Tesla Powerwall II and Octopus Agile

[1955Patric]

Hi all,

I had a Tesla PWII and Gateway 2 installed on 1st Feb this year but am still trying to get my head around the time based control. I am on Octopus Agile tariff which tracks wholesale prices every half hour so there are no specific off peak and peak times, and prices vary throughout the day and night. When I first had the battery I would put it in selfpower mode when the sun was shining and the battery would supply the house when solar was not producing according to demand. At night I changed to time based control to charge the battery back up again on cheaper rate. Regardless of time of day, the battery charged from the grid until it reached 100% charge and then went to standby. Two days ago I set it to time based control and have left it there since then. The battery charged to 100% and has stayed there since. Even at peak electricty rates the battery has not supplied the house since I changed to time based control even when there is no solar output. I have the reserve set at 25%. Does anyone have any idea why the battery won't supply power to the house when in time based control? Utility plan settings set up by my installer are:
Octopus Agile
Utility provider: Octopus
Rate plan: Agile
No seasons
All Year January - December
Buy price £0.34/ kWh
Sell price £0.34/hr

 

[JohnRatsey]

I'm using time-based control but with the Octopus Go tariff and the rates define clearly that it's financially worthwhile to charge at night using cheap electricity to power the house (with the help of solar power) for the rest of the day when mains electricity is more expensive. I wonder if you need to change the rates for buy and sell to give the battery some guidance. With the same buy and sell rates the battery probably thinks it's best to do nothing. Do you actually ean 34p/kWh for export? If not, then change this so the battery realises it should discharge to the house and have capacity to store surplus solar to use later. I would also review the recent Agile rates and create several time periods with typical rates which, I assume, would be lowest at night and highest during the late afternoon / early evening peak.

 

[1955Patric]

I'm using time-based control but with the Octopus Go tariff and the rates define clearly that it's financially worthwhile to charge at night using cheap electricity to power the house (with the help of solar power) for the rest of the day when mains electricity is more expensive. I wonder if you need to change the rates for buy and sell to give the battery some guidance. With the same buy and sell rates the battery probably thinks it's best to do nothing. Do you actually ean 34p/kWh for export? If not, then change this so the battery realises it should discharge to the house and have capacity to store surplus solar to use later. I would also review the recent Agile rates and create several time periods with typical rates which, I assume, would be lowest at night and highest during the late afternoon / early evening peak.

Hi John,

It occurred to me that this may be the problem, so I changed the sell rate (sert by my installer)to my FIT rate. This seems to have altered the behaviour of the battery. Having sat at 100% charge for 3 days before the change, it now supplies the house until it reaches the back up reserve point (regardless of time of day or electricity pricing). It will recharge from the grid as soon as this threshold is reached. The only way I have any influence is by altering the backup reserve set point. Unfortunately when the app is set up for Octopus Agile, there is no way, in the app, to input time of day or pricing. Since the price varies every half hour and prices ( and times) vary day to day, this would probably not be a great help anyway. I assumed that the AI would have some way of accessing the day to day pricing on Agile to determine charge and discharge times. I will give it a few days to settle down and if it still behaves the same way I'll have to contact Tesla support. I suspect it may be a setup problem

 

[Mark Purcell]

I have a similar issue with my wholesale retailer, Amber Electric, in that there is no relevant Powerwall mode. Amber do have a SmartShift product that controls the powerwall, like a VPP.

However, a native powerwall wholesale rate mode would be great:

[Feature Request] Wholesale Tariff Mode for Powerwall

What should Tesla improve? Wholesale Tariff Mode for Tesla Powerwall Objective: The primary objective of the Wholesale Tariff Mode for Tesla Powerwall is to enable users to optimize their energy consumption and storage based on real-time wholesale electricity prices. This new mode aims to...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[brian_e_davis@]

I have recently moved to Octopus Agile (Tesla tariff ended for me in early Dec) for input (won't currently allow this tariff for export so that is a fixed 15p/kWh).
Also had issues trying to use the half hour pricing info supplied by Octopus. However, I have set up what appears to be a reasonable fit to the pricing curve as follows under Utility Rate plan:
Have designated it as Octopus Agile but that doesn't do anything. But you can set a schedule with as many SuperOffPeak, OffPeak, MidPeak and Peak time slots - and set buy and sell prices for each type of zone (my sell price is fixed at 15p). I have particularly designated a SperOffpeak as 0.00-6.00am with a buy price of ,01p - ie more or less free!). My Peak period of 16.00 -21.00 has a buy price of 40p). Now these are not always correct and I do occasionally adjust them, but they have the effect of causing the battery to pretty well always supplying the house during the peak period - and recharging during the Offpeak or other low buy price times.
It would be lovely to be able to link the Tesla pricing and times to the Agile pricing but this just isn't available.
I also have an EV (Tesla!) and make sure it is set to charge when the buy prices are lowest. Octopus have been sending me alerts when the pricing to buy has been very low or negative - so I can make some changes if I feel up to it, but my basic schedule seems to be working reasonably well for now.
Very interested to hear of other people's experience with this.

 

[jjrandorin]

I have recently moved to Octopus Agile (Tesla tariff ended for me in early Dec) for input (won't currently allow this tariff for export so that is a fixed 15p/kWh).
Also had issues trying to use the half hour pricing info supplied by Octopus. However, I have set up what appears to be a reasonable fit to the pricing curve as follows under Utility Rate plan:
Have designated it as Octopus Agile but that doesn't do anything. But you can set a schedule with as many SuperOffPeak, OffPeak, MidPeak and Peak time slots - and set buy and sell prices for each type of zone (my sell price is fixed at 15p). I have particularly designated a SperOffpeak as 0.00-6.00am with a buy price of ,01p - ie more or less free!). My Peak period of 16.00 -21.00 has a buy price of 40p). Now these are not always correct and I do occasionally adjust them, but they have the effect of causing the battery to pretty well always supplying the house during the peak period - and recharging during the Offpeak or other low buy price times.
It would be lovely to be able to link the Tesla pricing and times to the Agile pricing but this just isn't available.
I also have an EV (Tesla!) and make sure it is set to charge when the buy prices are lowest. Octopus have been sending me alerts when the pricing to buy has been very low or negative - so I can make some changes if I feel up to it, but my basic schedule seems to be working reasonably well for now.
Very interested to hear of other people's experience with this.

There isnt anything at all wrong with posting this in this subforum, but most of the discussion around Octopus happens in the UK and Ireland specific subforum.

The UK and Ireland

teslamotorsclub.com

Here is one

Wiki - Everything you wanted to know about Intelligent Octopus But Were Afraid To Ask

Why write this post? A lot of people are starting to get interested in IO. I don't think Octopus do a very good job of spelling out the benefits in their website. They have some FAQs, but the same questions keep coming up over and over on the forums. What is it? In a nutshell, IO is a split...

teslamotorsclub.com

(seems to be the big thread with over 3 thousand replies)

 

[xWren]

There isnt anything at all wrong with posting this in this subforum, but most of the discussion around Octopus happens in the UK and Ireland specific subforum.

That seems to be all about Tesla cars, so can I encourage UK Powerwall owners to continue to use this subforum because our conversations are energy specific.

We are also on Octopus Go, considered switching to Agile but lack of integration with both Powerwall and my current charger makes it unattractive for now.

 

[bruce_miranda]

One way around this is to use Home Assistant in combination with the Octopus and Tesla integrations. The Octopus integration will get the latest rates and you then have to create an automation to decide if you want to let the PW charge from the grid or not.
There is no direct integration between Octopus and Tesla. Tesla seem to have fallen out of favour with Octopus who now seem to only support GivEnergy.

 

[xWren]

Tesla seem to have fallen out of favour with Octopus who now seem to only support GivEnergy.

Well it is another UK company and frankly the control parameters used by GivEnergy make way more sense in the UK energy market and weather. Unlike Tesla they don't pretend to have "AI" (i.e. a poorly designed and overly complicated algorithm that tries to use past data to anticipate future use). I would gladly swap my Powerwall for a GivEnergy one. Tesla's hardware is good, but their firmware is poor, infrastructure design impractical and their app design really crappy.

 

[offandonagain]

Automatic tariff configuration is something I'm working on with the Netzero app. If folks are interested in trying this (specifically with Agile Octopus, but other Octopus Energy plans would also work) let me know.

 

[Mark Purcell]

Automatic tariff configuration is something I'm working on with the Netzero app. If folks are interested in trying this (specifically with Agile Octopus, but other Octopus Energy plans would also work) let me know.

I have half hourly pricing with Amber Electric in Australia, who have a really well supported API to retrieve pricing.

They have their own optimized scheduling, but I have rolled my own using Home Assistant. I have played around with dynamically setting the tariffs in the Powerwall based on the 30 minute forecasts. It would seem the FleetAPI supports this even if it is undocumented.

I would be interested in seeing how NetZero could support the Amber dynamic pricing. Are you proposing to update the Powerwall tariff dynamically using NetZero?

 

[offandonagain]

I would be interested in seeing how NetZero could support the Amber dynamic pricing. Are you proposing to update the Powerwall tariff dynamically using NetZero?

Yes, Netzero would automatically update the tariffs to track the dynamic pricing, as frequently as needed. Amber doesn't seem to allow API access unless you're a customer, and I haven't seen any public sources for tariffs; I'll send them an email to see if they would consider a developer account, but if not this could work by having you share your API token with the app. I'll let you know how this progresses.

 

[Mark Purcell]

Yes, Netzero would automatically update the tariffs to track the dynamic pricing, as frequently as needed. Amber doesn't seem to allow API access unless you're a customer, and I haven't seen any public sources for tariffs; I'll send them an email to see if they would consider a developer account, but if not this could work by having you share your API token with the app. I'll let you know how this progresses.

We have a couple of sources of tariff.

The Amber API does require a key, which I can generate for you. ChargeHQ integrates Amber pricing this way

There are alternatives which publish the spot price are publicly available with OpenNEM and AEMO.