Starlink base station location used for Stormwatch

[Gwgan]

My Starlink in Maine uses a base station in NY. Well aware that some phone services think my phone is in NY when on home wi-fi. Today Stormwatch activated for a storm during times when the weather warning is in effect for NY—a day before the same storm is to hit us. This explains why there was no Stormwatch triggered for the ice storm we just had.

Note: We use an open database of cell tower locations to improve the performance of features, including Storm Watch accuracy. OpenCelliD Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Some location data is powered by Unwired Labs.

Too smart for their own good

Is it possible to force Powerwall to use cellular data and not wi-fi?

 

[Gwgan]

Unplugged wired ethernet
Deleted wifi password
Confirmed PW is using cellular only
No change yet. Will try powercycle after the sun goes down.

 

[Gwgan]

Update. Have not powercycled. Support is monitoring for 24 hours with wifi connection. Meanwhile the correct local weather warning now appears in the app. Probably more a problem of Storm Watch fetching the wrong data but not because of Starlink's location problem.

 

[BGbreeder]

My Starlink in Maine uses a base station in NY. Well aware that some phone services think my phone is in NY when on home wi-fi. Today Stormwatch activated for a storm during times when the weather warning is in effect for NY—a day before the same storm is to hit us. This explains why there was no Stormwatch triggered for the ice storm we just had.


Too smart for their own good

Is it possible to force Powerwall to use cellular data and not wi-fi?

I don't believe that Tesla uses your POP, which for Starlink I understand can be hundreds of miles away. From your installation, they have, or should have, your exact location. I'm not sure why yours activated early.

FWIW: The collective experience here is that stormwatch triggers off of NOAA/NWS alerts, which depending on the granularity of the warning, may, or may not, accurately cover you. For our location, I find the NWS forecasts to be quite good, but the storm warnings typically activate over much larger regions, and, depending on your local circumstances, may not be accurate.

All the best,

BG

 

[Gwgan]

NWS updated a new storm forecast at 0351 and Storm Watch activated within a minute.

Actual weather warning:
“WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIS EVENING TO 10 PM
EST MONDAY...”

Storm Watch:
“Starts Jan 22, 3:52
Ends Jan 22, 17:15”

Given the language in the app I thought “this event” was describing the interval of the weather warning but the times given seems to be the time SW is active and PW is able to charge up. Apparently I’ve been misreading the info pane. Still don’t know why the activation is slated to end at 1715 though.

 

[Gwgan]

Powerwall activated Stormwatch today Wednesday late afternoon while tomorrow is forecast to be sunny and a storm is not expected here for three more days on Saturday. Weather usually arrives here sooner than forecast but it would still two days too early even so.
I opted out and will prep batteries myself when the time is right.

 

[Gwgan]

When I wrote that post there were no weather warnings posted but we are now under a severe weather watch so it was appropriate for Storm Watch to activate, although it is still too early to be practical when the batteries will fill on solar tomorrow in advance of the storm.