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Powerwall Advance Settings

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We moved over to Octopus Agile today so thought I would try setting the advanced features on the app but it didnt function as I had imagined.

I set our peak and off peak times and tested it both Balanced and Cost saving mode.

At the time of testing we were in a peak period.

In both tests it ignored the battery (50% charged) and pulled from the grid?

Any thoughts?
 
We moved over to Octopus Agile today so thought I would try setting the advanced features on the app but it didnt function as I had imagined.

I set our peak and off peak times and tested it both Balanced and Cost saving mode.

At the time of testing we were in a peak period.

In both tests it ignored the battery (50% charged) and pulled from the grid?

Any thoughts?
When you change modes it does that but usually only for a brief period. Perhaps 10 minutes or less.
When I change mine, I do it when not much power is being used.
 
Hello, I use the advanced setting to charge over night to use Economy 7 electricity. A useful way to check that you have set the timing right is to go to the today graph in Power Flow and the hours that it will be charging are highlighted with a darker hue.
 
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It seems to work best for our particular usage on Advanced Cost Saving. And yes, it will take a while (several days) to get used to your usage profile and PV production levels before the AI settles down and behaves in a more or less predictable manner.

I also found that if you define a peak period the Powerwall will still pull power from the grid to charge during the 'shoulder' [ie not off peak and not peak] when you would also [ideally] want the PW to be powering the house.

It seems to behave better when we don't define a peak at all and just define 'off-peak' as between 0:30 and 07:00 - we are on the Octopus Agile tariff and this is when the cost of electricity is generally at its lowest. When set up like this it looks at the last couple of days PV production and if insufficient to run the house it will charge exclusively between those times.

It would be great it it has some kind of forward looking PV forecast ability as UK weather is very variable. Currently we can easily go from 20kWh PV production one day to 1-2kWh the next and in these cases the PW will not charge in the night proceeding the 'dull day' to cover the loss of PV production.

Looking at and responding to forecasts of tomorrows PV production was something that was promised as 'coming soon' when we had the PW installed 3 years ago.

Much like the Leicester Forrest East Supercharger that has been 'coming soon' ever since we bought the Model S 4 years ago....
 
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It’s quite a complicated matter especially when Agile is thrown into the mix, I used to be on Go and that was a simple matter of saying offpeak between 12 and 4am. With Agile the best times are all over the place and I found myself going nuts changing the offpeak slots to try and get the best four (ish) hour slot. This four hour slot is based on a max of 3.4kWp drawn from the grid per hour which is about 13.6kWp added.

Obviously in summer etc and with solar theres no need to totally fill the powerwall.

What I ended up settling on is using Home Assistant to work out the best four hours (or whatever time span I require) which then uses the Tesla API to put the powerwall into backup-only mode..which forces the powerwall to charge from the grid. Using this method it combines getting the cheapest agile half hourly slots to charge the powerwall. A similar method is used to charge the car too.
 
It’s quite a complicated matter especially when Agile is thrown into the mix, I used to be on Go and that was a simple matter of saying offpeak between 12 and 4am. With Agile the best times are all over the place and I found myself going nuts changing the offpeak slots to try and get the best four (ish) hour slot. This four hour slot is based on a max of 3.4kWp drawn from the grid per hour which is about 13.6kWp added.

Obviously in summer etc and with solar theres no need to totally fill the powerwall.

What I ended up settling on is using Home Assistant to work out the best four hours (or whatever time span I require) which then uses the Tesla API to put the powerwall into backup-only mode..which forces the powerwall to charge from the grid. Using this method it combines getting the cheapest agile half hourly slots to charge the powerwall. A similar method is used to charge the car too.

Just out of interest, his much does this approach save over a fixed 0:30 to 04:30 charging ? My gut feeling was that the early hours Agile prices were generally the cheapest - and if there was a difference then it was minimal and not really worth bothering about tenths of a penny per kWh.
 
Just out of interest, his much does this approach save over a fixed 0:30 to 04:30 charging ? My gut feeling was that the early hours Agile prices were generally the cheapest - and if there was a difference then it was minimal and not really worth bothering about tenths of a penny per kWh.

It varies quite a lot some days, for example 00:30 - 0100 may be 2 p/kWh then 01:00 - 01:30 up to 3.5 p/kWh then 01:30 - 02:00 back to 1.8 p/kWh etc etc. There really is no fixed pattern, last night for example it was mostly around 7:5 p/kWh so would have been cheaper on the go tariff. I’m going to keep an eye on tariffs and may switch back to go for winter if the agile prices remain higher during the off peak times, as the powerwall gets me through the day. But in summer being on Agile has saved a lot of money and at times paid to fill the car and powerwall up.
 
Just out of interest, his much does this approach save over a fixed 0:30 to 04:30 charging ? My gut feeling was that the early hours Agile prices were generally the cheapest - and if there was a difference then it was minimal and not really worth bothering about tenths of a penny per kWh.

Our average 0030 to 0430 last night was about £0.075 so higher than the agile but cheaper the rest of the day except 1630 - 1930 where it is significantly higher - this is where we use our battery storage so no issue. However the rest of the day its between £0.07 and £0.11.