Huh, well then that can't explain it. I'm stuck on firmware 23.4.2-2 but am seeing similar odd behavior to you. All the VPP events this week have not discharged the batteries to grid... however the prior VPP events in 2023 and 2022 worked just fine for me.
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Tesla Virtual Power Plant in CA
- Thread starter power.saver
- Start date
Was updated to 23.28.1 last night but didn't notice any behavior changes. Set my reserve to 0% and looks I'll end the event at 1%.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
I am at 23.12.10 and my VPP event was jut like @Benjamin Brooks I first turned on VPP this year at 1:30PM Monday and it said no events were scheduled. Then Tuesday night it said preparing. Then all day Wed it said preparing and during the event it said it was discharging to support the grid but did not do any discharging from the PW except to the house. Finished the event at 45% SOC with a reserve set to 20%.
I have a Tier 2 support ticket out with Tesla Energy to figure out why VPP isn’t sending any energy into the grid for me anymore. Maybe if others also report seeing the same problem too then Tesla can find their bug quicker. The fact that my VPP participation breaking aligned with Tesla’s recent change to throttle the grid export power from maximum based on your system’s reserve % setting seems the only clue on why there might be a new systemic bug in their VPP program
The export everything option seems incompatible with VPP.
If you export everything, then your VPP baseline usage is too low to get VPP credit.
I would turn that option off.
My previous experience with VPP was that it pegged my site export limit, often hitting my reserve (even if set very low) before the peak period ended.
This go around the algorithm seems pretty conservative. I haven't hit my reserve limit yet in the 3 VPP events I've watched.
This go around the algorithm seems pretty conservative. I haven't hit my reserve limit yet in the 3 VPP events I've watched.
This go around the discharge rates were all over the map here; high, low, zero ("standby"), medium, etc. There was no obvious pattern, so it seemed like Tesla was testing how responsive their VPP system could be to real-time demand fluctuations. It also seemed as if the charge / export behavior was very different than in the past. (Second image.)
Normal behavior would have been to postpone exports until after the powerwalls were fully charged; instead we had off peak and mid-peak exporting while charging.
Normal behavior would have been to postpone exports until after the powerwalls were fully charged; instead we had off peak and mid-peak exporting while charging.
charlesj
Active Member
My experience has been similar. But, I did hit my reserve on the 5 hour event on the 29th.
Has anyone been able to (or tried to) get their site export limit raised?
The behavior of the Powerwall will be impacted by solar generation, house load in addition to the site export limit. The second graph was for your solar generation. The first graph for Powerwall discharge looks it was discharging as intended during the VPP 6:00-9:00pm period yesterday and then you still had reserve left and continued to discharge after as there wasn't another VPP schedule that would have put it into standby to conserve the remaining charge.
@Redhill_qik I was surprised at the variability and the fact that we ended up with ~25% more reserve than I had set it for. Prior VPP events have gone right down to the reserve, more or less linearly.
BTW: I am still trying to get my understanding of your comment about the math for a net producer being better off with little or no Powerwall discharge during peak. My recollection was that the various bins of usage/export (peak, part-peak, off-peak) were totaled at true up by costs in the case of net generators on TOU. I guess that your comment means that I missed something and it is just net exports that are the year end accounting, which would mean then that, yes, not using the Powerwalls makes total sense, other than exercising them and not keeping them full.
All the best,
BG
BTW: I am still trying to get my understanding of your comment about the math for a net producer being better off with little or no Powerwall discharge during peak. My recollection was that the various bins of usage/export (peak, part-peak, off-peak) were totaled at true up by costs in the case of net generators on TOU. I guess that your comment means that I missed something and it is just net exports that are the year end accounting, which would mean then that, yes, not using the Powerwalls makes total sense, other than exercising them and not keeping them full.
All the best,
BG
I think that you are right to look into this, but you need to look at this holistically with solar, Powerwall, house and grid to understand why this happened. My VPP total discharge was pretty close to the same the 5 hour on Tuesday and the 3 hour on Wednesday, with the rate lower on Tuesday than Wednesday. In the end my Wednesday was 0.620kWh lower than on Tuesday (23.660kWh vs 23.040kWh).
The annual true-up includes your net generation and distribution charges based on TOU rates for imports and exports. If this value is below zero then the net surplus compensation rules kick in that are based on kWh. The closer your net charges and net kWh are to zero, the more you have to pay attention to TOU pricing.
If you are sufficient far away from net zero for both then you want to let your net gen+dist charges trend towards $0 while maximizing your net kWh. If you discharge 10 kWh (75%) from a Powerwall every day that is 3,650 kWh over the year. In order to recharge with a 90% efficiency that requires 4,055 kWh. That is 405 kWh that you can't export and be compensated for which for SVCE on my April 2023 true-up was worth 405 * $0.08748 * 200% = $70.86.
Thanks. Yes, I had forgotten that the SVCE NEM rate was higher than PG&E's. It feels counter intuitive to consume kWh @$0.43, or whatever today's number is, rather than use it from the Powerwalls, because at the end of the year the net efficiency comes back at 0.076kWh. I need to stay more focused on the year end net. I did eventually understand that the monthly charge basically represents kWh that I should be consuming.
We have been net producers because we did not go to full EVs and heat pumps as fast as we thought we would. That will change.
All the best,
BG
We have been net producers because we did not go to full EVs and heat pumps as fast as we thought we would. That will change.
All the best,
BG
I talked to support today and they said I wasn't setup properly. On the backend (their system) I was listed as "PV only" which means solar only for export. They don't know why this wasn't properly set when I was enrolled in VPP. However, it did take 2 months for support to escalate from level 1, to level 2, to level 3 to get my VPP setup earlier this year so I assume in that process, a step was missed. They also noted that looking at my batteries, they never went into VPP mode in the last 7 days even though we had 3 VPP events.
I'm in Peak Rate time right now and the battery is exporting to the grid. I will keep an eye on it to ensure I have enough battery to make it through the night. I set my reserve at 40%.
I was able to hit 0% reserve kinda perfectly at the end of each VPP this week. So it was definitely working for me. That said, I probably won’t get any credit due to the baseline I have from exporting every night.
On the site export limit…I’m wondering sane thing. I can find out where this is issued, who sets it, etc. Does PGE determine, tell PV/ESS installer (Tesla in my case) and installer configures when they initialize the system?
Actually had Tesla Energy at my house today replacing faulty inverter (clipping). I asked if he new, and if we could change the site export limit when going through the provisioning wizard. But he has already completed the process. I might try wizard in “installer mode” myself to see what is set-able or not.
Do you mean EE actually is “incompatible” with VPP? Or just that it’s not a good strategy to run both?
I EE every day starting from 4p down to 5% reserve on 4x PW’s. That’s 51.3kWh, though usually it saves some for home usage through 12a (i override the pricing table and set my 9p-12a buy rates same as 4p-9p). I’m on EV2A.
So in usually 3.5-4hrs, by 730-8p, my PW is at reserve.
So, I think I’m getting nothing, or very little, for VPP if they do the baseline math properly. I did these three VPP’s anyway to just see, maybe they don’t do the baseline math as others indicated has happened. Or, at least I might get 11.8kWh for the 8p-9p block? That’s like a whopping $23 (better then zero!).
Anyways, my point is that the day in and day out EE export for NEM2 credits at peak EV2A rates over the course of 365 days is going to be much, much more financially beneficial then a few VPP’s, even like 10 VPP’s. So EE makes a lot of sense.
I've tried in the past and it wasn't something that can be set through the wizard. I think it has to be done on Tesla's end.
Did the new inverter fix your solar drop-outs? Let me guess: It looks better so far, but 24 hours from now you'll know for sure?
Replaced one of the two inverters. Don’t know yet, as it got cloudy right after they installed. I’ll update when it looks conclusive. I certainly hope this resolves it.
I actually had to show the Tesla tech how to connect the two Neurio’s back to GW2 via my home network. Bizarro world.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
This is how I feel too. But I just started doing this last month. Waiting to see what my B/W bill is to make sure the utility does not have a way to not credit me for solar produced and then stored. It should only be by max agreed energy for the day, not the time it was produced, but you know ...
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