Ulmo
Active Member
Great PowerWall 2 review (I recommend you mute the first few seconds because they start with a wretched sound). I've learned that there's a universe of questions and issues with these things, but they do a great primer.
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Powerwall 2: Technical
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Interesting. The guy in this video says it can neither charge from grid (which means no load shifting) nor serve as a backup during outages, my another use case touted by SC/Tesla. If it cannot do that, it would make no sense for no-solar scenario. Obviously either SC/Tesla or this guy are not quite accurate on these points. This clearly is contradicting.
I can verify that I both charge from the grid and am able to discharge it with the service breaker off. If that is what the video says, it is mistaken.
Ulmo
Active Member
Grid charging will happen in the future (almost certainly; if they don't, it is a change in intent). We are awaiting software and inter-company integration upgrades on that. Part of that process includes the potential for failure (mostly the negotiations, in terms of walking away from each other as a strategy).
If you quoted correctly (I only watched half), the backup part is just wrong.
Here's a fun true story I can tell: I turned off my PG&E connection a few days ago during a thunderstorm (which wasn't that near, but was too near to ignore electrically; later, we heard it had 10,000 ground hits), and I forgot to turn my PG&E main meter connection back on for many days; in case anybody is totally airheaded, what I mean by this is that I did not need PG&E at all whatsoever during that time, and the house was not connected to PG&E at all. When I remembered, I just turned PG&E back on. We didn't even notice any difference. (That is, there was zero downtime, zero interruption, etc.). I've done this a few times in the past, too, with complete confidence and zero worry; it simply does not matter if the utility is hooked up, as long as there is sufficient electricity in the battery. I previously announced a whole one month stretch during summer in which I didn't need any PG&E at all; I could have just turned the connection off. Quite frankly, I'm amazed no one has picked up on this and realized how awesome this is. In my case, I think of the PowerWall system as better than a UPS for every home device.
Yesterday was the first day since relatives visited last month that we needed any PG&E at all; during the later part of the inland valleys hot spell of the last weeks, our coastal areas have been characteristically cloudy in response, and my solar+battery system is apparently woefully insufficient for our use in that situation. I suspect as we head into more winters, I think I will see this more often. (Where I live, we have only two seasons, Summer and Winter, and they happen dozens of times per year, but the incidence and magnitude of Winters is more during the months that have shorter days, and basically we will share nature's downturn in the amount of sun hitting us; we need to double both our solar and battery, by my estimate.)
If that statement in the movie about backup is correct (in the United Kingdom), then either his installer installed wrong (and lied to him about it to cover it up), or their regulatory scheme is more oppressive than ours. Learning that Great Britain United Kingdom England Land of the Muslim Takeover is stupid and backward isn't that much news to the USA Revolution upon which our country was founded; they can be backward in many, many ways, and we expect that. They suck. They can play with their Tesla toys, but they won't get back to being any strong country until they learn to stand up for their lives and families. (To do that, it looks like they need to make families in the first place, and protect their daughters.) I can't say enough how even though that may be a current and present decent primer of a video, it is not representative of the innovative spirit of USA, at least not that which was still residual when I grew up and Elon Musk moved here. To us US citizens, we've come to expect that from UK/whatever it tries to call itself (they're schizophrenic).
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Ulmo
Active Member
I believe that was the "Backup" commissioning option they gave us on the commissioning phone interview; is that correct? I chose "Self Generation Use" or whatever they called it, which is where I use my own solar power; that doesn't charge from grid. This behavior isn't user settable currently (despite having similar sounding settings in the app).
Correct. I'm on the backup commissioning, and it appears to top up the batteries without discriminating as to the power source.
Now that I have these two Powerwalls installed, I am about to complicate everything and do something I should have done before getting these installed.
Currently, I have 400A service being delivered on the far side of my vineyard to a panel on a riser. I have a breaker box there and it splits into 200A service to feed each of my main house and my pool house. The main house has a 9.54kW roof mounted solar installation and the two Powerwalls. The pool house is not backed up.
I am planning to add solar on the property and originally was planning to add it to the remaining space on my main house roof. However, after some deliberation yesterday, I believe I'm going to pursue a ground mount installation on the far side of the vineyard - close to where the service is delivered.
The easy thing to do would be to mount the inverter on the riser and install the solar backfeed breaker into that 400A panel. However, I will lose that solar when the grid is down. So it doesn't help me in that case. I will have to think through the logistics of this to determine whether there's a way for them to capture this remote solar generation with another backup transfer switch.
Ulmo
Active Member
Summary: go to Request a demo – Neurio and ask them if you can do extended communication runs from your home to your new solar farm connection point. You'll need in any solution I came up with below. Eventually, Tesla will have to figure this out, and they might want to know this themselves, and it will be easier if you're armed with answers to this simple question.
Ok, let's see. I think the backup switch (i.e., Tesla Backup Gateway) demarcs where they can turn off anything that has a failed leg at the severance point, singularly speaking as the utility side. On any non-whole backup situation (both yours and mine), that means part of the utility side of the Tesla Backup Gateway (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "Gateway") has revenue distribution (utility customer-side) that is not shut off from the battery backed up leg.
In my case and I presume yours, the breakers for the solar and batteries are on the other side of the Tesla Backup Gateway from the utility. So, once the Gateway shuts off its utility side connection, the breakers for the batteries and solar are still on the side being backed up, naturally.
In your case, you'd like the new Solar circuit to do the same. Here are some various options:
- Move the backup gateway. This seems simplest. Go ahead and study my photos at Ulmo.Solar and note the battery connections; I think the only thing the Tesla Backup Gateway needs to be proximal to regarding the batteries is the communication lines, and the only thing the Tesla Backup Gateway needs to be proximal to regarding the solar is the solar lines with the meters. You would have to verify with Tesla that the communication lines to the batteries can go long distance, and that the communication lines to the solar meters can go long distance (or even be non-wireless). If so, they would run the comm lines from your current solar and batteries (basically, proximal to where your current Tesla Backup Gateway is at) to its new location. The new location of the Tesla Backup Gateway would be where it can physically shut service to separate the interior which includes all solar and battery from the utility side, regardless of whether you cut off any non-backed up panels. You might have to select a particular spot on the splitoff where you can catch all solar and batteries but keep within the maximum spec of the Tesla Backup Gateway; I doubt Tesla doesn't have the ratings for whatever specs you have, since they install for utilities, but the box they delivered to me is only 200 Amps. (They proceeded to only install 100 Amp wiring and breakers, though, to my dismay. I want to ask them why they derated my interior box, and I'll have them expand that if needed in the future.) Another question is whether the Gateway can handle multiple solar inputs.
- Run your new solar farm connection all the way from where ever it will be to your current interior (this is a horrible option because of wiring cost), and add a meter to your new solar connection (ditto above question about current Gateway able to handle multiple solar inputs). Will it be too many amps to fit in your 200 Amp box? (That would be wonderful if true
, but makes this option probably not possible). If the Tesla Backup Gateway cannot handle multiple solar inputs, then this is the only situation I see where you could put a subsubpanel with all the solar input backfeed breakers that back feeds itself into the main house subpanel which has the battery connection, and then you can single-meter that one solar breaker there.
- Daisy chain the Tesla Backup Gateways using some daisy chain Tesla Backup Gateway protocol, or remote switch capability, so that it effectively can measure the new solar farm and turn off anything on its utility side and keep the solar on the backed up side of the stuff. That means the Gateway switch itself won't ever shut off (except in weird circumstances), and the switch that shuts off would be the remote one out near the utility connection. I have no idea if Tesla has such capabilities. It should, but from my Tesla experience, I assume it doesn't. I'm not sure why this would be superior to #1; #1 seems better. They might have some subset of this, like just add a remote switch and remote meter out there with a communication line back to your house and call it good.
- Ok, this is going to sound weird. Just install another Tesla Backup Gateway at the new solar farm site properly, and it considers the "house load" as just a "house load". It would be the world's weirdest "house load" since sometimes it would be "generating"; if the Tesla Backup Gateway out near the utility entrance understands that OK, then that sounds just fine. It wouldn't need to communicate to the interior at all; it would only need to know that it should separate the utility whenever the utility didn't have energy. But, this would create a situation in which your interior Gateway would think its "utility" has power but it might not "charge" from it. In your case, your commissioning is that it would still charge from it. Also, this new Gateway would need to be able to change the frequency in such a manner it can turn down the power coming from the new farm inverters so that they aren't putting in energy that won't be used (kaboom).
I just realized options #1 through #3 all require at least a communication line run from your home to your new solar farm input. Are you prepared for that? This is why I prefer fiber for all communication; I hate that Tesla doesn't use fiber for all communication, since that is something that will be highly beneficial in many areas. For home wiring, fiber is better because it doesn't cause electrical feedback from lightning, damaged electronics, etc.. I don't know if they can use fiber communication. They might use wireless, but you have to find out if you can amplify or get long distance wireless meter systems. That might actually work. Read about Neurio meter long distance extension; perhaps it's already discussed in other applications, since that is just some other company's product Tesla is using. Look at my pics at Index of /tesla/energy/powerwall/installation_in_progress/gateway/ and
Note that this is from Neurio – The leader in residential energy intelligence and I suggested at the beginning that you contact Request a demo – Neurio and ask them how far their connections can go and if they have any repeaters that work with Tesla Backup Gateway neurios.
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What has happened to date with my service panel is that Tesla cannot reach it wirelessly from the Tesla Backup Gateway. However, they want to monitor that secondary circuit (pool house). I've been told there's a "batch of new antennae" that are being tested for longer distance runs. If those work, that implies that there's a way for the Neurio to monitor the remote solar out past my vineyard as well. However, that doesn't necessarily help with my solar farm.Summary: go to Request a demo – Neurio and ask them if you can do extended communication runs from your home to your new solar farm connection point. You'll need in any solution I came up with below. Eventually, Tesla will have to figure this out, and they might want to know this themselves, and it will be easier if you're armed with answers to this simple question.
Ok, let's see. I think the backup switch (i.e., Tesla Backup Gateway) demarcs where they can turn off anything that has a failed leg at the severance point, singularly speaking as the utility side. On any non-whole backup situation (both yours and mine), that means part of the utility side of the Tesla Backup Gateway (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "Gateway") has revenue distribution (utility customer-side) that is not shut off from the battery backed up leg.
In my case and I presume yours, the breakers for the solar and batteries are on the other side of the Tesla Backup Gateway from the utility. So, once the Gateway shuts off its utility side connection, the breakers for the batteries and solar are still on the side being backed up, naturally.
In your case, you'd like the new Solar circuit to do the same. Here are some various options:
All of this depends entirely on how Tesla Backup Gateway works in terms of software, hardware, standards, specifications, etc., and you would need to talk to Tesla engineering. At least one option above (#2) is doable no matter what, but not optimal. In every case, there's going to be a slight additional cost; do your best to minimize it. That's why I prefer some combination of option #1, and will probably end up being simplest.
- Move the backup gateway. This seems simplest. Go ahead and study my photos at Ulmo.Solar and note the battery connections; I think the only thing the Tesla Backup Gateway needs to be proximal to regarding the batteries is the communication lines, and the only thing the Tesla Backup Gateway needs to be proximal to regarding the solar is the solar lines with the meters. You would have to verify with Tesla that the communication lines to the batteries can go long distance, and that the communication lines to the solar meters can go long distance (or even be non-wireless). If so, they would run the comm lines from your current solar and batteries (basically, proximal to where your current Tesla Backup Gateway is at) to its new location. The new location of the Tesla Backup Gateway would be where it can physically shut service to separate the interior which includes all solar and battery from the utility side, regardless of whether you cut off any non-backed up panels. You might have to select a particular spot on the splitoff where you can catch all solar and batteries but keep within the maximum spec of the Tesla Backup Gateway; I doubt Tesla doesn't have the ratings for whatever specs you have, since they install for utilities, but the box they delivered to me is only 200 Amps. (They proceeded to only install 100 Amp wiring and breakers, though, to my dismay. I want to ask them why they derated my interior box, and I'll have them expand that if needed in the future.) Another question is whether the Gateway can handle multiple solar inputs.
- Run your new solar farm connection all the way from where ever it will be to your current interior (this is a horrible option because of wiring cost), and add a meter to your new solar connection (ditto above question about current Gateway able to handle multiple solar inputs). Will it be too many amps to fit in your 200 Amp box? (That would be wonderful if true
- Daisy chain the Tesla Backup Gateways using some daisy chain Tesla Backup Gateway protocol, or remote switch capability, so that it effectively can measure the new solar farm and turn off anything on its utility side and keep the solar on the backed up side of the stuff. That means the Gateway switch itself won't ever shut off (except in weird circumstances), and the switch that shuts off would be the remote one out near the utility connection. I have no idea if Tesla has such capabilities. It should, but from my Tesla experience, I assume it doesn't. I'm not sure why this would be superior to #1; #1 seems better. They might have some subset of this, like just add a remote switch and remote meter out there with a communication line back to your house and call it good.
- Ok, this is going to sound weird. Just install another Tesla Backup Gateway at the new solar farm site properly, and it considers the "house load" as just a "house load". It would be the world's weirdest "house load" since sometimes it would be "generating"; if the Tesla Backup Gateway out near the utility entrance understands that OK, then that sounds just fine. It wouldn't need to communicate to the interior at all; it would only need to know that it should separate the utility whenever the utility didn't have energy. But, this would create a situation in which your interior Gateway would think its "utility" has power but it might not "charge" from it. In your case, your commissioning is that it would still charge from it. Also, this new Gateway would need to be able to change the frequency in such a manner it can turn down the power coming from the new farm inverters so that they aren't putting in energy that won't be used (kaboom).
I just realized options #1 through #3 all require at least a communication line run from your home to your new solar farm input. Are you prepared for that? This is why I prefer fiber for all communication; I hate that Tesla doesn't use fiber for all communication, since that is something that will be highly beneficial in many areas. For home wiring, fiber is better because it doesn't cause electrical feedback from lightning, damaged electronics, etc.. I don't know if they can use fiber communication. They might use wireless, but you have to find out if you can amplify or get long distance wireless meter systems. That might actually work. Read about Neurio meter long distance extension; perhaps it's already discussed in other applications, since that is just some other company's product Tesla is using. Look at my pics at Index of /tesla/energy/powerwall/installation_in_progress/gateway/ and
Note that this is from Neurio – The leader in residential energy intelligence and I suggested at the beginning that you contact Request a demo – Neurio and ask them how far their connections can go and if they have any repeaters that work with Tesla Backup Gateway neurios.
I cannot upgrade solar to my main panel, it's got a 40A backfeed on a 200A panel with a 200A breaker. That's the 120% rule at it's maximum, and I cannot derate the panel to a 175A breaker. I can, however, add another 8kW inverter to the 400A panel because that's a 400A panel with a 400A breaker, leaving 80A to backfeed, minus the 40A downstream backfeed. So that's 40A leftover. 8kW inverter, ~10kW array.. I should be in decent shape by doubling my current generation capacity.
I have placed a call out to Tesla in hopes to speak with one of their senior design engineers. Running communication lines out through the vineyard is prohibitive. There is asphalt in the way with one Schedule 80 3" PVC chase under it, so that may help, but the trenching would be extensive.
Regarding your #4 option - I actually thought about installing another one or two Powerwalls out at the riser on the far side of the vineyard, but it poses the same problem as you outline. The circuit downstream from it is both a generating and consuming circuit.
I'll let you know what Tesla tells me, if anything.
Ulmo
Active Member
That explains why Tesla made my 200A backed up subpanel a 100A panel. The solar (40A breaker) and batteries (2*30A breaker) both backfeed into it. However, if I had chosen "whole house", the breaker sequence would be with the solar and batteries in the main service panel, and I believe the Gateway has an extra breaker inside it in that configuration; does that allow non-derating in that case? That's something you should ask the Tesla Engineers; I'd like to know too. Let me figure it out:
Yes, I think it would work, provided the main service panel is rated for the full amount of all sources together.
So, that could be a reconfiguration of the Tesla Backup Gateway from "partial home backup" to "full home backup", for the panel for which it is connected to. This is one option. This initially looks most like it assists my #2 option, but since it is a technique, I suppose it could be used for a variety of options. Thank you for this discussion; I hadn't fully considered backfeeding at my own installation. My concern was initially assuaged when I added my backfeeds 40A+30A+30A+100A<200A so I just forgot about it rather than traversing all the ramifications like I would have in my youth, and then later I complained that they replaced a 200A breaker with a 100A breaker, and in my old age, I never put the two together even though that's why. Maybe it's not old age, and I've always been that stupid. Anyway, you reminded me that you can't backfeed more than the panel rating, obviously; you told me about the 120% rule, which I believe is like another rule that is about noncontinuous loads. Now I'm concerned that very bad power factor loads could help exceed the 120%, but that affects you more at 120%, not so much me at 95%, since my panel only has 190A going into a 200A panel. But most homes aren't full of bad power factor loads, so I seriously doubt either of us have any type of trouble.
I wonder how hard it would be for me to call Tesla and have them rewire the Tesla Backup Gateway for Whole House operation. Who would I call? Obviously, there's an installation charge. They did mention to me in a phone call that it would be only 100 amps of backup panel, but I didn't fully cognate that they were downrating the whole panel. The only reason I didn't do full home backup is I didn't want to feed the car charger with backup battery, but supposedly, Tesla should conceivably come up with a power management option in their car chargers that says things like don't charge in excess of utility use, i.e., the Tesla Backup Gateway would intentionally balance the battery inverter outputs to be equal to the entire home use (which includes the car charger) minus the car charger (i.e., the entire home use except the car charger), and therefore, the rest would just come out of the grid. In that case, I wouldn't need any more backed up subpanel, and I could just go to whole home backup; I wish I had fully realized this before their installation.
Just regarding the trenching: a small 1/2" plastic conduit is all that is needed. Since it's coming from within inside a power box, it might be considered full power and need the 2' to 3' depth of burial; if it was isolated somehow, then it could use the 6" or so burial rule. You could practically run your foot through loose soil to get that deep. But, it also introduces problems with electrical grounding and backfeeding, even though it's probably not a grounded circuit and just uses twisted pair; something could jump over something and cause something to happen. That's why I always prefer fiber over those distances. (I'm partial to single mode fiber, so when everyone else starts talking about the problems of multi mode fiber, I think, "what the hell, I never have those problems" with my single mode fiber, and then they say "single mode fiber is for Internet and telecom backbones; we don't use that" to which I respond "why not? it's like two cents more". You can make a gigabit ethernet single mode fiber link go many miles for under $100 for all the fiber and equipment (but typically it hovers closer to $175 or so); the materials and equipment are practically free compared to the expense of laying it, so why the hell does anybody use communication lines between buildings of anything but single mode fiber? I'm 100% baffled by this, except that I theorize that spooks and spies prefer copper since they can always intercept communications from it by radio, less so fiber, and that's a sucky excuse to ruin your installation because you want to let someone spy on you using their preferred secret method without your consent.) So, in conclusion, trenching seems impractical in your situation. Radio seems like the way to go:
A special call from you to Neurio to ask them specifically what kind of antenna they use and what kinds of 3rd party antennas you could add to it might make sense at this point. Sometimes all you need is a properly engineered, manufactured and installed directional antenna. Unfortunately, because of cell phones and wifi, there are lots of cheap scam antennas that aren't actually engineered correctly (a Pringles can would work better than them). You'd set up two directional antenna, of course, pointed directly at each other. It's a whole chore, but it could be far easier than trenching. As far as I'm concerned, directional antenna can give you a pretty huge gain; it's what makes satellites possible. Just using novice logic, since satellites are 22,236 miles away and I'm guessing your vineyard is less than a couple miles away, we can guess that the signal boost needed is on the order of one one-thousandth (1/1,000) the amount needed for a satellite connection (satellites probably use more power than existing Neurios that are designed to go a dozen feet, so I'm not saying 1/10,000); any parabolic dish antenna could be similarly downsized, and would not end up as a huge unavoidable eye sore. (You'd need one on each end pointed directly at each other, and I mean directly.)
So, Neurio doesn't use power line signalling. This is the first time in my life I've ever wanted to suggest that any design incorporate that, except for some of my daydreams about space elevators. I hate powerline communications, but this is one case where it makes sense. Alas, Neurio has a one size fits all design, so they'd rather not think about these more elaborate realities. I wonder if they are wed to that type of limitation, or if they will ambitiously conquer a larger array of possible installations. A behemoth in any industry tends to be able to say "yes" rather than "no"; the "no" answer will cause superior competition, regardless of and often despite what the old-time ignorant bean counters claim.
This is precisely why I think Tesla should put some measure of simple AI into their Tesla Powerwall Gateway: every home is unique (just look at the combinations of solar array sizes, battery sizes, and home breaker sizes, times combinations of solar array generation, battery use and state, and home use, and that right there is at least 10 billion typical combinations, never mind handling the billions of ways to install all the parts and the billions of failure modes it is supposed to be built to correct, so we're looking at, what, 10^30 combinations as an ignorant bare minimum in a regularized target market? Logic is needed, not a simple two state switch; there's no one size fits all), and all it takes is a being with relatively simple logic to figure out what needs to be done, but it is by no means a one size fits all type of situation. This is something Tesla can figure out: they only have to define each electrical system with a structure explaining each item and how it is connected. There are a limited number of electrical items in the marketplace, so this would be something that a multibillion dollar division of a corporation could easily do. It would be harder for a smaller outfit run by someone refusing to do that work, obviously. Even the large corporation could refuse to succeed. We're both being starry-eyed to talk about this option, but it is coming, whether or not Tesla wants to do it; they will be forced to do it, whether or not they realize it now. At some point they'll look back and say "of course that makes sense", but I get the feeling right now they are kind of unaware of this as an issue. The thing is they can use current AI tech to do this easily; it's not super advanced building life and self-conscious machines type stuff. Define the current state of the installation and how each item works and what it does and how it's connected, and the AI can easily traverse and calculate that like any current circuit modeling software; the AI is barely a tiny step above that, figuring out the best options to take in every new situation.
Thank you!
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Ulmo
Active Member
Here, folks, you can see the difference between a pro that knows answers and someone like me who is figuring out answers; he comes up with a single sentence, and I write about 3 pages of dense text. The Neurio is probably using industry standard communication on its white-black twisted pair, and that industry standard is most likely supported by exactly that sort of option @miimura mentioned by many companies (or just one?). All one has to do is figure out what protocol must be communicated. If the wireless solution is analog meant to support that type of digital connection, then they might not even need that, however, that often has problems (fitting a square wave in a round wave). But, this would be an excellent reason to call up Neurio and ask them. They might not want to tell you, because for some reason, we live in an age when most companies don't tell customers what they need to know (which totally baffles me); often, you must sleuth it out as a geek testing its parameters, so you could Google what protocol Neurio seems to use to see if anybody has already done that and go from there.
Uhh, no, what I wrote is incorrect:
Those black and white wires are sensors, not communication protocol. You woud need to cook them before sending them on. Perhaps this is what we're talking about, then:
That looks wireless. And, that antenna has a screw-on connection, so that is where you unscrew it and put in a proper amplifier (if needed) and directional antenna of your choosing. It looks like the engineers meant for this to be flexible, at least right now. If you can install that above radio box in your network of sensors, then this should be a piece of cake. And, here's something interesting:
Take a look at that coax; it is an antenna repositioner. If you can already use their own supplied cable to preposition their supplied antenna, then you could obviously supply your own improved distance antenna setup. This is made much more trivial; you'd only have to find out the frequency and go at it.
All the above pictures are from Energy Monitor – Neurio
Aww heck, my alarm went off. I have a job! Ugh, time to get up. My last comment is that I think that the sensors are unidirectional but that the Neurio links might be bidirectional, so you'd have to find out that too.
Just saw this: Obviously, Neurio has the same ideas I have in mind:
Take a look at these specs:
What's that W1?
Bingo! It's almost as if they want us to specify and buy their products! Who'd imagine that? Read this for feasting:
It gives frequency, wireless protocol, and power levels. They even chose a wireless protocol I've heard of before someplace. Ever heard of Wifi? There must be some solutions for directional extension of that.
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Google search turned up this good reference about long range native WiFi. You could get a long range directional WiFi antenna and connect it directly to the remote Neurio unit. You would need an access point on the main house with a similar antenna connection to put a matching long range directional antenna.
SimpleWiFi - How it works
SimpleWiFi - How it works
Ulmo
Active Member
Aha! I see... it needs the access point to relay to the internal antennas of the Tesla Backup Gateway's integrated Neurio, and you couldn't use a directional antenna directly on the Neurio because it might be using its local antenna for other items. Unless it isn't: how many of its items are wifi? I don't think they installed any wireless Neurios in my installation, but I suppose they could have.
I just learned that Verizon access to parts of my website are blocked; something about how it is relayed by Verizon's caches? Let me know if you're having trouble accessing Index of /tesla/energy/powerwall/installation_in_progress/ ; I can access it fine when I turn on my phone's VPN.
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Clearly the Neurio needs to be on a WiFi network to communicate its CT measurements to the Tesla App. However, I don't know if the gateway and the Powerwall have to have some other wired connection between them that would prevent them from being installed far apart. Actually, now that I think about it more, I'm sure there is a limitation. The PowerWall needs to know the phase of the grid when it comes back on so that it can synchronize before it tells the transfer switch to reconnect the grid. So, the use case where you want the gateway and transfer switch to be remotely installed out at the edge of the property and the PowerWalls installed on the house probably won't work. You may need to build a shed for the PowerWalls near the property's main meter panel. Also, I recall the transfer switch is only 200 amps, so people need to think about whether that will work for them too on a property that has multiple buildings and remote solar installations.
The way the Neurio is installed inside the metal box without the antenna being mounted outside will result in an inherently weak WiFi connection. At a minimum, they should put a short coax wire with a bulkhead connector and mount the antenna on the outside of the enclosure. From there, it would be easy to replace their little WiFi antenna with a high gain directional antenna as needed. I think your Aha! above is in error. My idea was to put a directional antenna directly wired to the Neurio and then have a dedicated access point far away to remotely serve the Neurio, thereby bridging the large gap in the network. The other way to do this is to use wireless to wireless long range bridges. Since the Neurio is only 2.4GHz, you could use a directional 5GHz backhaul bridge.
Ulmo
Active Member
I similarly think the Neurio has those capabilities, but as a point of clarification, I got the distinct impression the Tesla Backup Gateway uses its own computer distinct from the Neurio, but I certainly don't know that. Here's the picture of the enclosure with the Ethernet with which I communicate directly to the box myself; the Ethernet Internet connection is the gray cable that goes into the Ethernet plug in the middle where that black box is:
Here is the picture of the PowerWall communications lines connected (black, white, blue, yellow, as labeled):
What I don't know is what requirements that has; if they can be more remote; multiplexed; intermixed; modulated; etc.
Yes.
That's a fair point. Let me try to figure out why I thought that would work. Yes, I think it was the one with the Gateway remote to the batteries, however, the batteries could just be moved, too. They're just mounted on concrete basically; that's pretty easy. Or, we can find out if those are also wireless able ... ew, I'd hate that. No, I prefer the Gateway near the batteries.
Me as in I'm making suggestions to @ohmman , and yes, I agree, now.
Yup; I already mentioned that. I want to also know if they can be daisy chained; for instance, if it's OK to have a Gateway and then another Gateway upstream (without batteries), which just senses when utility dumped and isolates it, and ... no, that wouldn't work, because I can't think of any method for it to skew the frequency in sync to reconnect at that point, unless it first disconnects its interior end and then connects the utility and then reconnects its interior ... what a mess ... and it would still need to tell the interior one about the exterior one's solar. No, I don't like that at all; it will be decades before Tesla supports that, and by then, they'll probably have communication via the powerlines coordinating all this stuff.
I'm sure that's a consideration for each unique installation depending where they locate the sensors. In my case, I doubt they used any.
I agree; it can be done now. That's what I was originally referring to.
Fair!
Yup, that makes sense, too.
Basically, @ohmman would have to locate the PowerWalls and Gateway out near the first solar input, and do it in such a way he doesn't mess up his amp capacity downstream.
Another solution which I know @ohmman and Tesla don't want to hear is leaving his interior PowerWall and Gateway as-is, and installing a brand new additional PowerWall and Gateway out near the exterior solar panels. What the heck, you say? Well, simple: when power goes out, the exterior PowerWall will charge and discharge. The interior PowerWalls and Gateway will still think utility connection is on. Only time the interior PowerWalls ever think the "utility" went away is when the exterior PowerWall stopped producing enough power --- oops, that's an error, because the utility is considered an infinite ocean of power, and the exterior solar+powerwall is not that infinite. I retract this idea.
Exciting stuff! Of course, every particular exotic scenario Tesla specially supports through either generalized flexible configuration or specific programming would open up new possibilities.
Yeah - sticking an antenna inside of a metal box is just about going to kill the reception. The beefy power wires running right next to the antenna don't help, either. I'm surprised it works at all and I agree - at a minimum use a short bulkhead extension cable to locate the antenna outside the box.
Ulmo
Active Member
New firmware version! I'm not sure when, but I checked after this suspicious behavior this morning. I want to know if this is true and if PowerWall system waits before the upgrade to make sure utility is connected and reliable.
Here's my first observation which made me hunt for reasons:
The behavior when the PowerWall is busy showed up; my gnuplot makes a continuous line for all points, so those straight lines represent no samples, something that is common when the PowerWall is busy, such as switching to backup or other events like that, and perhaps software functions, perhaps such as firmware changes. I think that's likely, because I checked the software version, and it appears upgraded. Note that they picked a decent time to do it, but I would have done 3AM personally.
P.S., here's what it looks like in the app; it's a spike when you isolate the sources:
If my theory is correct, many PowerWall apps should be showing this ~today, but I think only for those who use PowerWall for night power, rather than using it just for backup or arbitrage from cheap nights to expensive days, except in the arbitrage case, if it was still charging, I'd expect a charging lapse dip showing as an inverse spike to happen as well (similar to my battery use app screenshot).
Here's my first observation which made me hunt for reasons:
The behavior when the PowerWall is busy showed up; my gnuplot makes a continuous line for all points, so those straight lines represent no samples, something that is common when the PowerWall is busy, such as switching to backup or other events like that, and perhaps software functions, perhaps such as firmware changes. I think that's likely, because I checked the software version, and it appears upgraded. Note that they picked a decent time to do it, but I would have done 3AM personally.
P.S., here's what it looks like in the app; it's a spike when you isolate the sources:
If my theory is correct, many PowerWall apps should be showing this ~today, but I think only for those who use PowerWall for night power, rather than using it just for backup or arbitrage from cheap nights to expensive days, except in the arbitrage case, if it was still charging, I'd expect a charging lapse dip showing as an inverse spike to happen as well (similar to my battery use app screenshot).
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detlefo
Member
Ulmo
Active Member
On iPhone, top right and bottom front at the same time, then in Safari, upload a file, which it will have as a picture.
