Tesla app showing incorrect information when charging from grid

[swedge]

D

Yeah.

Mine seems to be so much simpler without Export Everything. Here is a grid charge to PW day (at midnight while also charging my car). You can see the solar output in orange at the bottom. In my case only solar gets exported to the grid because I don't have Export Everything toggled on.

Can the PW export to the grid while solar is also being exported? I suspect it would be capped by your max export rate.

This may be just poor graphics on the apps part. If so I wish they would just show the orange as what is flowing from the solar to the grid and any PW (green) adding to it.

View attachment 916959

Dude, these numbers look wacky, make no sense at all. But I've been drinking while watching the Oscars... I'll look again tomorrow...

 

[swedge]

Can the PW export to the grid while solar is also being exported? I suspect it would be capped by your max export rate.

Yes it can. I'm not sure about the export limit, but what you suggest does make sense.

If so I wish they would just show the orange as what is flowing from the solar to the grid and any PW (green) adding to it.

This is what it does do. You can see an example in cwied's post above. At 3pm PW started exporting and there was still a bit more solar then the house (not shown) was using, so that added a smidge to the export.

Your usage is nearly 10X mine, so that number threw me. Perhaps you have heat-pump in addition to car charging. That little bit of charging from the grid around 11pm does look strange. I'm on EV2-A rate, and mine does not do what yours did. Is it possible there was a storm watch event? I think storm watch will charge even during peak times. In fact today I turned storm watch off to prevent that and I hope to remember to turn it back on at midnight before tomorrow's rain+wind river tomorrow.

I had my car charger wired outside of the gateway, so it does not show up in the PW app display, making mine look very different from yours. I figured that charging the car from the PW during an outage would be counterproductive, and I could use the dryer outlet if I ever really need to add a few miles range during an outage. Oh, or maybe during an extended outage, when SOC reaches 100% during an extended outage I could do that rather than have the PW shut the solar down. Wouldn't want to let those photons go to waste!

 

[aesculus]

This is what it does do. You can see an example in cwied's post above. At 3pm PW started exporting and there was still a bit more solar then the house (not shown) was using, so that added a smidge to the export.

OK. I think that dip caught me off guard. I could see it if the solar ran into shadowing, but why the PWs would suddenly stop discharging for a few minutes bothered me. In my mind they were the same with just a rounding error separating them.

Your usage is nearly 10X mine, so that number threw me. Perhaps you have heat-pump in addition to car charging. That little bit of charging from the grid around 11pm does look strange. I'm on EV2-A rate, and mine does not do what yours did. Is it possible there was a storm watch event? I think storm watch will charge even during peak times. In fact today I turned storm watch off to prevent that and I hope to remember to turn it back on at midnight before tomorrow's rain+wind river tomorrow.

That was me simulating storm watch and making sure it only applied off peak. IE I turned on grid charging at 11 PM. The car charges at midnight. The same thing happened the day before with the PW charging starting at 11PM.

And yes to 6 tons of heat pumps. I only set them back 1-2 degrees at night because they suck at playing catch-up, even these brand new state of the art inverter ones. That is most of the blue until you get to 6:30 am where the spa comes on. At 6am the setbacks are removed from the heat pumps. Another set of setbacks occurs during peak and terminates at 9PM so the blue spike then.

I had my car charger wired outside of the gateway, so it does not show up in the PW app display, making mine look very different from yours. I figured that charging the car from the PW during an outage would be counterproductive, and I could use the dryer outlet if I ever really need to add a few miles range during an outage. Oh, or maybe during an extended outage, when SOC reaches 100% during an extended outage I could do that rather than have the PW shut the solar down. Wouldn't want to let those photons go to waste!

You need to have Tesla put some CTs on your outside the GW charger. That is how mine is configured. As long as you have grid power, the car charges and shows in your house consumption. That is the big hunk going on under the PW green at midnight. I am charging the car at ~17 kW.

 

[swedge]

That was me simulating storm watch and making sure it only applied off peak.

Yesterday evening I went to bed "early", and so set Storm Watch on around 11. Shortly thereafter, it started grid charging, even though we were on partial peak till midnight. So, as I suspected, storm watch over-rides the time/rate settings. Makes sense, because backup really is the primary PW function.

You need to have Tesla put some CTs on your outside the GW charger.

I have an old TED monitoring system in addition to the PW, the anaphase solar and consumption monitoring and the car's logging, including Tesla Fi. While our PW makes somewhat more over the course of a year than the house consumes, I am hoping (and tracking) that PW's tricks will leverage our solar enough to keep the true-up around $100, largely offsetting the cost of car charging. Time shifting our consumption to off-peak, exporting any extra SOC during peak, and doing these even when cloudy by grid charging all add up, it says here in my simulations. My first true-up with enlarged solar and the car is in July, after a few months of solid solar, assuming these Rivers of Rain stop coming...

Anyway, I'm fine with having the car metering separate, though your suggestion of putting extras load CTs on that would be a decent alternative.

PS As I was typing this, the River of Wind glitched our power very briefly. PW kept us running, but the little UPS on our internet gear tripped offline and sounded its alarm. In real grid failures as opposed to testing by opening the main breaker, PW lets the power drop for only a fraction of a second, but long enough to confuse the ONT, modem and router. Hence the UPS. Except now it is causing, rather than preventing the problem. One more piece of gear to de-bug, maybe a dead battery. Looks like I'm back online, so here goes this post. Oops, I had to re-launch my browser too, after copying the above. Technology, fun but a mixed blessing!

 

[aesculus]

While our PW makes somewhat more over the course of a year than the house consumes, I am hoping (and tracking) that PW's tricks will leverage our solar enough to keep the true-up around $100, largely offsetting the cost of car charging. Time shifting our consumption to off-peak, exporting any extra SOC during peak, and doing these even when cloudy by grid charging all add up, it says here in my simulations. My first true-up with enlarged solar and the car is in July, after a few months of solid solar, assuming these Rivers of Rain stop coming...

If you have not seen this take a peek: NEM-PS Annual True-Up Calculation [PG&E example]

As shown in the graph above I am a total energy hog based on my Model X (10k miles), 6 tons of heat pumps and pumping water. But in the end of the day I did not feel bad having a less than $300 dollar true up. Those days will be over once I get kicked off of EVA and NEM2, but I will enjoy it while I can.

 

[swedge]

If you have not seen this take a peek: NEM-PS Annual True-Up Calculation [PG&E example]

As shown in the graph above I am a total energy hog based on my Model X (10k miles), 6 tons of heat pumps and pumping water. But in the end of the day I did not feel bad having a less than $300 dollar true up. Those days will be over once I get kicked off of EVA and NEM2, but I will enjoy it while I can.

Perhaps, once the Calif solar install industry goes belly up as the NEM2 grandfather-gold-rush ends, this the industry will use the business-collapse-apocalypse to persuade the Gov to undo the damage he has done. NEM3 in not Net Metering at all. It is a sham.

Claiming that the revenue lost (as we used less juice) transferred costs to non-solar customers was pseudo-capitalist nonsense. The fossil fuel industry is dinosaurs, literally. Electric utilities will survive by adapting to the realities of renewable sources, time shifting, season shifting, geography shifting, car charging, truck charging, and all the other opportunities these create. But for now they own the politicians, so that will need to change.

I expect to see a good old fashioned petition drive to put NEM on the ballot as an initiative. We may all need to contribute a bit to the cause, but we number over a million, and only 100 bucks each could easily swamp PG&E's lobbyist budget.

Hopefully we can get this done before the next series of Global Climate Change River Events washes Sacramento into SF Bay, and before our NEM2 expires.

Appologies for the late night hyperbole.

SW

 

[RKCRLR]

If you post the four screens from the Tesla app, we can probably point you in the right direction of which CT is misconfigured.

I think these are the four screenshots you requested plus a shot of the home screen. My solar was actually producing ~0.5 kW during these shots:

And here is a screenshot from I log into the Gateway directly:

Thanks

 

[jgleigh]

The CT measuring your house (or site) load is backwards. Your house load should never be negative. That's what is throwing off everything else.

The exclamation point on the house load probably says something similar.

 

[RKCRLR]

The CT measuring your house (or site) load is backwards. Your house load should never be negative. That's what is throwing off everything else.

The exclamation point on the house load probably says something similar.

Yep, but according to Tesla this is the way it is supposed to work.

 

[jgleigh]

Yep, but according to Tesla this is the way it is supposed to work.

Actually go back and read their response. I think the fact that you reported an issue when off-grid confused them. This definitely isn't normal when on-grid.

 

[RKCRLR]

Actually go back and read their response. I think the fact that you reported an issue when off-grid confused them. This definitely isn't normal when on-grid.

I never told them the problem was when off-grid, it was when I was charging the Powerwalls in preparation for the grid going down since Stormwatch wasn't activated. It was just their response that mentioned going off grid. I pretty much sent them what I stated in the first post. It was a typical customer service response that didn't address the issue. I'm going to send them the screenshots but I suspect I still won't get a response.

 

[jgleigh]

Do you have the plans and/or are you comfortable changing things in your electrical panels? If not, definitely get them to send a tech out and correct the issue.

 

[RKCRLR]

Do you have the plans and/or are you comfortable changing things in your electrical panels? If not, definitely get them to send a tech out and correct the issue.

I'm not uncomfortable changing things in the electrical panel other than the CTs are really crammed in there and I don't want to break something. And I don't want to own the problem if something goes wrong.

 

[jgleigh]

If you could post pics of the CTs, the Neurio box, and the breaker they're wired to, we could at least direct the Tesla tech to exactly what is wrong.

It's unfortunately a VERY common issue with new installs.

 

[RKCRLR]

If you could post pics of the CTs, the Neurio box, and the breaker they're wired to, we could at least direct the Tesla tech to exactly what is wrong.

It's unfortunately a VERY common issue with new installs.

I might do that but my installation isn't straight forward. The system is mounted installed at my shop where I have a 400 amp entrance panel that is split into two 200 amp services, one of which is backed up and sent to my house but also runs some things in the shop. At this point the only things not backed up is the circuit for my welder in the shop and an outside outlet. I have two solar systems mounted on the shop, an old string system and a newer Enphase system. Tesla screwed up the monitoring for the Enphase system when they installed the 3rd Powerwall and it took them forever to get it straightened out.

 

[swedge]

The CT measuring your house (or site) load is backwards. Your house load should never be negative. That's what is throwing off everything else.

The exclamation point on the house load probably says something similar.

The house should never show a negative number. Houses don't do that.

If it were me, I'd open the panels and sketch out the wiring and the location of the CTs. I'd also check in the installer wizard and note the configuration of the CTs.

But your installation is messed up, and the installer should come out an fix it.

I am having trouble imagining a mis-configuration that would result in what you are seeing, and without knowing how your system is wired, I can't even guess. But it is an easy mistake for the installer to put a CT on the wrong wire or flipped. If your system has CT's for the house load, if one was flipped, the gateway would see the difference, rather than the sum of the two phases. As appliances on the flipped phase come on, the gatway will see a decrease in the total. If that is a large load, like a heat pump, the difference would become negative.

However, at least in my installation, there are no house load CT's and instead the house load is instead calculated from the solar, grid and PW flows.

Another oddity is that the various displays disagree, perhaps from different times. But some show 0.6 kW from solar, while other show 6 kW. The difference is close to what it says the house is "exporting". Newer installations use just one CT on solar (because the inverters output 240 volts, equal current on both legs) configured to indicate 2X Solar power.

So perhaps the CT's are mis-wired and or misconfigured. But in any case, the installation is messed up. But probably trivial to fix once the error is uncovered.

SW

 

[RKCRLR]

The house should never show a negative number. Houses don't do that.

If it were me, I'd open the panels and sketch out the wiring and the location of the CTs. I'd also check in the installer wizard and note the configuration of the CTs.

But your installation is messed up, and the installer should come out an fix it.

I am having trouble imagining a mis-configuration that would result in what you are seeing, and without knowing how your system is wired, I can't even guess. But it is an easy mistake for the installer to put a CT on the wrong wire or flipped. If your system has CT's for the house load, if one was flipped, the gateway would see the difference, rather than the sum of the two phases. As appliances on the flipped phase come on, the gatway will see a decrease in the total. If that is a large load, like a heat pump, the difference would become negative.

However, at least in my installation, there are no house load CT's and instead the house load is instead calculated from the solar, grid and PW flows.

Another oddity is that the various displays disagree, perhaps from different times. But some show 0.6 kW from solar, while other show 6 kW. The difference is close to what it says the house is "exporting". Newer installations use just one CT on solar (because the inverters output 240 volts, equal current on both legs) configured to indicate 2X Solar power.

So perhaps the CT's are mis-wired and or misconfigured. But in any case, the installation is messed up. But probably trivial to fix once the error is uncovered.

SW

I'm going to keep pushing Tesla for a resolution. As I mentioned my system is complicated. There are the main feeds to my house that is 200' away and then all the other wires from the breakers that feed my shop. So the CTs need to capture the main feed wires to the house and the individual wires from the breakers at the shop panel. So L1 and L2 need to be kept straight as well as the "direction" on which way the current is going.

 

[swedge]

I might do that but my installation isn't straight forward. The system is mounted installed at my shop where I have a 400 amp entrance panel that is split into two 200 amp services, one of which is backed up and sent to my house but also runs some things in the shop. At this point the only things not backed up is the circuit for my welder in the shop and an outside outlet. I have two solar systems mounted on the shop, an old string system and a newer Enphase system. Tesla screwed up the monitoring for the Enphase system when they installed the 3rd Powerwall and it took them forever to get it straightened out.

Yeah! Electricians tend not to know much about electronics, and CT's are pretty magical. I love there trick of running two wires and the CT measuring the sum of the currents.

Anyway, do you know which of all those circuits are included in the "house" draw? What I'm getting to is where are the CT's which measure the grid power. In my simple installation, there are CT's internal to the gateway for this. But in your system, the grid CTs may be external, and maybe there are 2 pairs of them. If one of these is reversed, it would see less power coming in than really is, and to balance the equation would think there must be power coming in from the house.

In the installation wizard, about 7 continue clicks in, you can find the CT settings, mine attached below. The site CTs measure the grid flow, while solar ones measure the solar. Of interest is the display of the measured power. When the PW is off, as it is when the wizard is running, the power flows shown should make sense. If you shut the solar down, the site CT's should show positive numbers. If not, clicking the flip box may solve your problem. I'm working a hunch, not experience with your setup, of course.

If you are not comfortable with the installer menu, you'll need your installer to come out. Their mistake, their responsibility.

 

[aesculus]

In the installation wizard, about 7 continue clicks in, you can find the CT settings, mine attached below.

I suspect this is GW2? For my GW1, going into installer mode and then system I can just see the settings on the CTs (2 are site and 2 are solar). I cannot change anything and it was only one click in from the main page.

 

[RKCRLR]

Yeah! Electricians tend not to know much about electronics, and CT's are pretty magical. I love there trick of running two wires and the CT measuring the sum of the currents.

Anyway, do you know which of all those circuits are included in the "house" draw? What I'm getting to is where are the CT's which measure the grid power. In my simple installation, there are CT's internal to the gateway for this. But in your system, the grid CTs may be external, and maybe there are 2 pairs of them. If one of these is reversed, it would see less power coming in than really is, and to balance the equation would think there must be power coming in from the house.

In the installation wizard, about 7 continue clicks in, you can find the CT settings, mine attached below. The site CTs measure the grid flow, while solar ones measure the solar. Of interest is the display of the measured power. When the PW is off, as it is when the wizard is running, the power flows shown should make sense. If you shut the solar down, the site CT's should show positive numbers. If not, clicking the flip box may solve your problem. I'm working a hunch, not experience with your setup, of course.

If you are not comfortable with the installer menu, you'll need your installer to come out. Their mistake, their responsibility.

Yea, I'll

Yeah! Electricians tend not to know much about electronics, and CT's are pretty magical. I love there trick of running two wires and the CT measuring the sum of the currents.

Anyway, do you know which of all those circuits are included in the "house" draw? What I'm getting to is where are the CT's which measure the grid power. In my simple installation, there are CT's internal to the gateway for this. But in your system, the grid CTs may be external, and maybe there are 2 pairs of them. If one of these is reversed, it would see less power coming in than really is, and to balance the equation would think there must be power coming in from the house.

In the installation wizard, about 7 continue clicks in, you can find the CT settings, mine attached below. The site CTs measure the grid flow, while solar ones measure the solar. Of interest is the display of the measured power. When the PW is off, as it is when the wizard is running, the power flows shown should make sense. If you shut the solar down, the site CT's should show positive numbers. If not, clicking the flip box may solve your problem. I'm working a hunch, not experience with your setup, of course.

If you are not comfortable with the installer menu, you'll need your installer to come out. Their mistake, their responsibility.

I don't have (or don't know how to) access the installer menu. Interestingly enough, when I was "discussing" this issue with the customer support rep the first time they accused me of going into the installer menu and making changes that caused the problem. I told them I don't have access to the installer menu (I was a little put off by being accused of causing the problem). They told me it would void my warranty if I made changes in the installer menu.