 11a - 7p
Part-Peak: 7a - 11a and 7p - 4a
Off-peak: 4a - 7a
5% reserved
I start to charge my car at 4 am. As you can see, PW stops discharging at 4 am (as expected), but for no reason, it discharges again around 6:15 am, when it is still off-peak. It happened multiple times in the past. And I found out that to stop it from discharging in off-peak, I need to adjust my reserve close to SoC during off-peak. In essence, it does what Tesla rep said.
JES2
Member
Right, I agree it is working as designed, but I would hope it could work as the customer (me) would like it to.
JES2
Member
Thanks,
I set it up the way you suggested tonight. I'll wait a few days to report back on how it operates. The good news is that the next few days will be totally sunny, so I should see how the Powerwalls operate when they are still filled up once off-peak begins.
JES2
Member
If the Balanced approach does not work, then that is my best bet. I'm not any good writing scripts (only worked at IBM for 38 years), so I'll need to find someone competent to assist me.
If the Balanced approach does not work, then that is my best bet. I'm not any good writing scripts (only worked at IBM for 38 years), so I'll need to find someone competent to assist me.
Ha! I'd wondered about your JES2 Id. If you cant script it after 38 years what hope for me is there, I only managed 27 years (after 11 as a customer). (Apologies, a little, off at a tangent humour).
JES2
Member
If I could write some FORTRAN, ASSEMBLER, Basic, or even COBOL, then I might be the guy.
So far, the Balanced setting has operated the same as the Cost Savings. If the Powerwall has "some amount" of a high capacity of charge, then it will start offloading at night (off-peak). I have no idea what triggers the discharging, or for that matter, when during "off-peak" it will occur. Sometimes it transitions from peak to off-peak, and the Powerwall just continues to discharge. Sometimes it waits until two hours before peak is about to begin to start discharging.
I love that my Tesla M3 allows me to now program my side mirrors to fold when I reach a specific location. This was added in the latest download. The Powerwall (in the same context) should allow me to not do any discharging during off-peak. It cannot be a difficult programming change.
I'm going back to Tesla L2 and try to find out why they are not setting this up. I'll bug them until I get an answer.
By the way, my initials are actually JES, plus I am the 2nd, so it was coincidental. I supported MVS when I started at IBM. Oddly, my son's initials are also JES, but I didn't want him to be a 3rd, so thus, no JES3.
JES2
Member
So, I tried the Balanced TBC and it continued to discharge during the off-peak even when there was no peak.
However, I called Tesla, and now they are telling me that the PW2 should not discharge at all when it is off-peak under Cost Savings mode. They want me to not make any changes for the next few weeks and let the PW2 system learn my behavior. I have set it on Friday, but so far, the system continues to discharge during the off-peak. We'll see if anything changes after two weeks. I'm working with a Tesla PW2 support rep named Paula.
I won't even talk to any of the Solar panel folks when they pick up the calls (for PW2 support.) Horrible knowledge.
It is odd that it is discharging in off-peak. I've never seen that with mine. I do have peak, part-peak and off-peak periods, but I don't know if that would make any difference.
I agree about some of the solar folks. I made three calls last week and all of them were clueless about my situation. Besides incorrect information, one of them didn't even know that Powerwalls would allow me to power my house if the grid was down. Sad.
JES2
Member
Do you ever have an abundance of power (> 50%) during off-peak with your PW2(s)..? My won't discharge if the power is low, but if I am over 50% (a guess) then it will discharge to some extent. In fact, last night, I went into off-peak with 92% and the PW2s discharged the entire night (down to 58%).
Frankly, I think the PW2 rep is wrong. I think the system is designed to discharge when it "feels" that it has some excess power in off-peak. I wish they would give us a simple option to say "no discharging during off-peak when in cost-savings mode." Should be a simple option.
Yes. I have 3 Powerwalls and usually they are still between 70% and 90% once my off-peak period would officially begin at 9 pm. When I first got TBC, I noticed that when using my power company's TOU schedule, the Powerwalls would shut off promptly at 9 pm, when my off-peak period begins. Since I actually want my Powerwalls to power my house into the night, I had to extend my part-peak to actually extend until 4 am. That way, my Powerwalls power the house from about noon until 4 am the next morning. As others have requested, I would prefer to have a "scheduled self-powered" option but it doesn't exist yet so I use TBC Balanced and power the house for about 20 hours a day. The cars are charged starting between 4 am and 7 am and then the sun comes up and solar takes over (around 8 am currently) and powers the house and recharges the Powerwalls.
I'm surprised you're seeing it drain them in the TBC Cost-Saving's mode since the description here says:
Since it mentions "when electricity is expensive", I wouldn't expect it to run during off-peak.
Whereas the description for Time-Based Control Balanced specifically mentions:
It would definitely be nice if we had more control over our Powerwalls when using the Tesla app. It would be nice if we could enter our actual peak, part-peak and off-peak rates so it can better determine cost savings. In your case, with free nights, it should see that it should never be discharging when electricity is free.
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After months of complaining to Tesla Support about the off-peak charging behaviour I've had a glimmer of hope in an email which included "That's why our Engineering Department is working on a feature for MyTesla App called "ability to send manual charge/discharge commands to the Powerwall". This will avoid the "strange" behavior that you have noticed in this situation and it will give you, as a customer, the possibility to better manage your battery."
So maybe there will be some improvements before next winter arrives (which is when I need the off-peak charging). If Tesla roll it out soon then the Australians can debug it during their winter. However, good manual controls for charge / discharge behaviour would open up numerous operating options such as enabling people to sign up to electricity tariffs which reward them for putting power into the grid during peak periods.
So maybe there will be some improvements before next winter arrives (which is when I need the off-peak charging). If Tesla roll it out soon then the Australians can debug it during their winter. However, good manual controls for charge / discharge behaviour would open up numerous operating options such as enabling people to sign up to electricity tariffs which reward them for putting power into the grid during peak periods.
JES2
Member
What's funny is that during off-peak right now, half of the power is coming from PW2s and the other half is coming from the grid. Seriously, I think the PW2s are using a randomizer to figure out when to come on.
JES2
Member
Well, it has been a week, and the PW2s continue to do discharge during off-peak (while in cost-savings mode.) There is no doubt that the PW2s are set up to discharge in off-peak when they have a certain amount of energy. It will be interesting to hear what the Tesla folks say in a couple of weeks, since it is operating exactly the opposite way they say it should operate.
Did you ever try Balanced? I've had mine on Balanced since last September and have never seen them discharge in off-peak.
Mine are still on 1.32.0 but have behaved the same on every version since I got TBC enabled.
eml2
Member
What is your reserve % and usual SoC at the end of your off-peak? I tried to use Balanced and it always discharges near the end of off-peak if SoC - reserve > 30%. In addition, when my panels are generating power, my PW will stop charging for 1 minute for no reason, and this happens every 15 minutes like clockwork. This only happens in TBC. No such problem in Self-Power mode.
JES2
Member
Yes, I did try Balanced, and it discharged very similar to cost-savings. eml2 mentioned that if the reserve is greater than 30%, then the Powerwall will decide to discharge. I'm not sure if that is a number than Tesla provided (or eml2 noticed), but I do believe that a large reserve triggers discharging in both modes. Frustrating...
The behavior you're describing sounds like what my Powerwalls do during partial peak. If they're charged beyond about 30% above threshold, they'll discharge to that level during partial peak. I've never seen this pattern during off-peak, though. I'm wondering if that's a clue to the source of the bug. Do you have all three levels (off-peak, partial peak and peak) configured, or just two?
I have my reserve set to 35% and never see them discharge in off-peak . They are usually charged up to between 80% and 100% but I haven't figured out why the max charge percentage varies. I think it tries to charge just enough to cover usage down to 35%.
JES2
Member
No, I just have peak and off-peak set. The PW2s did not have a full charge going into this off-peak last night. They were at around 58%, nevertheless they discharged down to around 30% before peak started this morning. Seeven days in a row. Will be interested in hearing the comments from the Tesla team...
