I just found myself in the same situation as a customer a few weeks in. I am also on SDGE, but I am not on EV yet. I was initially configured with TOU-DR1 plan both with SDGE and in the Tesla app, and Time-Based Control was working correctly discharging the Powerwall during peak. But yesterday I decided to consider my options starting with my SDGE plan. I switched to a plan called DR-SES for solar energy customers without EV. Then, I updated the Tesla app to reflect that. Now today during peak period, the Powerwall is not discharging. I only have a 20% reserve, and the charge level is 67%; so, it should be discharging during peak. I switched the system to Self-Powered mode, and it is started discharging again. I guess something about the buy and sell prices or possibly a hidden flag based on the rate plan preset I chose told the system to behave this way. Next, I switched the app back to TOU-DR1, waited 15 minutes for it to apply the change, and switched it back to Time-Based Control. Guess what? It is discharging from the Powerwall during peak again. Obviously, there is some reason, and maybe it knows best? I am not confident I figured out what is best yet, but I think it is better with this configuration, and this is how I got it going again.
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Time based control not working
- Thread starter powerwall88
- Start date
After getting the TBC to use my battery again during peak billing, today around 11:30 AM I found my battery at its lowest, reserve level 20%, not charging, and selling to the grid. WTH? It should be charging the battery so I can use it during peak billing! Maybe it is doing that because my sell price >= buy price, but I only want it to sell - regardless of price - after the battery is full. Don't you? Is that really out of the ordinary? TBC is too mysterious and requires too much experimentation.
I had a similar problem this morning. Our power walls were at around 60% and the system was selling to the grid instead of charging the batteries during off-peak. I changed to self-powered and that got the power walls to charge. Now they are at 100% and we are in part-peak and it is not drawing from the batteries. Should I be selling all the generated power and drawing from the power walls during part-peak and peak? That is the behavior I observed before today.
Maybe it is unrelated, but we had some sort of blip yesterday that knocked our inverter offline for a minute or two, tripped two breakers, and caused our IT equipment (which is on a UPS) to restart.
Maybe it is unrelated, but we had some sort of blip yesterday that knocked our inverter offline for a minute or two, tripped two breakers, and caused our IT equipment (which is on a UPS) to restart.
I did a little digging and identified some of the problem. The app added buy and sell prices for each time period. For some reason prices were inverted and my sell price was higher than my buy price. I manually changed them to have sell be lower than buy and the behavior is more like what I expect.
Let me guess, you're an MCE customer? Because I'm ALSO having the EXACT same problem, except in the East bay!
Great detective work!
Great detective work!
Have you had any luck fixing things? When I go into settings->Rate Plan all the sections have a little blue edit option on the right side (iOS). That is where I changed the prices.
I found this, which might be helpful.
teslamotorsclub.com
Tesla App Utility plan configuration: Multiple Peaks, Buy/Sell Behavior, etc
Starting a thread to document behavior I'm seeing using the new multiple peaks configurations (really multiple of any type). Maybe this information exists elsewhere but I couldn't find it when I first had my system go live a couple years ago, and I'm not really seeing if for the multiple peak...
teslamotorsclub.com
Just adding to the record, another user here. Noticed wall not discharging suddenly. Set the new version of the app to use SDG&E DR-SES and the wall will no longer discharge during peak. I made a manual schedule, painful process.. and as of this moment I am still drawing from the grid during peak hours. PW been sitting at 99% for several days while burning $ with the power company. NOT what I invested in.
I can't believe we have these very expensive products and Tesla has made it so difficult to control them.
It is down to corporate arrogance - the ethos at Tesla is that their software (even that coded by the B-team working on Powerwall control) is bound to do a better job than any user. It has never crossed their minds that a) houses do not always have access to internet or Tesla servers; b) both solar generation i.e. local weather and domestic use vary chaotically and so can not be predicted adequately by from data for previous days.
Rather than base the system on simple robust local control and then add cloud supported automated management as an extra innovation (which can impress users when it works, and can be avoided when it doesn't), they only design for the latter and fail to deliver.
Hi,
I got it finally sorted by calling the USA based Tesla support. They were able to enter the pricing for me, remotely in my app.
Heard through my NZ installer that it was a problem for others in NZ too.
Not the best solution, but the PW is behaving closer to what I expected.
Monitoring it frequently.
