This may sound like a silly question, but are you sure your email client is not marking them as spam? That wouldnt be the same thing as being blocked.
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Utility Rate Plans Where are they?
- Thread starter colovin
- Start date
This may sound like a silly question, but are you sure your email client is not marking them as spam? That wouldnt be the same thing as being blocked.
When I click on the Unwatch button I get a dialog, "Are you sure you want to unwatch this thread?" So I believe that is used for, if I wanted to stop watching a thread that I'm currently watching. If I go to a thread that I'm not following button says "Watch" so I am watching the thread.
Ok, better yet, I unwatched this thread then clicked the watch which showed the dialog about receiving notifications. I'll see what that does.
I have a spam filtering extension on my email client. What it thinks is spam would be put in a spam folder, not blocked or thrown away. I go through spam (very quickly) and delete manually. If something is there that shouldn't be there I can mark it as not spam. I got the email verification email when I registered for this forum and it came through in the clear, not in the spam folder. Gmail will block some emails from coming to my client. Being king of my domain, I don't have that problem, everything comes to my client unhindered to be dealt with by my client (MacMail & Spam Sleve). Once again, I got no notification of either of the replies to this thread. I'm going to put a watch on another thread and see what happens.
Ok, better yet, I unwatched this thread then clicked the watch which showed the dialog about receiving notifications. I'll see what that does.
That worked!! I guess it was because I was a newbie and the thread had to reviewed before it was first put up that it interfered with my notification preferences. However it was showing that I was watching the thread so it really should have been notifying me. Now I can mark the return address in my rules so anything I'm following will show up in my forum folder. Thank you for the test post.
skepticcyclist
Member
I was just about to start a thread asking the same question. I too don’t have this option. I can only create my own custom plan. And the “Add a New Rate Period” option is grayed out.
Wow, nice to see when there is a new reply. 
It's a bit of a head scratcher. I understand the rolling it out, but it would seem that if you had the same firmware (21:35) and same app version (4.2.0) you'd have the same capabilities. Apparently that's not the case. Gradually rolling out predefined utility rate plans is fine but I'd rather just setup my own custom plan. No problems right now, 1 peak period 2-8. Nov 1st, 2 peak periods 5-9a 5-9p for 6 months. Last year (my first year of solar) I had to change daily because app only supported 1 peak period. Now supposedly it supports multiple peak periods. So why can't all people have the same capability to set custom periods with the same firmware/app versions?
It's a bit of a head scratcher. I understand the rolling it out, but it would seem that if you had the same firmware (21:35) and same app version (4.2.0) you'd have the same capabilities. Apparently that's not the case. Gradually rolling out predefined utility rate plans is fine but I'd rather just setup my own custom plan. No problems right now, 1 peak period 2-8. Nov 1st, 2 peak periods 5-9a 5-9p for 6 months. Last year (my first year of solar) I had to change daily because app only supported 1 peak period. Now supposedly it supports multiple peak periods. So why can't all people have the same capability to set custom periods with the same firmware/app versions?I can 100% confirm that having just those two things are not the only thing that enables you to have those features. I got both of those applicable versions but did not have those features. It was activated "later".
There is definitely (as in 100%, I am not guessing here) some additional "something" that tesla has to do to enable this on a specific account.
ArizonaJon
Member
Since Tesla has info on your location at home and based on that knows what generation providers you might have a choice of, I’m assuming they can roll out software “customized” to individual areas of the state/city, not so unlike Tesla cars’ software customized between different years, models and car features. I know where I’m at it’s PGE and SVCE (community aggregate) as the choices. With change of seasons in rate plans happening around now, I’m sure there’s a lot of upgrading of info to be done thus the spread out roll out period. And my guess about not having access to create your own at this point is that Tesla already knows what is available in your specific area and there will be pre-established choices soon to choose from. Selecting the info here does Not change your plan. That as Tesla says is already set between you and your provider. The app selection is just to give you a good idea of your cost savings in one place to view.
I'm not sure what the great technical challenge is. Seems simple to give the app the ability to schedule multiple peak periods. Yes it would be nice to be able to have your utilities rate plans selectable within the app but that seems like the hard way to do it. While Tesla has info on my location I definitely know exactly what rate plan I'm on and can easily program it in the app. I don't need Tesla to do that. I'd say the vast majority of people with solar panels have a working knowledge of their utilities rate structures.
I'm happy to see that I'm not the only person on the planet with split peak periods. I figured that must have been the case since such a basic function wasn't in the app from day one. Once given the ability to program multiple peak periods I will program it myself rather than go with Telsa's preprogrammed options. It's not like they're trying to make a car that can drive its self without plowing into cars parked on the shoulder. Oh wait . . . Never mind!
I'm happy to see that I'm not the only person on the planet with split peak periods. I figured that must have been the case since such a basic function wasn't in the app from day one. Once given the ability to program multiple peak periods I will program it myself rather than go with Telsa's preprogrammed options. It's not like they're trying to make a car that can drive its self without plowing into cars parked on the shoulder. Oh wait . . . Never mind!
I'm not sure what the great technical challenge is. Seems simple to give the app the ability to schedule multiple peak periods. Yes it would be nice to be able to have your utilities rate plans selectable within the app but that seems like the hard way to do it. While Tesla has info on my location I definitely know exactly what rate plan I'm on and can easily program it in the app. I don't need Tesla to do that. I'd say the vast majority of people with solar panels have a working knowledge of their utilities rate structures.
I'm happy to see that I'm not the only person on the planet with split peak periods. I figured that must have been the case since such a basic function wasn't in the app from day one. Once given the ability to program multiple peak periods I will program it myself rather than go with Telsa's preprogrammed options. It's not like they're trying to make a car that can drive its self without plowing into cars parked on the shoulder. Oh wait . . . Never mind!
Completely agree - heading into dual peaks myself November 1st and would love to be able to set and forget versus having to edit twice a day (which worked fine last year just a bit of a pain). Strange that the last few updates (FW in particular) had no release notes now they have release notes and were on the right FW / App versions but we have to wait for the capability...
Now if they would just program the charging algorithm to take into account weather conditions...
App updated to 4.2.2 today. Was hoping this was going to be the magic ticket . . . nope, same old same old. Just for gins and I had some stuff to do on the computer while I was waiting on hold, I called tech support to see if they might know when it was rolling out to my area. Of course they didn't know, which is what I expected but I did find out that nothing will happen until the firmware is updated to 21.39. Once that happens you then have to wait for Tesla to get around to your area. I still don't understand why such a basic function is such a technical challenge. My tankless water heater has split peak settings for goodness sake. If I for some reason forget to edit the time after 9pm to 5am, the system will think it has till 5pm to recharge the battery so it will happy discharge the battery overnight. There isn't much sun light at 5am when peak starts again, to augment the depleted battery. On my rate schedule (E27 for those of you in SRP land) I pay a penalty if I draw during peak. That's my choice, I can go to a different plan but E27 has the lowest cost per kWh. Soooo I made it through last year, I suspect I've got 6 months of doing what should be automated, twice daily editing of peak time periods. Come on Tesla, this isn't rocket science (they do have a division for that) my phone is a Cray super computer compared to the computer that landed a man on the moon. I don't think I'll get any 1202 alarms from my phone either. . .
No necessarily related to this post but I too am with SRP and recently shifted from E27 to E15 (Average demand price plan) which you might want to look into. If your demand is zero it costs the same; if your demand is exactly equal every day (not realistic) then it's more expensive; if your demand varies then E15 plan is generally better as it smooths things out (so if your forget to change the peak one day it does not completely mess up entire month's demand charge)
Interesting, I'll have to look at that. I rarely get hit with the demand charge. Day one I got hit, didn't get commissioned until 3:30 pm so no time to charge the batteries. There were only a few days left in my billing cycle so it was prorated, wasn't horrible. One time I was doing something in the electrical panel during peak and inadvertently flipped the breaker for the Powerwall which meant it had to reboot. I'll never work around the panel again during peak (dah!). My main hits are a few 10ths during the winter from the tankless water heater. Ground water is cold so it really spikes. However I had forgotten that you could reduce the power load 50% in peak period, figured that out in the spring. Has programable seasons and split peak periods, imagine that. Next weeks challenge is I'm headed out of town on Tues for a couple of weeks. I'll be in CDT and will have to do the math (I was never good at math). I will be editing remotely. Then on 11/7 the rest or the world goes to standard time, different math involved. I'm going to a reunion so heavy drinking will ensue. Humm maybe I need to switch to E15 right away.
It's 3 am, 2 hrs before the first split peak of the season. At 9 pm my battery was at 100% and in standby. Just for gins I checked the app on my 3 am pee run. Battery down to 87% discharging in Off-Peak period????? So what, am I going to have to set an alarm for 4:55 am every morning and manually turn on and off the battery?
I have mine set with a shoulder period (attached snap shot) and I think that effectively causes the PW to save the PW for the longer periods. I just checked it out and it hasn’t used any off Peak PW. I also have a reserve set which seems to force the Powerwall to save some power wall juice for later.
Then after the morning peak period I can change my peak to the evening, adjust the shoulder if I need to, and tweak my reserve if I’m going to need it. Mostly I leave the shoulder, and just slide the reserve up/down to adjust behavior during the shoulder period.
Because I have the shoulder set, during the shoulder the system seems to try and predict how much I’ll need for my evening peak (after I set it) and only charges the PW high enough to cover the evening peak and then will use Solar to power the house after that. At times I’ll slide the reserve up until closer to my evening peak at which time I slide the reserve back down if I think I’ll need more.
I have found tweaking the peaks/shoulder configs too close to my actual peak period (I.e. several hours) can cause unpredictable behavior so I try to only change those twice a day; after my morning peak and then again after my evening peak. Beyond that I only adjust reserve which seems to not confuse the system too much when changed, even if it takes up to 30 minutes or so to be reflected in behavior. Sliding the reserve seems to not reset or discombobulate the system the way changing the peak periods does. Lowering the reserve if needed during the peak period seems to work fine.
Hopefully they push the multiple peak periods feature soon!
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I observed a very similar phenomenon today too although more extreme (battery was at 50% at 5am leaving only 20%, given my 30%, reserve to cover 5am-9am which with solar is likely enough to cover my normal usage but why cut things so fine). Might try setting a shoulder for 9am to 9pm or just extend the peak further to force less off peak discharge.
I guess technically I'm setting "Off-Peak" to be 9pm to 5am and I just leave it don't ever change it, which has the effect of having a shoulder that is always covering the gap between my peak periods 100%. Then twice a day I toggle the am/pm on the 9-5 for the peak period. So basically at 9am-ish I switch the peak to be 5pm-9pm, and then at 9pm-ish I switch it back to 5am-9pm. If I know it's going to be a hot day or we're cooking entertaining in the evening during our peak I'll bump the reserve up quite a bit more, and then sometime before peak set it back down just to make sure we have enough to get through the evening peak and the next morning peak.
I leave tomorrow for a couple of weeks. I've had my wife practicing all weekend going through the motions of changing the peak periods. She usually has nothing to do with the system. I will be checking from my CDT location (Houston) but wanted to get her up to speed just incase trying to manage from a different time zone creates unforeseen problems. I'll be checking on her work. All weekend we had been going with the shoulder approach just changing the peak and off peak times from AM to PM where appropriate using the KISS approach (keep it simple stupid). That gave the timeline as illustrated in JayClarks post. When it was finally for real, 9 pm Sunday night it worked as I had expected, battery 100% in standby. It was the 3 am pee run when I checked and it was discarding down to 87%. That's when I changed it to all off peak with no shoulders. Change wasn't instant but it finally went into standby.
Isn't shoulder not as good as off-peak but not as bad as peak rate wise? I only have peak and off-peak so that's what I'm assuming. In a time based control senecio it would seem that it would also want to use the battery in the shoulder period and stay away in the off-peak period. But it is a multi step process to get it in all off-peak or peak. (no KISS involved ) You can't just change the AM to PM. You get a, "can't overlap error" so you have to first set the off peak to just the time ahead of the next peak. Then you set the peak and then go back and change the off peak to the rest of the day. MUCH harder than the old app. Old app you just slid the times on the time line.
Hopefully they rolled this app out in anticipation of these wondrous pre programed rate periods, otherwise I far prefer the old app. I've still got it running on an old android tablet that is very slow so not practical to do anything with but the old interface is still much better than the current one. It will be interesting to see if it discharges after 9 pm tonight with the all peak or non-peak. It did not work with the shoulder.
As far as the reserve, my grid power is very reliable here. In the 1.5 years of solar I've gone on battery twice for 5 minutes at a time and I think it was just testing itself. So I don't use reserve for backup power at all. I go 100% reserve when I want to force the battery to charge and then go 100% time control once the battery is holding at 100%. Every peak period I'm at 100% time control. I also switched off storm watch. One of the times I got a demand charge was when storm watch went off during peak taking me off the battery. I guess somewhere in Phoenix they were having a few drops of rain, not at my house. That's when I shut off storm watch.
Now that we're in the damn split peak time period please post your success stories and failures. I'll be a little late posting tonights results because I'll be on the road literally, I'm driving, but will let you know if my setup works at some point in time.
Isn't shoulder not as good as off-peak but not as bad as peak rate wise? I only have peak and off-peak so that's what I'm assuming. In a time based control senecio it would seem that it would also want to use the battery in the shoulder period and stay away in the off-peak period. But it is a multi step process to get it in all off-peak or peak. (no KISS involved ) You can't just change the AM to PM. You get a, "can't overlap error" so you have to first set the off peak to just the time ahead of the next peak. Then you set the peak and then go back and change the off peak to the rest of the day. MUCH harder than the old app. Old app you just slid the times on the time line.
Hopefully they rolled this app out in anticipation of these wondrous pre programed rate periods, otherwise I far prefer the old app. I've still got it running on an old android tablet that is very slow so not practical to do anything with but the old interface is still much better than the current one. It will be interesting to see if it discharges after 9 pm tonight with the all peak or non-peak. It did not work with the shoulder.
As far as the reserve, my grid power is very reliable here. In the 1.5 years of solar I've gone on battery twice for 5 minutes at a time and I think it was just testing itself. So I don't use reserve for backup power at all. I go 100% reserve when I want to force the battery to charge and then go 100% time control once the battery is holding at 100%. Every peak period I'm at 100% time control. I also switched off storm watch. One of the times I got a demand charge was when storm watch went off during peak taking me off the battery. I guess somewhere in Phoenix they were having a few drops of rain, not at my house. That's when I shut off storm watch.
Now that we're in the damn split peak time period please post your success stories and failures. I'll be a little late posting tonights results because I'll be on the road literally, I'm driving, but will let you know if my setup works at some point in time.
