Tesla Virtual Power Plant in CA

[astrorob]

same questions as @swedge but i guess we are going to find out. the thing that sucks is that it's very cloudy today and i ran my powerwalls down to 25% last night. but if the event doesn't start discharging till 6PM then i'll probably reach 100% before then.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

same questions as @swedge but i guess we are going to find out. the thing that sucks is that it's very cloudy today and i ran my powerwalls down to 25% last night. but if the event doesn't start discharging till 6PM then i'll probably reach 100% before then.

I was down to 33% at end of peak yesterday and having some spotty PV generation.
I'm at 94% right now though so looks to be good for the event.

 

[swedge]

I suspect your best bet is to check the discussions in the Connected Solutions thread.

That did help, thanks. In fact very interesting - it looks like some of them getting over a thousands dollars a year from that program.

But to my question, this one post suggests that setting it to Export Everything is necessary for it to work correctly.

Connected Solutions Real-World Experiences (MA - National Grid / EverSource)

I think I'll leave my settings alone for now and see what it does today. (Export Everything, Time Based, 20% Reserve, Grid Charging allowed) I may alter the setting if it behaves strangely.

Thanks again!
SW

 

[swedge]

same questions as @swedge but i guess we are going to find out. the thing that sucks is that it's very cloudy today and i ran my powerwalls down to 25% last night. but if the event doesn't start discharging till 6PM then i'll probably reach 100% before then.

If you had the grid charging option, you may be able to top it up now: Enable grid charging, set reserve to 100%, and then set reserve back down to your normal setting after it has charged up.

SW

 

[cwied]

If you had the grid charging option, you may be able to top it up now: Enable grid charging, set reserve to 100%, and then set reserve back down to your normal setting after it has charged up.

SW

FWIW just turning on grid charging was enough for me. Once I enabled grid charging, the Powerwalls started charging at 5 kW each. I think that the VPP event will make it charge to 100% from grid if you enable grid charging.

 

[astrorob]

well there's still the matter of the ITC. not really sure if we should ever grid charge if the ITC was taken. don't want to find out the hard way that i shouldn't have been!

 

[aesculus]

well there's still the matter of the ITC. not really sure if we should ever grid charge if the ITC was taken. don't want to find out the hard way that i shouldn't have been!

Well like storm watch, if you only do it for special cases it becomes a rounding error in the total use. It's not binary in that if you use it once, they would negate the ITC.

So I think if you grid charge sparingly and its a tiny fraction of the total power you put into the PWs, you are OK.

 

[cwied]

well there's still the matter of the ITC. not really sure if we should ever grid charge if the ITC was taken. don't want to find out the hard way that i shouldn't have been!

I think that's a reasonable concern. I got my Powerwalls at the original price with an SGIP rebate, so while I'd be very annoyed if I would have to pay back the ITC, it wouldn't break the bank. For commercial projects, the amount recaptured is prorated annually over five years, so I think it's likely that something similar would apply to residential projects. Given the direction the new legislation is taking on this, I'm hoping it will never become an issue.

 

[sorka]

4 pm rolled around which is peak time for me on ev2a and the house is NOT consuming from the powerwalls at all but directly from solar with the balance of solar going to the grid. I assume this is intentional to keep the batteries full until the event starts. Currently it says preparing for event.

I'd be fine with this if the event consumes all of the PW capacity but as it stands right now, I'm losing money by not exporting all solar production to the grid during peak. What would be even worse is if the event doesn't actually happen or it draws very little from the powerwalls. If that ends up happening today leaving my powerwalls near 100% late tonight, which is not good for them to leave them fully charged that long, I will be withdrawing from the program first thing tomorrow morning.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

4 pm rolled around which is peak time for me on ev2a and the house is NOT consuming from the powerwalls at all but directly from solar with the balance of solar going to the grid. I assume this is intentional to keep the batteries full until the event starts. Currently it says preparing for event.

I'd be fine with this if the event consumes all of the PW capacity but as it stands right now, I'm losing money by not exporting all solar production to the grid during peak. What would be even worse is if the event doesn't actually happen or it draws very little from the powerwalls. If that ends up happening today leaving my powerwalls near 100% late tonight, which is not good for them to leave them fully charged that long, I will be withdrawing from the program first thing tomorrow morning.

Same behavior for me. Typically 100% of solar goes to the grid and home runs off PW. Taken in the 4-5 pm hour.

 

[tfan2018]

Is anyone’s pw not exporting to grid right now? I set it to export everything and no energy is being exported. It’s been working fine any other day so I suspect it’s the VPP or flex event causing issues

Edit: as soon as I typed this post, my powerwall started exporting. Should have started exporting 17 mins ago when I changed the pw settings

 

[dailo]

Will be interesting to see if all the PWs in the different regions will even make a small blip in the demand on the CAISO website. Looks like there is plenty of capacity for the demand.

California ISO - Today's Outlook

Monitor real-time grid conditions. View current and historical data for demand, net-demand, supply, renewables, CO2 emissions and wholesale energy prices.

www.caiso.com

 

[astrorob]

no export over here where ordinarily it would have started at 4PM. of course because of the clouds my powerwalls are still not full.

i agree that this is somewhat suboptimal - if the event lasts from 6-9pm then i can only export 15KWh during the event. that's less than the normal ~20kwh i usually export during peak time.

is it possible this is just a test run given the capacity available in the grid right now? seems like maybe they just declared it since they're in restricted maintenance mode plus a flex alert.

 

[dailo]

Doing my part. 11kW back to the grid.

 

[wrongray]

My PWs were charging all day and started discharging right at 6PM. Currently exporting 8kW to the grid.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

Power reported on the VPP page is PW discharge not grid discharge. I appear to be limited to 10.8 kW even though I have 3 PW (reported to be 10.77 kW in settings).

Screenshots when AC kicked on and without. Export to grid amount stayed the same.

 

[jboy210]

My 2 powewalls are discharging 9.8 kW. They are not going to long at this rate.

 

[sorka]

 

[astrorob]

2 powerwalls but only exporting 5.3KW. i think this is because my solar inverter is only 5KW and so that’s all pge has approved for export. there were a few days after the “export everything” feature appeared where my system exported 10kw, but that ended pretty quick.

 

[MJ_CA_2019]

2 powerwalls but only exporting 5.3KW. i think this is because my solar inverter is only 5KW and so that’s all pge has approved for export. there were a few days after the “export everything” feature appeared where my system exported 10kw, but that ended pretty quick.

If you login using the IP of the gateway and click "Summary" there will be a reported setting called "Site Export Limit".