Why is the gateway taking energy from the grid during peak?

[carteriii]

See the two images below for reference . . .

I have time-of-use setup with peak hours 4-9pm with the preference set for cost savings. The first screenshot below shows 6:24pm (in the middle of the peak range) and the house only wanting to use 4.4kW of electricity. I have multiple Powerwalls showing 85% capacity remaining (enough for the entire day) that in total are only providing 1.7kW causing another 1.7kW to be pulled from the grid. Really? What could cause this?

The second image shows 6:35pm and now the Powerwalls are providing absolutely nothing. This doesn't make sense. I have enough capacity to power much of the day, yet the peak time which is most expensive is pulling from the grid despite my explicit preference for cost savings. There would seem to be no chance any algorithm should take this approach to consume the most expensive electricity.

 

[cwied]

Can you show your reserve/mode settings and schedule to show what the configuration is? My Powerwalls configured to cost savings never pull from the grid during peak unless the reserve has been hit. There are schedules that are harder to deal with, though. For instance, if all your sunlight hours are during peak, there is more ambiguity over what the best strategy is.

 

[jjrandorin]

how long did it actually do that? Like, was it minutes, or did you screen cap a couple seconds when it was doing that?

 

[carteriii]

Below is the image for the day. For those unfamiliar, the green is the PowerWall which you can see charging from about 7:30am until about noon when it reached 100%. You'll note the Powerwall properly kicks in at 4pm to match the house usage as the solar decreases, but then it drops to zero as I showed in the original images.

The Powerwall then starts up again a bit later, but only ramped up gradually and didn't generate enough electricity to cover the home usage (in blue) until roughly above the "2" (20 for 8pm). Only at that point does the PowerWall do exactly what I would expect, covering all home usage until 9pm when the peak period is over.

My reserve is specified at 50%, and I never went below 75%. The grey shaded column clearly shows the peak period from 4-9pm.

 

[aesculus]

I have time-of-use setup with peak hours 4-9pm with the preference set for cost savings. The first screenshot below shows 6:24pm (in the middle of the peak range) and the house only wanting to use 4.4kW of electricity. I have multiple Powerwalls showing 85% capacity remaining (enough for the entire day) that in total are only providing 1.7kW causing another 1.7kW to be pulled from the grid. Really? What could cause this?

The second image shows 6:35pm and now the Powerwalls are providing absolutely nothing. This doesn't make sense. I have enough capacity to power much of the day, yet the peak time which is most expensive is pulling from the grid despite my explicit preference for cost savings. There would seem to be no chance any algorithm should take this approach to consume the most expensive electricity.

In another thread I posted the same sort of behavior the other day during a Storm Watch event. Even though I had Storm Watch off it still acted like it was on. It would not take power from the PWs during peak but used the solar and grid to power the house.

I suspected this was because I had toggled SW off and on a few times and maybe the server algorithm kept it on while the app said it was off.

Any chance you might have done the same during a Storm Watch event in your area?

 

[cwied]

I would call Powerwall support. I believe that cooling issues can also make the Powerwalls reduce output. They may be able to tell from their remote diagnostics what's going on. That graph definitely looks like there is some kind of problem.

 

[jjrandorin]

Yeah the whole graph makes it easier to see what happened (if you are used to looking at it like most of us that have powerwalls are, lol). I only use self powered, or backup, because I am not on a TOU plan so dont have any experience with those settings other than looking at them, and what people post here.

Cost savings specifically seems to be a bit strange, as it supposedly has some sort of predictive behavior. Are your powerwalls inside (like a garage, basement, etc) or outside? Any chance there could be sun shining on them in the afternoon and they needed to cool or something, as someone else mentioned?

Since you have specific time frames, etc, I would also recommend contacting tesla energy support and asking them the question, with the time stamps etc, if they can see "why" the powerwall behaved that way.

 

[carteriii]

I do have storm watch on, but have not touched it and I'm in Southern California where it seems highly, highly unlikely that storm watch would have even accidentally been triggered yesterday.

My Powerwalls are outside, though temps were only mid-70's (F) but I'll call & find out what may have happened. At least something heat-related would make some sense.