Scheduled Charging for solar production

[Adidadi]

I’m trying to figure out how best to use the app to charge off peak but also specifically during solar production times.
If I select Schedule, then charge, I can set it to start at 10:15 when it’s Sunny but it doesn’t have ability to not charge during off peak.
But under schedule, departure, I can specify off peak charge, but if we plug it in at the end of the day, it’ll charge that evening at 9:45 from the grid.
Would setting enable charge at 10:15 am on that page along with departure at 4pm work? Or are the two pages not correlated?

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Rocky_H]

Would setting enable charge at 10:15 am on that page along with departure at 4pm work? Or are the two pages not correlated?

You only get to use EITHER start time OR departure time, but not both.

 

[Adidadi]

You only get to use EITHER start time OR departure time, but not both.

Thank you.

 

[Adidadi]

This is so frustrating. My wife and I are battling it out because if I plug it in when I get home at around 7pm, she has it set to 9pm for off peak. But we buy juice from the grid.
I want it to charge the next day at 10am so our solar charges it for free.
Whenever it is low, I select off peak and hit charge now if outside of peak hours.
These cars are so advanced, isn’t there a way to set a hierarchy:
1) charge during solar
Unless:
2) juice is below 40% then charge option 3
3) charge off peak.
I’d imagine there could more flexibility in such an advanced car. It is app driven essentially. Anyone know why it is limited to one either or instead of a cascading hierarchy?

 

[Edtreo]

Don’t you guys have net metering?

 

[DCGOO]

Don’t you guys have net metering?

Or house batteries?

 

[Adidadi]

Don’t you guys have net metering?

I’m not sure what that is. Could you kindly elaborate please.

 

[Adidadi]

Or house batteries?

No, unfortunately not. We made the calculations and the expense of batteries (Tesla wallpack) was so expensive, that even the savings from not buying from grid after Sun down did not recoup expense for many years.
My decision to go solar was a financial disaster. I installed 46 panels and I do not come close to offsetting my bill. Most of our usage is at night. We sell lots of power to the grid for fractions of a penny and then we buy it back after sundown. Complete joke of a maneuver. My electricity bills with nem charges at true up, and lease payment come to around $1100 a month. More than before I went with solar. And of course, the company went out of business and reopen as a new one to clear all responsibility. A common practice.

 

[Adidadi]

Don’t you guys have net metering?

I just googled it and believe we do have net metering. If you read my previous post, you’ll see we are disappointed with our solar decision. It’s an expensive luxury that costs us.

 

[Genie]

I want it to charge the next day at 10am so our solar charges it for free

The app will do that.
Home battery storage seems bound to come down in price, there is competition. When they hit your price point I bet you’ll be a lot happier with your solar system.

 

[DCGOO]

No, unfortunately not. We made the calculations and the expense of batteries (Tesla wallpack) was so expensive, that even the savings from not buying from grid after Sun down did not recoup expense for many years.
My decision to go solar was a financial disaster. I installed 46 panels and I do not come close to offsetting my bill. Most of our usage is at night. We sell lots of power to the grid for fractions of a penny and then we buy it back after sundown. Complete joke of a maneuver. My electricity bills with nem charges at true up, and lease payment come to around $1100 a month. More than before I went with solar. And of course, the company went out of business and reopen as a new one to clear all responsibility. A common practice.

That’s too bad. To me it never made sense to have solar without batteries. Batteries should be far less expensive than solar although not particularly cheap mind you. my only interest in solar is to generate and store solar during the day, and run on batteries at night. Our rates for electricity are pretty low, around 11¢ per kWh, 24/7 (no TOU). So the only advantage of solar is to store energy locally for use at other times, and not buying energy from the grid in the first place. Around here backup generators are far more common than solar arrays. Largely because we have many large trees. Trees often make solar difficult, and the grid less than 100% reliable. I never thought the Tesla Powerwall made much sense for this part of country (low energy costs, storms and trees). Anyway, this is not really the forum to get in to solar, batteries or backup power.

 

[posity]

Your member info says you are in San Diego. Quick googling says SDG&E offers net metering. That would solve your problem by essentially using your power company as a battery instead of selling them power like you are doing now. You definitely should investigate whether your utility company offers net metering: may be as simple as some paperwork to fix your issue?

 

[Adidadi]

Your member info says you are in San Diego. Quick googling says SDG&E offers net metering. That would solve your problem by essentially using your power company as a battery instead of selling them power like you are doing now. You definitely should investigate whether your utility company offers net metering: may be as simple as some paperwork to fix your issue?

I’m in Lafayette with PG&E. I may be wrong, but the rate they buy from me is a fraction of what I buy it back from them at night. My electricity bill is brutal. Around $450 for gas and electricity. It shows a small bill for electricity itself, then carrier charge from a local power supplier and taxes and then nem true up at the end of the year is around $5000 plus my $215 lease payment. So I’m around $1200 a month for electricity. I would love a consulting company to come in and help me identify problem areas. Whole house is on Lutron dimmers. I minimize ac and heater use. But it’s a pretty big property. Very little low voltage light. 2 hour pool pump. My cinema is the biggest culprit, but it was down for a couple mo this and my bill didn’t drop too much. Thank you all for the help and any suggestions.

 

[Edtreo]

I’m in Lafayette with PG&E. I may be wrong, but the rate they buy from me is a fraction of what I buy it back from them at night. My electricity bill is brutal. Around $450 for gas and electricity. It shows a small bill for electricity itself, then carrier charge from a local power supplier and taxes and then nem true up at the end of the year is around $5000 plus my $215 lease payment. So I’m around $1200 a month for electricity. I would love a consulting company to come in and help me identify problem areas. Whole house is on Lutron dimmers. I minimize ac and heater use. But it’s a pretty big property. Very little low voltage light. 2 hour pool pump. My cinema is the biggest culprit, but it was down for a couple mo this and my bill didn’t drop too much. Thank you all for the help and any suggestions.

Best guess is you don’t have true net metering Where kWh generated to the grid = kWh consume.

 

[Adidadi]

They say they have it. I guess that’s what my NEM charges are. How it’s still so expensive is beyond me. Here’s their explanation. They might just be ripping me off as they buy it for cheap and sell it back to me at a massive premium.

Understand Your Bill

Learn to read your energy statement and understand your PG&E bill. Find common questions about your PG&E bill.

www.pge.com

 

[Rocky_H]

Yeah, "net metering" is a really broad term that can be done in a lot of different ways. We are currently undergoing a fight with Idaho Power here in my state where they're trying to change net metering to be the ripoff kind, where they will only buy back at less than 5 cents per kWh. I am still grandfathered in where it's the useful system, where they net the number of kWh generated per month and bank that, and those kWh can be used at any time, even months later. We have had multiple meetings at the Public Utilities Commission to try to contest this.

 

[posity]

Since PG&E currently does offer 'true' net metering, and you are still seeing utility power usage on your bill, that says you are using more power than you are generating. If you see Net Energy Metering statistics on your bill, you have NEM and you are getting full credit for all the power you generate (for now, at least: lots of political wrangling going on to change that). If you have PG&E NEM, the only time you get 'screwed' is if you end up having generated more power than you used in a 12 month period: that is clearly NOT what is going on in your case. So your 'battle' with your wife is for nothing.

I agree your bill seems high with 46 panels. You likely have some 'low-hanging fruit' to reduce your bill. You should find someone to analyze and measure your usage and provide a breakdown of your costs. I too had very high bills at one of our rentals. I bought a little device called a Kill-A-Watt to measure power usage at each of our 120V devices (old refrigerators and freezers are huge energy hogs). And once I made sure none of the 120V devices were sucking excess power (ending up getting rid of an old freezer: the new freezer paid for itself in 14 months!), I went through all my 240V equipment on my electrical panel, turning them off one at a time, reading the change in power usage at my utility meter. I found that our well pump was staying on 24 hours a day due to a stuck pressure switch: my electric bill went down by $100 the next month. Given your bill, odds are high that you have some 240V device that is your main culprit IMHO (pool, a pump, water heater, AC, heat,..)

You might also want to investigate Time Of Use Billing if you are currently on PG&E's Tired Rate Plan. In that case, you WOULD have reduced rates at most hours (except 4-9PM) (and you could restart a new battle with your wife!). This takes some careful analysis to determine if TOU billing is better for your particular case, With Tiered Pricing, you are roughly paying 39 cents per kWh at PG&E, whereas with TOU pricing, you pay anywhere from 28 cents to 49 cents per kWh depending on your location, time of year. and time of day. So changing to TOU pricing requires thoughtful analysis to know if it will help.

 

[Edtreo]

They say they have it. I guess that’s what my NEM charges are. How it’s still so expensive is beyond me. Here’s their explanation. They might just be ripping me off as they buy it for cheap and sell it back to me at a massive premium.

Understand Your Bill

Learn to read your energy statement and understand your PG&E bill. Find common questions about your PG&E bill.

www.pge.com

Using energy monitoring device helps seek out your home phantom drain. Sense Home Energy Monitor - Sense.com

 

[Rocky_H]

I was just thinking it's about time for someone to mention Sense to try to detect and itemize where the power consumption is going.

 

[mxnym]

While I don't want to discount any of the advice prior to my response here, I do want to answer the original question. The Tesla app doesn't have a way to do what you want that I am aware of, but people definitely do this with the Tesla API and things like IFTT (a subscription webapp that could interact with the API to start and stop charging and/or change your scheduled charge time based on criteria and schedules you effectively program into it). While I haven't used IFTT, I believe it is supposed to be intuitive, so don't let hte word programming scare you. You could probably find examples that could lead you in the right direction for that option elsewhere on the web by choosing the appropriate search terms. While my google-fu is horrific, and there may be services other than IFTT that fall in the same category (automation, I believe), something like this might work: iftt tesla api charging