I will never say never now.
I do LOVE having and EV. Wife LOVES the acceleration getting on the freeway
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Tesla to add the ability to Charge EV with excess solar
- Thread starter holeydonut
- Start date
I do LOVE having and EV. Wife LOVES the acceleration getting on the freeway
I will never say never now.
Now ask your wife to imagine having of these. Like you said... you can't take $ with you. Might as well enjoy some massaging seats and an interior that doesn't suck hah. Also good thing you have a J1772 EVSE.
This is cheaper (combined payments + hit to equity) than the Tesla Model 3 Performance we had a month ago.
Do you have 2023.26 on your car? Methinks that is also required to Charge on Solar. If you do have that version, lucky you! Us FSD beta folks are locked out, still stuck on 2023.7.x . So, maybe it is clever you for not going with FSD.
I have 2023.26.1 I believe on the car, just updated a few days ago. Yep, I meet all 3 requirements, and I have set it up, but I see a bug, and at this point does not meet what I want. Yep, FSD TOO expensive for me, would rather put towards another car.
I am on hold with Tesla. As usual, because I have 2 gateways, they may not have tested enough.
It lets me pair both of my gateways, but, it always drops one and says unpaired. Re-pair, says paired, but when I go out and back in, says unpaired.
I am on self powered. I never plug my car in until all batteries are at 100% charge which is lets say 1pm. Then when I am sending like 20kw back to PGE, I turn on charging at 11kw, 48 amps, so only 9 goes back to PGE. I stop at 4 pm if not fully charged so I get max
credit of solar going back to PGE.
But the issue I see is it does not have the logic I want. This is have the app be able to have a setting for PW charge. Now I see nothing. But, when it says it sees excess solar, it charges the car. But what does excess mean? If the PW is not fully charged, how would the app see any excess solar? It says it only fully charges the PW after the car is charged to the set point one sets.
It also seems you have to set your scheduled charging schedule to make this work. Meaning, you can have it not charge during peak.
So, maybe I am having senior moments. So, has anyone else got this working yet and can give tips?
Just got off the phone with Tesla support. This is brand new to them, and yep, they are finding some bugs, and the docs might not be the best wording.
They told me you can only enable one GW at a time. I guess could make sense.
But the key question, that he could not answer, is what is "excess solar"? How is it measured? He stated lots of folks
want control with PW charge status, before the car gets, which it does not have now, and the dev team may not be open to
put in for some reason.
So, at the moment, I told him I see no value since it does not have enough control and flexibility in my situation.
But again, what are they measuring to define "excess solar"? Maybe if I know this, it might answer some questions for me?
They told me you can only enable one GW at a time. I guess could make sense.
But the key question, that he could not answer, is what is "excess solar"? How is it measured? He stated lots of folks
want control with PW charge status, before the car gets, which it does not have now, and the dev team may not be open to
put in for some reason.
So, at the moment, I told him I see no value since it does not have enough control and flexibility in my situation.
But again, what are they measuring to define "excess solar"? Maybe if I know this, it might answer some questions for me?
Cool! Yet another new feature to figure out! Last year they added Grid Charging, Export Everything, and VPP, each of which can save us a few bucks. All sorts of interesting details to figure out, given the paucity of documentation.I have 2023.26.1 I believe on the car, just updated a few days ago. Yep, I meet all 3 requirements, and I have set it up, but I see a bug, and at this point does not meet what I want. Yep, FSD TOO expensive for me, would rather put towards another car.
I am on hold with Tesla. As usual, because I have 2 gateways, they may not have tested enough.
It lets me pair both of my gateways, but, it always drops one and says unpaired. Re-pair, says paired, but when I go out and back in, says unpaired.
I am on self powered. I never plug my car in until all batteries are at 100% charge which is lets say 1pm. Then when I am sending like 20kw back to PGE, I turn on charging at 11kw, 48 amps, so only 9 goes back to PGE. I stop at 4 pm if not fully charged so I get max
credit of solar going back to PGE.
But the issue I see is it does not have the logic I want. This is have the app be able to have a setting for PW charge. Now I see nothing. But, when it says it sees excess solar, it charges the car. But what does excess mean? If the PW is not fully charged, how would the app see any excess solar? It says it only fully charges the PW after the car is charged to the set point one sets.
It also seems you have to set your scheduled charging schedule to make this work. Meaning, you can have it not charge during peak.
So, maybe I am having senior moments. So, has anyone else got this working yet and can give tips?
I am doing Charge on Solar manually while I wait to Tesla to re-merge the FSD and production branches of the car software.
But these reports and questions about how the new option works are very interesting to me. Your question about "excess solar" in particular. I had my car charger connected between the utility meter and the PW Gateway. So my PW does not see any car charging at all. So I am curious to see if Charge on Solar might not work for me at all. In which I could modify the PW installation, or become un-lazy and write my own code to do it.
So I'm looking forward to hearing what you-all are seeing it do.
The ideal, at least for me, is that excess solar is when I am in off-peak, my Powerwalls are all fully charged, and I'm about to backfeed to the grid at off-peak rates. I want all of that to be dumped into my vehicles until they reach their max charge setting OR until part-peak or peak rates begin. That's how I'm doing it right now with my hacked up Home Assistant version.
My wall connectors are also connected between utility meter and PW gateway.
But, since my tesla and gateways are, I assume able to see each other, with the solar, it seems like it could be easy to do, but at this point, I do not thing the App does it.
Meaning, all the app has to do is have an option to say at what charge level do you want the PW to be before one turns on the EV to be charged. All it has to be is set to 100%, and it triggers the car to turn on. Seems would be easy. I just do it manually now.
But yes, still waiting for the Tesla person to get back to me saying what "excess solar" means, how measured, etc.
For now, the KISS on my charging, I just do manually, is so simple.
I also got the updated PW software and now Charge on Solar showed up in the app. I set it up but I'm at work during the day. So I'll have to wait until the weekend to see it in action. It may not be that useful. I still want the gateway to charge my PW first before it charges the car. No sense in having a fully charged car and PW's at 50% when the sun goes down. If Tesla allowed the car to power the GW this would be a much more useful feature. I could charge the 60Kwh battery to run the house. But Tesla doesn't sound like they will ever support this.
I agree. But sometimes, I know I will need the car during those few hours between full PW and rate increase. While I am doing things manually still, I sometimes turn the PW off (using the rocker switch) in the morning and slow charge the car. When I leave with the car, obviously I unplug it, but also turn the PW back on. Frankly, I don't expect the Charge on Sunshine to guess when I'm gonna need the car.
I just received my first NEM2 true-up, and NBC's were determinative. (I think this was an error, as discussed in another thread.) But the details of how and when charging the car on solar affects the true-up is still a question mark for me. More head scratching in my future...
As for discharging the car to the grid, the inverter in the car is not capable of grid-tied exporting. My Enphase micro-inverterters can do it, as can the electronics in the PowerWall, so it is clearly possible. But not with the electronics in current Tesla cars.
I would never mess with turning off the PW. I did this once, and the GW messed up and I Had a heck on a time working with Tesla to get things working. They told me to not do that again.
I guess since I have so much solar, I never have to worry about when I charge, since I can get batteries and car charged before 4pm most of the time.
But so far, the charge on solar does not seem very useful, which is what the tech person told me they are telling their sw writers, but so far, not listening
Sorry for the newb question but trying to make heads/tails of some of this as I do not yet have an EV...
If I want the car charged from solar, when I install an EV charger can it go between grid and Tesla Gateway1, or does it need to be hooked up to the house panel behind Gateway1/PW2s?
IOW, if the PWs are charged (or at some future point Tesla lets me specify level of charge), and the Gateway is exporting to grid, would that get diverted to car charging on the way out, or must the Gateway-exported electricity go directly to grid?
This would also then mean car could not charge if on the grid side of the gateway?
If I want the car charged from solar, when I install an EV charger can it go between grid and Tesla Gateway1, or does it need to be hooked up to the house panel behind Gateway1/PW2s?
IOW, if the PWs are charged (or at some future point Tesla lets me specify level of charge), and the Gateway is exporting to grid, would that get diverted to car charging on the way out, or must the Gateway-exported electricity go directly to grid?
This would also then mean car could not charge if on the grid side of the gateway?
zT,
Good to plan ahead. But don't worry too much. No matter how you wire things, you'll be able to charge your EV from the grid, and if you have solar, it is also connected to the grid, so you can charge from solar if you want to.
Tesla is just starting to release a new App/PowerWall feature which may help to automate the timing of car charging relative to solar production. The value of this will depend on details of one's electric utility rates for solar exports. For example, here in Calif. the old NEM1 allowed a flat rate with no time-of-use variation, and credited exports at the full retail price: It cost nothing to export and re-import, so car charging on solar was of no benefit. Then in 2016, NEM2 added what is in effect roughly a 10% tax on exports and requires a time-of-use rate. Under NEM2 exporting and re-importing is disadvantageous, and the timing of exports has a large impact. So it is getting more complicated, but all depending on the local utility rates.
In my case, I started with solar, then years later added a PowerWalll, and more recently added an EV. I figured that it would not make sense to charge the huge (~70kWh) car from the small (13.5kWh) house battery, so I had the charger connected outside of the PW's domaine. In a pinch, such as during an extended grid outage, I could still plug the car into the dryer outlet and slow charge it.
On the other hand, a neighbor of mine has his car metered with the PW, but not backed up by PW, same as his home A/C. Both of those can draw more power than the single PW can provide, which would pop the PW breaker, not a good thing during an outage. But he does get to see his car charging on the PW app page as well as on the app car page.
Anyway, you have lots of options, and they will all get you where you want to go.
Don't sweat too much about all the details we get into here on TMC. I, for example, am trying to get my next annual true up down from $65 to closer to $0, fine tuning about 18 cents per day, big whoop. Another contributor here has 30kW of solar and 7 (I think) PowerWalls. So his issues are very different from mine. Most owners just don't care to deep dive or deal with the complexities. In all cases, solar, EV's, and house batteries reduce dependance on fossil fueled utility power. From there, the details are icing on the cake, but only if you like icing.
Not worried, just trying to plan in case SO decides to get an EV soon. We don't have 1:1 net metering here, only getting a fraction back for what we send to grid, so want to maximize solar charging. Ideally, would also like to charge if grid is down but for now that's secondary. Unlikely we'd get a Tesla vehicle, so it may be moot for us, although I'm hopeful standards will emerge not just for the connector which appears to be where the industry is going.
One thing I've noticed about these TMC forums is that a lot of users are trying to min/max their total energy costs. I mean, trying to sneak out that extra $0.02 per kWh takes a ton of effort and geeking out lol.
But I think the average person can simply do what h2ofun and others recommend... where they simply charge their EV in the daytime; and as long as they're reasonable about attempting this, they'll see quite a bit of upside without needing everything to be perfect.
Or alternatively, there are some EVSE's from Solar Edge, Enphase, and Emporia that can take a CT reading of energy going back across the meter. The EVSE then instructs the EV (doesn't need to be a Tesla) to charge at a rate to soak up that energy. Those options may make more sense than relying on the Tesla App.
It really doesn't matter where your car charging is connected. What really matters is where your Grid CTs are placed. When my PW system was first installed, the Grid CTs were placed on the Gateway 1 switch at the grid input. That meant that the system was blind to the loads that remained in my main panel like my EV charging. This was not a big deal at the time, but I knew that I would be installing air conditioning in the main panel that I would want to offset with Powerwall energy, so I needed to measure the total grid draw closer to the meter. I opened a case with the third party installer and they moved the Grid CTs to the conductors between the main breaker and the breaker bus in the main panel. The PW Gateway is fed by a breaker in the main panel.
Long story short, my EV charging is not backed up, but the Powerwall system can measure my total grid draw and when it wants to zero out the total house load, it can. I would like the Charge on Solar feature to tell the car to absorb all the power that would otherwise be exported to the grid during Off Peak. That means, charge the Powerwalls first and only start the car charging after the PWs stop or reduce charging to the point that grid export begins. I also have a non-Tesla EV so this Charge on Solar thing isn't going to work for that car either. I'm pretty sure the car has to vary the charging current based on data from the Tesla cloud, not using the Wall Connector or something to signal the car through the charge port.
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