Tesla: we need more control over our PowerWalls

[xWren]

However, in the depths of winter, one needs to again wake up at 01.30 (in my case), select Time Based Control, then slide the Back Up Reserve to 95%. This will fast charge the battery at 3.5 kW, and ensure that it is still pretty well fully charged at the end of cheap rate.

This might fast charge the battery at 3.4kW, or it might not. Time-based control mode is a law unto itself, and more recently it seems to ignore changes to power reserve percentage. The way to get it to charge at a faster rate was to use the now deprecated backup-only mode, but that is not possible now.

I share your frustration and disappointment @mw963 I really do. The software was designed by people that have no concept of changing from grid or the possibility the user might know best their usage needs tomorrow and hence the charging they want.

BTW tell Heidi that UK weather is not "habitual" and can not be learnt, I don't think Dutch weather is either.

 

[mw963]

I haven’t read the full thread here, so it might have already been mentioned, but your post reminded me of something from this thread where some folks were using scripts to adjust the reserve settings to accommodate a double peaked rate plan. Wonder if that would be of help in your situation? Arizona Powerwall Installs

Thanks for that Z_S. It's totally beyond me but I'll note the site and ask one of my computer geek friends whether they can work out how to implement it.

 

[mw963]

@ xWren - thanks for that. I wondered if we could also start a Trustpilot section specifically for Powerwalls, there isn't anything at the moment. I'm not sure how one creates a new topic when it's sort of already covered by a general Tesla catch-all. But a few bad reviews might just wake someone up....?

Thus far under TBC my Powerwall has charged at either 5 kW (which I'm not terribly happy about), or at 3.5 kW, but I've only had it a week so I'm not entirely familiar with every obstructive bit of behaviour with which it intends to encumber my path!

 

[xWren]

IMHO, what you describe is not a "way to command grid charging", rather it is a workaround that sort of gets you that result - at half power. At least your method presumably gives you a charging target based on the Reserve level you set. Good on you to have found that workaround. I would not have assumed that Self-Powered would do any grid charging.

Fair point @miimura , a workaround isn't a facility and I would love to have a facility in some well designed firmware with local UI.

The app FAQs actually suggests you use Self-Powered mode to get it charging from grid.
Then again the same FAQ also say that the most efficient charging rate is 3kW to protect the life of that battery and that is the rate it uses.

So maybe I can report the low rate 1.7kW charging as a fault? After all it is potentially shortening the life of my battery as well being inadequate for my winter needs.

 

[mw963]

Well I'll join you on that xWren, it would help if the 1.7 kW rate was upped to 3 kW.

I've just had the chance to review my experience of Tesla support, I've been very positive about Heidi's help on my meter leakage problem, but have gone to town over the hopelessness of the app and the fact that the response is "live with it".

We really need to get an ear to listen to us over in the States.

 

[JohnRatsey]

I'm going to tackle my new friend Heidi at Tesla UK/Netherlands with this suggestion tomorrow, but I think we have to find a way of getting this over to the States, as Heidi's defence of the system is simply that I should "let it learn my habits". It's clear from this thread that there are people who have been doing that for the last three years without success......

If the battery discovers that it can't get get through to the next off-peak period without hitting empy then it should learn to not discharge during the off-peak period. However, if the sun shine and avoids it getting empty then it won't learn. In my experience we are currently in the transition period between summer and winter when, along with the same transition period in the spring, is when Tesla's opaque algorithm most frequently results in the wrong result. Nonetheless, it would be easy to give us a place in the app to set the target SoC at the end of off-peak period with the user responsible for setting that value according to their own estimate of the next day's solar generation (actually not very easy to predict given our fickle weather) and household consumption. It would be much easier to implement the control than getting pigs to fly but given Tesla's progress towards solving this nuisance in the past three years I suspect the pigs will get airborne first. It's reached the stage where I'm suggesting to people to consider other products. Powervault Why choose Powervault to store your solar energy appears to have a much better user interface (but may have some other deficiencies).

 

[Solar1920]

Tesla’s biggest powerwall market will be the USA where you can’t charge from the grid, so this is a non-issue there, the next biggest is Australia where the weather is a bit less changeable, so this issue will not affect them so much. The UK and other countries where this is a bigger problem are a small market with probably few people making the effort to complain, which is probably why it is being ignored by Tesla.

If this major limitation to the battery became well publicised in the Uk a lot of people would avoid it and it would, I imagine, hurt Tesla’s pride “the high tech world leader in advanced software that can’t charge a battery!”- then it might get addressed.

Does anyone affected here have a YouTube channel? As a group we could support making a video If a few of us were interviewed to give our feedback as owners and give recommendations to potential new UK buyers.

At least this would allow people about to spend a lot of money to know the Powerwalls limitation before deciding on buying it or choosing an alternative.

In the UK where being able to charge from the grid during cheap rate and save money is one of the most important selling points, if I had known in advanced how bad it was I would have reluctantly avoided it (I’m an engineer and I love the engineering in it).

 

[Zabe]

Tesla’s biggest powerwall market will be the USA where you can’t charge from the grid, so this is a non-issue there, the next biggest is Australia where the weather is a bit less changeable, so this issue will not affect them so much. The UK and other countries where this is a bigger problem are a small market with probably few people making the effort to complain, which is probably why it is being ignored by Tesla.

If this major limitation to the battery became well publicised in the Uk a lot of people would avoid it and it would, I imagine, hurt Tesla’s pride “the high tech world leader in advanced software that can’t charge a battery!”- then it might get addressed.

Does anyone affected here have a YouTube channel? As a group we could support making a video If a few of us were interviewed to give our feedback as owners and give recommendations to potential new UK buyers.

At least this would allow people about to spend a lot of money to know the Powerwalls limitation before deciding on buying it or choosing an alternative.

In the UK where being able to charge from the grid during cheap rate and save money is one of the most important selling points, if I had known in advanced how bad it was I would have reluctantly avoided it (I’m an engineer and I love the engineering in it).

It seems to me that in the UK people should be buying powerwall only setups that they can charge up at the super low off peak rates. No solar for Tesla to fumble around with a crummy algo that does not account for local weather.

 

[mw963]

If the battery discovers that it can't get get through to the next off-peak period without hitting empy then it should learn to not discharge during the off-peak period. However, if the sun shine and avoids it getting empty then it won't learn. In my experience we are currently in the transition period between summer and winter when, along with the same transition period in the spring, is when Tesla's opaque algorithm most frequently results in the wrong result. Nonetheless, it would be easy to give us a place in the app to set the target SoC at the end of off-peak period with the user responsible for setting that value according to their own estimate of the next day's solar generation (actually not very easy to predict given our fickle weather) and household consumption. It would be much easier to implement the control than getting pigs to fly but given Tesla's progress towards solving this nuisance in the past three years I suspect the pigs will get airborne first. It's reached the stage where I'm suggesting to people to consider other products. Powervault Why choose Powervault to store your solar energy appears to have a much better user interface (but may have some other deficiencies).

You make an interesting point about running the battery down during the day so that the system "learns", and this - as you further suggest - is something that will be easy for me to achieve in the winter, and which may well then solve the problem until spring arrives.

We do need to make some noise though, I like the idea by Solar1920 of a Youtube channel, but I don't have anything in that line. I wondered about something similar on Facebook but again as I refuse to go anywhere near that it's probably a non-starter.

Would a simple old-fashioned paper letter to Mr Musk work I wonder?

 

[mw963]

It's a pity that someone can't write a simple control program in the form of an app that logged in to the Gateway directly via the TEG wifi portal, that way one could completely eliminate Tesla from the system (unplug the internet connection) and gain complete control over one's own system. But maybe it's more complicated than that.....

 

[BGbreeder]

Perhaps get the person behind The Fully Charged channel looped in? (Robert Llewellyn) He appears to have more than a little pull with Tesla.

All the best,

BG

 

[Gdotp]

An example of the issue and dumb algorithm. Last night in the off peak period I was charging the car. For some inexplicable reason the battery decided to dump its remaining charge at the end of this into the car leaving it empty at just after 04.30 even though it was forecast to be a pretty cloudy day today and 2.5 hours before sunrise …..so much for AI

 

[mw963]

A classic example Gdotp. Dreadful, irrational, and ultimately costly. And I thought discharging at 5 kW wasn't good for the battery. That said I suspect that Tesla would say that they emptied the battery to leave room for the almost 100% you got back from the sun during the day. Still the wrong AI decision in my view.

It would be good to see if we could set up a separate "Powerwall Only" section on Trustpilot, I'm not sure it's possible, but if it is then we could all gather together and put in poor (but constructively worded) reviews.

 

[Gdotp]

It’s even worse today…..it was forecast to be dull and cloudy ( only 7kw generated all day) so you’d have thought it would have done a precautionary top up off peak but not it did not. As a result I’ll be out of charge by 7pm

 

[Gdotp]

Even worse. It did not learn from yesterday, only charged to 7% off peak and ran out before the sun even came up. Currently sitting at 7% because it’s dull again today so we will tun out soon after the sun goes down. I’m starting to think the powerwall is pointless.

 

[xWren]

It’s even worse today…..it was forecast to be dull and cloudy ( only 7kw generated all day) so you’d have thought it would have done a precautionary top up off peak but not it did not. As a result I’ll be out of charge by 7pm

@Gdotp you have a fundamental misconception that with time-based control mode it looks at some kind of weather prediction. It doesn't. At most it is somehow based on your previous day(s) domestic consumption and solar generation. Lower your expectations or be continually disappointed.

There is "storm watch" which does I'm not sure what when enabled and there is a storm alert. My Gateway got stuck in that mode once and it was even more annoying than usual, my advice is don't enable it! Again this may work well for the US where they get tornado warnings and major outages etc., but in UK where the Met gives a warning for any wind gusting above 50MPH or heavy rain or even an unusually hot day (> 80F) it is just a nuisance.

I also don't understand why people keep referring to the simple algorithm Tesla uses as "AI", it really isn't that smart.

 

[xWren]

It's a pity that someone can't write a simple control program in the form of an app that logged in to the Gateway directly via the TEG wifi portal, that way one could completely eliminate Tesla from the system (unplug the internet connection) and gain complete control over one's own system. But maybe it's more complicated than that.....

With a suitable officially published API such a thing would not be that hard for those with some relevant expertise @mw963, but instead Tesla have made direct access to the Gateway harder and do not publish their API (what we know about is where others have reverse engineered it). At one time if you could get an installer logon you could change settings directly, but now the Gateway has to be restarted to apply any change made that way thus removing it as a viable approach.

Tesla do not want to be "eliminated". Partly I'm sure it is for security reasons, after all owners don't want anyone in the locality to be able to mess with their settings, but it is also because Tesla can not grasp that owners would want to control their devices themselves. After all don't we all want a car that drives itself so we never hold the wheel again? It also avoids all those less skilled owners that given too much rope would mess-up and then call support and blame Tesla. I have worked in tech support and often wished users didn't have mouse or keyboard, then home computers would all work perfectly!!!

 

[Gdotp]

@Gdotp you have a fundamental misconception that with time-based control mode it looks at some kind of weather prediction. It doesn't. At most it is somehow based on your previous day(s) domestic consumption and solar generation. Lower your expectations or be continually disappointed.

There is "storm watch" which does I'm not sure what when enabled and there is a storm alert. My Gateway got stuck in that mode once and it was even more annoying than usual, my advice is don't enable it! Again this may work well for the US where they get tornado warnings and major outages etc., but in UK where the Met gives a warning for any wind gusting above 50MPH or heavy rain or even an unusually hot day (> 80F) it is just a nuisance.

I also don't understand why people keep referring to the simple algorithm Tesla uses as "AI", it really isn't that smart.

Thanks for the tip on storm watch but I’ve disabled this as I wanted it to avoid topping up with peak electricity for no reason.

I’m not sure I do misunderstand it. Even if it did look at my previous days consumption it’s not working. The consumption is pretty consistent day to day and it continually at the moment runs out before the end of the day even though it has an off peak period I which it could, and should recharge. Last night it did start to recharge off peak but inexplicably stopped at 7% rather than goingto the 60% it should based on the day before.

The Tesla help says
“
Powerwall continuously runs an energy forecast, learning the patterns of your energy use and seasonal solar production. This energy forecast allows your Powerwall to optimize your energy usage. If the forecast shows that you are likely to use energy at a high-cost time, Powerwall prioritizes charging during low-cost periods and discharging during high-cost periods.

Note: Since this smart forecasting needs time to learn about your energy usage, Time-Based Control requires approximately a week before becoming a selectable control mode.”

I don’t believe it’s looking at my consumption pattern or indeed seasonal production, if it did it would know that there is not much sun in autumn in the U.K. and my daily consumption is pretty consistent. It’s clearly not “prioritizes charging during low-cost periods and discharging during high-cost periods”

I’ve not “played” with the settings for weeks hoping it would learn something….it clearly has not.

I’d far rather I had a little more control to simply top it to 50% each night which is far more likely to be right than it is each day.

 

[alexguichet]

Breaking news in App v4.2:

Utility Rate Plans | Tesla Support

The Tesla app allows you to add your utility rate plan for more accurate value calculation estimates and system optimization.

www.tesla.com

 

[Redhill_qik]

Breaking news in App v4.2:

Utility Rate Plans | Tesla Support

The Tesla app allows you to add your utility rate plan for more accurate value calculation estimates and system optimization.

www.tesla.com

This has been in the app for quite a while, at least for the 3.x version I haven't checked before in the 4.x version. When you selected your utility it updated the time based control periods.

For myself on PGE+SVCE the periods were wrong and started 30 mins before and ended 30 mins after the peak period. No way that I'm aware of to report issues like this to Tesla.

Edit: Checking the 4.x app SVCE isn't an option, but PCE and MCE. The lack of inclusion might be a scrolling issue as it would fall after the last listed option.