For these events we don’t set the time when the start pulling 9 kW from the Powerwalls, the utility does. Also, when in this mode I could not adjust percentage reserves after the event started, which was 9 AM.
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Tesla Virtual Power Plant in CA
- Thread starter power.saver
- Start date
So yea, it appears it's not in the app. You need to pull the data from the API and add grid + solar. If that's negative, then the balance is a discharge from the powerwall and doesn't include the portion discharged to power the home. There are glitches in the 5 minute intervals where powerwalls discharge to the grid small amounts for short periods that are not part of events. Doing a query, the largest this has ever been in my case for the last 18 months has been in the high 700 watt range. So I filter those out:
My powerwalls discharged 20.152 kwh to the grid but in total discharged 22.4 kwh with a couple of those powering the house.
I was able to adjust my percentage reserve from 20% to 10% right in the middle of the event because I was willing to potentially be without power to get the extra kwh onto the grid at $2 / kwh. Unfortunately the power went out in my neighborhood about 40 minutes before the event ended due some local unplanned incident.
I tried to drop mine from 40 to 30 percent and it would not change. Maybe because we have an older TEG?
I dropped mine from 75% to 5% during the event around Noon. I have a TEG2, but I don't see why that should matter from an app perspective. Maybe the change update frequency in the original TEG is longer than the TEG2 or PW2+, but the change should have still been accepted.
It would be under the $600 reporting limit, so I highly doubt it. I didn't receive a 1099 from the CCA for the net exported kWh annual true-up check last year. I'm pretty sure that this is classified as income, so I added to my return as such. There is probably an argument that can made that the either deprecation of the PV or other maintenance costs offset that to $0, but not worth the chance of it in an audit IMHO.
I'd almost rather have it as a credit that could offset minimum billable and remaining NBCs.
You will still earn the difference from 8pm-9pm since the event began later than 4pm, but if an event were to begin at 4pm, you wouldn't earn anything extra from the VPP. Did your batteries continue to export everything after the event was over?
I also have "export everything" turned on, but I usually hit my reserve some time between 6 and 7 pm, so it's less of an impact. You could consider setting your reserve higher to avoid running into event hours, depending on how much the credits are worth to you. Of course we don't know how frequently events will happen or what the hours will be at this point, so it's all speculative.
I find all this discussion fascinating. Not because I want to do it myself (I dont), but from the aspect of how much discussion normally goes into "how often should I cycle my batteries" and cycle counts etc.
It appears to me that many users here whom I would expect to really be "wary" of things like extra cycle counts, etc dont care about it like I thought people would.
Note that I am not saying this extra battery usage is bad, etc, just that I am surprised that people are so willing to do this vs how much people tend to pay attention to "the battery" in the vehicles, worrying about things like "should I charge it to 82.456% daily or 86.99234%?"
It appears to me that many users here whom I would expect to really be "wary" of things like extra cycle counts, etc dont care about it like I thought people would.
Note that I am not saying this extra battery usage is bad, etc, just that I am surprised that people are so willing to do this vs how much people tend to pay attention to "the battery" in the vehicles, worrying about things like "should I charge it to 82.456% daily or 86.99234%?"
You mentioned thing that shouldn't be mentioned.
I'm firmly in the camp that Tesla says cycling your Powerwall every day and charging to 100% from solar is fine and good for 10 years with a capacity loss of less than 70% and I expect that people that have turned on VPP are as well and most of those that haven't aren't. This is only supposed to happen a maximum of 20 times a year which is only 5.5% of the operating time which seems like moderate stress to me.
I'm more surprised at people that are using the "Export Everything" on a daily basis. I don't think that it is cost effective within the PG&E territory and that the sustained current would be putting a lot more strain on the batteries and other components every day.
The credit for PG&E's ELRP is the difference in net consumption vs. the baseline (computed from the previous 10 weekdays). I'm assuming the Telsa version is the same. This means that all you need to look at is the average of the grid usage for the previous 10 weekdays during the event hours and compare it to the grid usage for the event days. The difference is the amount you'll be compensated for.
ref: Customer FAQ - Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) (see "How are payments calculated...")
Why do you think it's not cost effective? The extra credits translate pretty directly to cash for those of us who owe at true-up. I haven't done the exact calculation, but I discharge about 9 kWh more and get about $3-5 more in credits each day during the summer months with "export everything" vs "export solar".
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
If this was true then people who are running Cost Based would never get anything for being a part of the VPP, because they are never using power during peak periods.
This is why I wrote above it has to be based on how much power you put on the grid solely from PWs. Cost based never (by itself unless you enabled Export Everything) puts any PW energy on the grid, only powers your home to either send all solar back or at least not use any grid power during peak.
Negative grid usage (i.e., exporting) is considered in the baseline. Getting compensated for exports is optional for the directly registered customers, but it would not make sense for Tesla customers not to consider exports. So, if you normally export 1 kWh, but export 15 kWh during the event, you get credit for 14 kWh. If you read the link I included you'll see there are certain special provisions for negative baselines (i.e. the day-of adjustment is not applied).
If your baseline for 6:00-9:00pm was 0 kWh and you exported 15 kWh during the VPP then you should be credited for 15 kWh (15kWh + 0 kWh).
If your baseline for 6:00-9:00pm was 5 kWh and you exported 15 kWh during the VPP then you should be credited for 20 kWh (15kWh + 5kWh).
If your baseline for 6:00-9:00pm was -5 kWh and you exported 15 kWh during the VPP then you should be credit for 15 kWh (15 kWh + max(baseline,0).
That was from my reading of ELRP material specifically this point in the link provided earlier:
A case might be made if you are a net consumer as a net generator if the CCA is not paying out at the surplus rates then it makes no sense as you lose more kWh during the recharge. I tend to gloss over a positive true-up as I am a net generator, currently at least.
Given how so many regular members of this subforum (many of whom are active participants in this thread) are both extremely smart, and technically savvy, I am surprised someone hasnt already drawn up a spreadsheet that calculates this (payouts etc). I am betting someone will, not too long from now
LOL I am in one of those discussions for the Ioniq 5, which comes with 2 years free DC charging. There are people who are very sure that using DC fast charging on a car designed to support DC fast charging (and where DC fast charging being trumpeted as a major feature) will damage (reduce the lifespan) of the batteries in those cars, and saying otherwise is foolish. I'll let you know how it works out for me in 3-5 years.
I got a powerwall with my very small solar install so I could pretty much run off grid for 8-9 months of the year, generating a small surplus, and avoid peak times at least for the other 4 months... or survive a multi-day outage any time of year. My battery usually cycles down to 40% and back to 100% daily. So far after 9 months, my total capacity is unchanged. Yay.
I am almost certain that the "no AEB" means that the baseline is not adjusted for day-of usage rather than that the baseline is 0. To me this makes a lot more intuitive sense considering this is a "load reduction" program. The amount that a participant reduced the net load on the grid is the difference between what they would have exported if there hadn't been an event and what they did export during the event.
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