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Storm Watch failed us again [in MA, Late July 2021]

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(moderator note)

Thread time out. Will unlock later (24 hour time out). When I do unlock it, hopefully it can get back to making suggestions that might be able to be enacted. "I should be able to charge from the grid during any weather event I choose" is not one that is going to be enacted by tesla.

I should clarify (since it was was asked of me) that I dont have any issue with the complaint that @Skip Whiffle has, and I also agree that we all wish / hope that stormwatch operated in a different way. I just want to get the discussion focused on how that might look like or work vs where it is now.

EDIT: I decided 24 hours was "much much" too long so going to try unlocking this now.

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(regular content post, not moderation content)

On a side note @Skip Whiffle, I can imagine that what you experienced would be extremely frustrating. I specifically micro manage my own reserve levels to ensure I specifically dont have to go through what you went through. Spending all this money on this stuff and still having power outages has to be super frustraing.

Hopefully at some point tesla can get more granular with the activation of stormwatch mode. Stormwatch mode is basically skirting the "system charges from solar only" stipulations, so it has always appeared to me that tesla has been pretty conservative with allowing its activation. One side effect of that is what you experienced. We all wish it worked better.

Until or unless that happens, the only option you currently have is to, when hearing any possible upcoming weather, raise your reserve (and understand that that may reduce effectiveness of peak pricing arbitrage etc). "Working as currently designed" doesnt necessarily mean the way its designed works.

That seems to be the root of the previous 2 pages of thread discussion, with "working as designed" being taken to mean "how its designed, works". For some people, how its designed absolutely doesnt work, even if its working as its currently designed.
 
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Maybe it's because I'm new and I watch my generation/weather daily right now, but I think as great as AI/Stormwatch or anything advertised is, nothing really works as great normally for 1 person's individual case IMO.

I think for me moving forward, if it's a massive once in a decade storm (and no sun for a few days), I'm probably going to go very high reserve since at the end of the day, we all spent a lot of $$ for that once in a year (a few times a year in PG&E land) power outage to see our $$ "well spent". No point in exporting if something big is coming.

For me at least, I over-generate anyways and getting back $0.03 for excess is like $0 so for those cases where a massive storm is coming, just don't use the PW/batteries and raise the reserve. The good things for storms is at least, we know they are coming a lot of times.

Yes, I agree it should all work like magic and just work, but I joke/state that if things worked that way, none of us would have jobs since the AI/robots can replace all of us in whatever we do. A lot of the storage tech/workings is also 'new'. Maybe in the future, it will be smarter, but I think we all agree Stormwatch and what triggers it doesn't work that good so far.
 
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Maybe it's because I'm new and I watch my generation/weather daily right now, but I think as great as AI/Stormwatch or anything advertised is, nothing really works as great normally for 1 person's individual case IMO.

I think for me moving forward, if it's a massive once in a decade storm (and no sun for a few days), I'm probably going to go very high reserve since at the end of the day, we all spent a lot of $$ for that once in a year (a few times a year in PG&E land) power outage to see our $$ "well spent". No point in exporting if something big is coming.

For me at least, I over-generate anyways and getting back $0.03 for excess is like $0 so for those cases where a massive storm is coming, just don't use the PW/batteries and raise the reserve. The good things for storms is at least, we know they are coming a lot of times.

Yes, I agree it should all work like magic and just work, but I joke/state that if things worked that way, none of us would have jobs since the AI/robots can replace all of us in whatever we do. A lot of the storage tech/workings is also 'new'. Maybe in the future, it will be smarter, but I think we all agree Stormwatch and what triggers it doesn't work that good so far.


Haha yeah I feel like just a few years ago, people would make small talk by saying "how about that weather." But lately weather (and related fires) is taking center stage all too often. I think there's a challenge in predicting the weather though. For example, this recent West Coast "atmospheric river" thing just came out of nowhere. And prior to this week, I thought a Nor'Easter was like Haboob. It was a thing... but not extreme that would wipe out the grid.

A couple weeks ago I finally got the $ scraped together to have a roofer install some gutter guards, re-route some downspouts, re-do all the stinkhole vents, replace some broken tiles, replace flashing, seal some chimney caps, etc. When I was getting the quote/contract he was like "you have to be the only person in California worrying about rain maintenance right now."

Literally the day after his crew completes everything, suddenly it's overcast and we're getting flood watch forecast alerts. Like WTF. By then, I wasn't generating enough solar to refill my Powerwalls even if I tried to set the reserve to 100%.

If there's anything I've learned in the last few months, is to ignore the Tesla Storm Watch and just bump up the reserve %. I think that thread we had about the NorCal reserve setting was very enlightening. But I also understand folks on TMC are far from the average homeowner. I think there are a lot of people out there expecting Storm Watch to be some resiliency silver bullet since it's touted so aggressively by installers as a way to ensure the batteries are always full when bad weather is on the horizon.

If 1 inch of water can take out the grid, imagine what a quake will do. Storm Watch can't help there. Maybe we should all set our reserves to 100% lololol.
 
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Haha yeah I feel like just a few years ago, people would make small talk by saying "how about that weather." But lately weather (and related fires) is taking center stage all too often. I think there's a challenge in predicting the weather though. For example, this recent West Coast "atmospheric river" thing just came out of nowhere. And prior to this week, I thought a Nor'Easter was like Haboob. It was a thing... but not extreme that would wipe out the grid.

A couple weeks ago I finally got the $ scraped together to have a roofer install some gutter guards, re-route some downspouts, re-do all the stinkhole vents, replace some broken tiles, replace flashing, seal some chimney caps, etc. When I was getting the quote/contract he was like "you have to be the only person in California worrying about rain maintenance right now."

Literally the day after his crew completes everything, suddenly it's overcast and we're getting flood watch forecast alerts. Like WTF. By then, I wasn't generating enough solar to refill my Powerwalls even if I tried to set the reserve to 100%.

If there's anything I've learned in the last few months, is to ignore the Tesla Storm Watch and just bump up the reserve %. I think that thread we had about the NorCal reserve setting was very enlightening. But I also understand folks on TMC are far from the average homeowner. I think there are a lot of people out there expecting Storm Watch to be some resiliency silver bullet since it's touted so aggressively by installers as a way to ensure the batteries are always full when bad weather is on the horizon.

If 1 inch of water can take out the grid, imagine what a quake will do. Storm Watch can't help there. Maybe we should all set our reserves to 100% lololol.

Haha, yeah. Our power grid is actually extremely stable in San Diego. I think nearly all recent outages has been human errors and maybe we had 1 affecting me (rolling blackouts) in my recent memory. I'm sorta protecting against the 'unknown' thing that seems to be occurring literally a few times a year now (Texas freeze, Bomb Cyclone, east coast had multiple floods and this rain event, etc...). Texas was just this year so like stock market/housing crashes, I think the next event will be something not many predicted.

As for reserves, I'm of the mind that as long as it's very sunny tomorrow, I'm ok with lower reserves since I tend to recharge the batteries around noon. It's that rain/cloudy over the next week which has me pause. I had very little generation on Monday of this week so raised my reserve to 50%.
 
We have a massive thunderstorm coming through Massachusetts right now, and no Storm Watch event was declared. I have my PW set as 100% backup, but we're also part of Connected Solutions (Tesla Virtual Power Plant), and we output 72% of our 2 PW back out to the grid this afternoon.

And just 15 minutes into the beginning of the nearby lightening, we lost power, with just 28% on the PW.

With no way to force the PW to recharge from the grid (unless Tesla declares a Storm Watch event), I may need to cancel our participation in Tesla VPP. This will defeat the purpose of having the PWs.
Storm Watch sucks. It works when you could care less, and DOESNT'T work when the winds are lashing the trees outside and the rain in pouring down in buckets.

A useless feature, from useless people.

Fruitcake
 
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Storm Watch sucks. It works when you could care less, and DOESNT'T work when the winds are lashing the trees outside and the rain in pouring down in buckets.

A useless feature, from useless people.

Fruitcake
Storm Watch doesn't activate when you want. Only when certain conditions occurs. It's described here:

So I guess the question is. When the weather occurred that you described above, what was the alert type and did it match what is on the web site? If no, then they DON'T turn on Storm Watch.

It's not what you want to hear, but it's the way it's permitted to work.
 
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It's not what you want to hear, but it's the way it's permitted to work.

If that's the case, Tesla needs to start telling customers how it's "permitted to work". Instead of the BS marketing/sales they've been using so far. The way I see Powerwall/ESS advertised looks nothing like what you're describing.

Nowhere does any Powerwall installer mention that they need a minor degree in meteorology and follow NWS alerts to understand if their home backup is functioning. The ads paint the scenario that the Powerwall preps your house when weather turns south, so you gain peace of mind. No disclaimers, asterisks, or other overt things to douse your permitted reality onto the selling proposition.
 
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If that's the case, Tesla needs to start telling customers how it's "permitted to work".
They do. It's in that link. They don't provide paper manuals. As a owner, you can look it up in the App or on the web site.

In the app, go to Support, under System Performance, go to Powerwall, then scroll down and look for Preparing for an Outage section, and then tap on the Storm Watch link. The link I provided above is now visible on your mobile device.

If you use the mobile app, you'll find all the info on how Powerwall and or Solar work individually or together. It's all there.

Have you found something that is missing?
 
Haha, yeah. Our power grid is actually extremely stable in San Diego. I think nearly all recent outages has been human errors and maybe we had 1 affecting me (rolling blackouts) in my recent memory. I'm sorta protecting against the 'unknown' thing that seems to be occurring literally a few times a year now (Texas freeze, Bomb Cyclone, east coast had multiple floods and this rain event, etc...). Texas was just this year so like stock market/housing crashes, I think the next event will be something not many predicted.

As for reserves, I'm of the mind that as long as it's very sunny tomorrow, I'm ok with lower reserves since I tend to recharge the batteries around noon. It's that rain/cloudy over the next week which has me pause. I had very little generation on Monday of this week so raised my reserve to 50%.
rain? clouds? What are those? Looking rainless and bright until mid March here in NorCal.
 
They do. It's in that link. They don't provide paper manuals. As a owner, you can look it up in the App or on the web site.

Have you found something that is missing?

I agree with you that the NWS alerts are the trigger for whether the vaunted Stormwatch will activate. And I think people in this thread also agree that the NWS alerts oftentimes do not behave as an individual may expect. Because what one person sees when they look out a window may not be what some robot at the NWS sees for an entire zip code.

And that's why I'm saying Tesla and their Powerwall installer/partners need to put this limitation front and center when they sell their product.

It's like when Wells Fargo was jobbing people into fraudulent accounts by using fine print buried deep in the bowels of the legalese being pushed on customer contracts. Do you also defend WF's actions because of the strict interpretation that "it's written; so affected customers were simply not reading the correct pages?"

I don't think it's reasonable to brag about how great Stormwatch is to hook a lead; but then ask the same lead to click 4 layers deep to understand how un-great Stormwatch is because it's all reliant on the NWS.
 
My system has been in stormwatch mode (as in charging from the grid) for most of the past 3 weeks, due to wind. Stormwatch has actually activated (as in activating charging from the grid) and de activated and then re activated all on the same day, at least a couple of times, all due to the NWS alerts for my area.

In none of those cases was I actually following NWS alerts before stormwatch activated. It activated, and I was like "I wonder why this is on?" and then looked saw the alerts.

I am certainly not saying its perfect (far from it), but I think " how well" it works depends on how accurate the NWS alerts are for your area.
 
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I turned off Storm watch (we call it "Storm Guard" in Enphase land) almost instantly...Saw it kick in some 2am and 100% charge my batteries in like an hour. Not really needed since it was sunny that day so I'm getting to 100% anyways.

I think it's really dependent on what your system can't handle. Anytime there is lots of sun (say high heat warning or wind or whatever), I don't see why I'd need storm watch because the next day is sunny which translates to 100% batteries.
 
The purpose of this thread was to point out that Stormwatch doesn't activate in enough cases when we are likely to lose power. E.g., heavy rain with strong wind. That's what I started this thread.

For me it's only a problem when ConnectedSolutions / Tesla VPP runs the batteries down in the summer (and I get paid for that). Right now we're in a Stormwatch event for the heavy winds (and light rain) that is hitting MA right now. Even our utility sent out a warning to expect outages. But I keep the Powerwalls at 98% reserve, to reduce the loses from the DC<->AC<->DC while charging them. So in the winter it doesn't matter; I'm always ready for an outage.

I still hope that Stormwatch starts to trigger on more heavy summer storms.
 
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I turned off Storm watch (we call it "Storm Guard" in Enphase land) almost instantly...Saw it kick in some 2am and 100% charge my batteries in like an hour. Not really needed since it was sunny that day so I'm getting to 100% anyways.

I think it's really dependent on what your system can't handle. Anytime there is lots of sun (say high heat warning or wind or whatever), I don't see why I'd need storm watch because the next day is sunny which translates to 100% batteries.
High winds mean a potential grid outage. And for many with smaller arrays, clouds, high usage, or shading, it means there is no way that solar alone will power their homes in a day-long outage.
 
The purpose of this thread was to point out that Stormwatch doesn't activate in enough cases when we are likely to lose power. E.g., heavy rain with strong wind. That's what I started this thread.

For me it's only a problem when ConnectedSolutions / Tesla VPP runs the batteries down in the summer (and I get paid for that). Right now we're in a Stormwatch event for the heavy winds (and light rain) that is hitting MA right now. Even our utility sent out a warning to expect outages. But I keep the Powerwalls at 98% reserve, to reduce the loses from the DC<->AC<->DC while charging them. So in the winter it doesn't matter; I'm always ready for an outage.

I still hope that Stormwatch starts to trigger on more heavy summer storms.
I think right now the only way Stormwatch will trigger more often in summer storms is for the NWS to declare weather alerts at lower thresholds.

Of course, if they do that people may be upset that their Powerwalls are pulling from the grid more often.
 
I think right now the only way Stormwatch will trigger more often in summer storms is for the NWS to declare weather alerts at lower thresholds.

Of course, if they do that people may be upset that their Powerwalls are pulling from the grid more often.


I forget where I saw it, but one of the IOU advocates for NEM 3.0 said that since Tesla's Powerwalls actually take power from the grid to help the home during a stormwatch, that the homeowner with solar and Powerwalls should be paying a "tax" when stormwatch is activated.

Can you imagine if NEM 3.0 actually charged every time Stormwatch turned on? Hahaha.