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Odd behavior - charging from solar, house from grid

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bkp_duke

Well-Known Member
May 15, 2016
9,851
56,195
San Diego, CA
Over the past hour, my powerwalls have done something I have not seen them do before.

The Solar production (about 9kwh) is being fully diverted to the 3 x PW2s, and the house is being run from the grid. I was charging one of the cars, per my usual from solar and the excess going into powerwalls, but now I have stopped.

Anyone else seen this? It's almost like the gateway is messed up and not routing production properly.

PW odd behavior.png
 
What mode is your PW in? Is the reserve % higher than the current SoC?

I always have them in Self-powered. I just checked the app and it was changed from self-powered to Backup-only. I didn't make that change, and no one else has access to make changes. Very odd.

I changed it back, and now things are back to normal. In 3 years of having these, I've never seen the setup do something like this.
 
I think it had to do with the fact that it was in backup mode. When they first powered on my system to test it after it was installed the powerwalls were in backup mode and I saw the same thing... the house was being powered by the grid and all the solar power was going to the powerwalls. I think that is expected behavior in backup mode so the powerwalls can get charged as quickly as possible so they are available for backup.
 
I think it had to do with the fact that it was in backup mode. When they first powered on my system to test it after it was installed the powerwalls were in backup mode and I saw the same thing... the house was being powered by the grid and all the solar power was going to the powerwalls. I think that is expected behavior in backup mode so the powerwalls can get charged as quickly as possible so they are available for backup.

My system is not new. It has been online for 3 years 2 months.

Also, the system just tried to go in to advanced TOU mode, which I pulled it out of.
 
My system is not new. It has been online for 3 years 2 months.

Also, the system just tried to go in to advanced TOU mode, which I pulled it out of.

Yeah, I realize that it’s not new and it’s very odd that it’s changing modes like that. But what I was trying to say is that I believe that what you were seeing is normal for backup only mode. Of course I have no idea why your system suddenly seems to be randomly switching modes.
 
When PW is in self-powered mode and reserve % is lower than SoC, all solar will go to PW until SoC reaches reserve %. Since backup mode is almost equivalent to self-powered mode with 100% reserve, I would expect to see all solar going to PW.

No idea why your PW switches mode on its own.