I would say the first sentence should be qualified that if you generate more for the year than you consume, there is little incentive to send the excess power back to the utility. For those of use with less than a 100% offset, Net Metering is a huge help in reducing our energy bills. By exporting during the peak rate times, I can get enough credits to cover the missing production and end up with a $0 bill even though I am a net consumer for the year. Furthermore, the Community Choice Aggregator that provides the generation part actually does pay out at retail if I ever accumulate more than $100. This will actually go some way to canceling out the generation charges from PG&E.
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Powerwall 2 supply issues
- Thread starter Myke Hines
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- powerwall install
I would say the first sentence should be qualified that if you generate more for the year than you consume, there is little incentive to send the excess power back to the utility. For those of use with less than a 100% offset, Net Metering is a huge help in reducing our energy bills. By exporting during the peak rate times, I can get enough credits to cover the missing production and end up with a $0 bill even though I am a net consumer for the year. Furthermore, the Community Choice Aggregator that provides the generation part actually does pay out at retail if I ever accumulate more than $100. This will actually go some way to canceling out the generation charges from PG&E.
Ed Hart
Member
Ed Hart
Member
BTW: The SGIP program allows no more than two Powerwalls for this home.
Dukeybootie
Member
I have heard conflicting accounts regarding how many PW units can qualify for the SGIP rebate (per home). The Tesla website says 2 max but at least one installer has told me they have successfully gotten 3 rebates per home on multiple occasions. Does anyone here have personal experience with >2 SGIP rebates? This is in the So Cal region. Thanks!
Vinc
Member
Quick anecdotal evidence regarding availability. Last week I approached the sales rep who did my solar panels a couple of years ago about adding a PW. He replied that he would forward my request to that team and somebody would be getting back to me in 3 to 6 months.
And that is just to talk about it...
And that is just to talk about it...
I have no experience, but others in the forum have reported success. 3 or more Powerwalls is a different SGIP category, "Large Scale Storage" versus "Small Residential Storage".
Also, SGIP limits installations above 10 kW in continuous power rating (2 Poweralls) to the peak power usage during the previous 12 months. So if you want to get the SGIP for 3 Powerwalls, you need to have used at least 15 kW average over one metering interval in the last 12 months. I don't know if the metering interval is 15 minutes or 1 hour.
Cheers, Wayne
Ed Hart
Member
Hmmmmm.....it sure seems like charging two EVs would meet that 15 kW requirement handily. Just in case, I tried to make room for a third PW, which I hope to get by giving Supercharging referrals!!!
(OK....I'm dreaming, but I love the shirt my son gave me!)
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Ed Hart
Member
FYI: Here is a snapshot of the SCE listing of SGIP applications, with mine in yellow. It appears that there have been 675ish applications since mine.
Ed Hart
Member
Interested parties:
My Powerwall installer returned this week and discovered that the problem seen in the earlier data was caused by their having installed the wrong-rated current sensor. The house has 400 amp service, but they had assumed it was 200 amp service. With new sensors installed, everything is working as expected.
So, yesterday was a high energy usage day due to very hot weather and the need to clean the home and prepare dinner for 12 guests. I have annotated the chart. Happy to answer any questions from readers. I believe the Powerwalls are doing what I had expected.
My Powerwall installer returned this week and discovered that the problem seen in the earlier data was caused by their having installed the wrong-rated current sensor. The house has 400 amp service, but they had assumed it was 200 amp service. With new sensors installed, everything is working as expected.
So, yesterday was a high energy usage day due to very hot weather and the need to clean the home and prepare dinner for 12 guests. I have annotated the chart. Happy to answer any questions from readers. I believe the Powerwalls are doing what I had expected.
Ed,
Are you running your PWs in Self Consumption, TBC Balanced or TBC Cost Savings mode? What is your Reserve set at?
Are you running your PWs in Self Consumption, TBC Balanced or TBC Cost Savings mode? What is your Reserve set at?
Ed Hart
Member
Running in Self-Powered mode with reserve set at 20%. Any thoughts on which is best? Tesla is not much help on such information.
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Judging by your intraday charts, you hit the 20% reserve when the Powerwall stopped discharging. If you hold your finger on the chart, it will highlight one 5 minute interval and give you the value(s) for that interval. By sliding your finger over, you can see when the Powerwalls stopped discharging. It doesn't look to me like they made it to 10pm. It looks more like 9pm to me.
If you used TBC Balanced, it would have started exporting All Solar when your Peak period started and it probably would have run down to the Reserve earlier in the evening. However, if you have net metering, it's not the that big of an issue because you would have already exported more than normal at the start of the Peak period. On lower usage days you would be able to fully power the house from the batteries during Peak and export your solar. If you normally owe money at your annual true-up, I would try using Time Based Control because it will probably reduce your true-up payment significantly more than Self-Consumption. That is definitely true in my case with lower household usage and a smaller solar system. The amount you save with Powerwall arbitrage is directly proportional to your energy usage during the Peak period, up to the maximum of the Powerwall daily discharge capacity.
Ed Hart
Member
That is very helpful, miimura.
I did not know that feature of the app: Yes, PW dropped to 20% at 9:05 PM. Tonight it was 9:55 PM.
You pose some questions/suggests that I need to explore. My settle up was last week, and the raw calculation showed a credit of more than $1,900. The second electric car was only added to the load for effectively the last month, so it did not figure in heavily. That second car was what prompted me to double the size of the solar array and add PW.
I will do some calculations tomorrow to see if I can figure out what is best for me. I did a detailed analysis before I ordered the PW, and the utility seemed to agree that the calculations made sense...
Many thanks for the feedback.
Kbra
Member
I'm still waiting on my Powerwalls from end of 2016. Finally got the call in March 2018 that they were ready for me to do my own site survey. Did that right away and have yet to get the survey design back. Just today received this email from my sales guy.
"All Powerwall projects are on hold effective immediately due to Powerwall inventory constraints. We will be in touch with you when we have any sort of updates."
"All Powerwall projects are on hold effective immediately due to Powerwall inventory constraints. We will be in touch with you when we have any sort of updates."
They aren't using Puerto Rico as an excuse anymore?
Ed Hart
Member
Frustrating. We put up with a lot of "abuse" trying to help Tesla, don't we.
Ed Hart
Member
Here is a summary that I think tells the story of how the Powerwall can shift solar usage to maximize home economics...all while helping the utility during the crucial "Duck Curve" hours after sundown.
Kbra
Member
Sorry guys, I just need to vent here for a minute, I put a lot of planning, time, energy and money getting ready for my Powerwall and now this AGAIN with Tesla.
Waiting for more than a year for mine. Always "just about to ship yours". SGIP rebates about to expire. After waiting years for a model X only to find out it was not as promised (seat config etc) or really available for a year after they promissed. I am feeling the same about powerwall. From what I can tell Tesla loses money on everything they ship. The last thing they want to do is ship lots of products. If you are lucky enough to get one of these great products (subsidized by investors) then you are happy. If not you plan your life around their lies and wait...then feel stupid for believeing their BS again. There have been too many times in my years of waiting for Tesla products to know there have been MANY MANY times that they knew my product was no where in site, but they just kept lying saying "any time now" or some version of that. Since 2015, Telsa has probably shipped less than 5000 residential units. Is everyone ready to hear the announcement "Powerwall 2 discontinued. Powerwall 3 is here! We put you in line for a new one. Slow production at first buy you will get yours in three months!"
Waiting for more than a year for mine. Always "just about to ship yours". SGIP rebates about to expire. After waiting years for a model X only to find out it was not as promised (seat config etc) or really available for a year after they promissed. I am feeling the same about powerwall. From what I can tell Tesla loses money on everything they ship. The last thing they want to do is ship lots of products. If you are lucky enough to get one of these great products (subsidized by investors) then you are happy. If not you plan your life around their lies and wait...then feel stupid for believeing their BS again. There have been too many times in my years of waiting for Tesla products to know there have been MANY MANY times that they knew my product was no where in site, but they just kept lying saying "any time now" or some version of that. Since 2015, Telsa has probably shipped less than 5000 residential units. Is everyone ready to hear the announcement "Powerwall 2 discontinued. Powerwall 3 is here! We put you in line for a new one. Slow production at first buy you will get yours in three months!"
I suspect they prioritized them to folks with the higher margin solar installs. I ordered 2 powerwalls with my solar install from Tesla last September and had ours installed in March this year.
I do wonder how the SGIP is going to play out with the powerwall shortages. Folks who have open SGIP applications like yourself but will expire before the install date and folks like myself with installed hardware who will probably expire on the application side before the steps open up. End result might be a bunch of wasted rebates that no one gets.
I think they really handled the whole thing poorly overall.
