Ok good, thanks
@jgleigh and
@Vines! I was trying to reconcile that "wiring diagram"
from Tesla with what I thought would actually be logical. It sounds like the gateway really is the brains of the operation and decides how much power is needed from each source (and how to combine them if needed) to power the home loads (up to 200A).
And I'm assuming that the GW would always prioritize running your loads from the solar power first, then the PW (depending on the mode you set in the app) and then the grid last. Is that right?
Now my next question: would it ever make sense to get two powerwall+'s? And does Tesla ever do that? I would love to have more than 1 inverter (to have more mppts, to have a "backup" if one inverter dies, to avoid clipping around noon, etc). Or if I was to convince them to give me more than 1 inverter, would they just give me 1 PW+, 1 PW, and 1 extra 3.8kW inverter? I'm most likely getting either 11.2kW or 12kW of solar (haven't figured that out 100% yet).
Thanks guys (and girls) for all your help! This forum has been so much more helpful than the actual Tesla advisors who seem to need a little more understanding of things. One advisor even told me "you can't charge your car off of solar...only the grid has enough power to charge a Tesla". Unless I'm really misunderstanding something, I'm pretty sure the solar panels could always charge the car as long as they're producing more power than the car is trying to pull (like if the solar is producing 8kW, you should be able to easily charge at 4kW right from the panels as long as the solar stays above 4kW -- assuming you're not trying to charge the PWs or pull a ton of load in the house).