Haha, yes. Although I've love to have 500+kW per phase... it would take me half a minute to fill up from empty to full... take that EV haters!I think you mean 500+W
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Charge On Solar Australia
- Thread starter cafz
- Start date
I’ve just turned off Charge On Solar to see what would happen. Those three dots were there while I had it activated but now that I’ve used the toggle to turn it off, the three dots have disappeared. See attached screenshot. There is once again no way to turn it back on.
iOS app version 4.30.6-2531. Car on 2024.2.7. Tried restarting the app. Rebooting the phone. Starting to charge the car rather than having it on standby while plugged in as per the screenshot.
Attachments
Yes, still paired. In fact, there's my phone twice. A previous pairing before I deleted the app & reinstalled it which I had to do last time to get the COS option back again. I'll give the unpairing/repairing thing a go.
Welcome to Australia!
Due to our rather high proportion of renewables, and thanks to a 60 Minutes interview of Elon Musk a few years back, we rely heavily on Tesla batteries and autobidder software to run our power grid. Autobidder lets Tesla observe when the grid needs more power, or has power to spare, and whether it should dump power from big batteries into the grid, or charge the big batteries, taking into account the cost of buying and selling the power all around.
Take it a step further.
If Tesla Autobidder decides that the grid is stressed, is it better for Tesla to dump power into the grid from a big battery, or quietly tell a few thousand plugged-in Teslas to charge a little slower for a few minutes? The net impact to the grid is identical. One option requires Tesla or Neoen or whoever to use power they paid for, that they'll have to pay to recharge later. The other option can be done quietly in the background at no cost to themselves. Except for maybe an SMS to wake up a few thousand cars and tell them to stand by to change the amperage limit up or down during a grid event.
Given megapacks cost a lot to buy & install, and have an enormous lead time, whereas we pay to buy a Tesla, I can see an economic incentive to include Tesla EV customers in the autobidder picture before long.
Tesla should widen out Charge on Solar slightly. Maybe call it "Charge on someone else's solar", tongue-in-cheek. Forget about making solar & powerwalls on-site a requirement if you're on-grid in a market where Tesla has autobidder running, and you've got 4G data reception.
If a few thousand Teslas charging at 7½kW could slow down simultaneously during a brownout & thus prevent a blackout, why not monetise that? It's a grid service, it should be worth real money, so give us some incentives.
Heck, many folks would accept it without even being paid, as it'd help win arguments at Christmas dinner with Uncle Norm. He'll tell you that EVs will crash the power grid when everyone plugs them in all at once, and he'll rub salt in by saying that you live in an apartment so you can't possibly have solar like he does at the house he bought decades ago (when they were affordable) so you're charging on coal.
You can tell him you've set your car so that, unless it's desperately low on power, it won't charge at all unless there's a tonne of spare solar power in the grid. And hopefully the app will tell you the last few dates it was desperately low. And hopefully those dates were a long time ago.
Or just sum it up by saying 'unless it's an emergency, my car only charges when the sun's shining or the wind's blowing'. Then add some salt of your own, with 'and I'd rather the occasional bit of coal than to lose a single Aussie kid in yet another invasion of Iraq, just to keep the oil flowing'.
There's already a mechanism to pay for that kind of thing in the NEM, it's called the Wholesale Demand Response Mechanism. Registered Demand Response units bid, are dispatched and are paid like a generator.
My Charge on Solar behaviour has changed slightly so that it now prioritises charging the Powerwall 2 first from my 10% reserve up to 20%, then prioritises charging the car over the battery. That is better than just completely prioritising the car, as it did initially, but I would still before to completely fill the battery first.
I don't know if this was a firmware change, or some algorithm took a while to observe my usual consumption patterns.
I don't know if this was a firmware change, or some algorithm took a while to observe my usual consumption patterns.
I initially thought that my car wasn’t going to sleep either after I set up CoS. Because whenever I swiped across in the App to switch from PW2 to my vehicle to check something, it always responded immediately, as if it was already awake. Previously you’d get the spinning wheel and it could take anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute for the car to respond. And sometimes never, and I’d have to wake the car by going to the garage and opening a door.
I’m pretty sure it is sleeping now that I have turned CoS off - and I will only turn it on again manually if my car needs a charge and my PW2 is full. I would notice if it was losing 5% a day and it isn’t.
However what I have noticed is that the car seems to wake far more quickly via the App than it ever did previously. This could be a result of Tesla migrating from Owner API to Fleet API which works better, or the latest software update, or both.
Thanks. Have been in NZ for last 2 weeks and car was not sleeping. Ironically I logged a ticket last night and lo and behold the car is sleeping today....
Sorry for late reply. My answers are below. The only thing I can think of is the wifi.
Thanks for your help.
AndroidAre you on iOS or Android?. I’m on iOS and as soon as I paired my phone with PW2, the CoS controls appeared. I didn’t have to logout, or restart the App, or anything.
Yes, it's plugged in.And this might seem a dumb question… but is your car plugged in?
I have the charging controls but no three dots to open the CoS parameters.
Thanks for your help.
I didn’t join the dots on the weekend, and Charge on Solar mucked up my charging routine ahead of a long drive yesterday.
I manually set the charge limit to 90% the evening prior, and the App reported that “Scheduled Charging” as usual would start at 23:00.
However, with CoS also on, it was set to use ‘other energy sources’ to charge to the minimum 30%, then solar above that.
But since the car SoC was already above 30%, and not surprisingly there’s no solar overnight, scheduled charging did not commence at 23:00. As a result, in the morning the car had not been charged to 90%. It hadn’t been charged at all.
Thankfully, it didn’t matter too much, we had plenty to get to our destination, and if we had have pushed it, almost enough to get back. In the end we took a brief stop at a Supercharger on the way home.
Now a ‘smarter’ App should have had an on-screen warning that because my SoC was above the CoS minimum, then no scheduled charging would occur. And that would have led to the ‘a-ha’ moment and I would have either changed my CoS settings, or turned it off.
So a trap for the unwary…
I manually set the charge limit to 90% the evening prior, and the App reported that “Scheduled Charging” as usual would start at 23:00.
However, with CoS also on, it was set to use ‘other energy sources’ to charge to the minimum 30%, then solar above that.
But since the car SoC was already above 30%, and not surprisingly there’s no solar overnight, scheduled charging did not commence at 23:00. As a result, in the morning the car had not been charged to 90%. It hadn’t been charged at all.
Thankfully, it didn’t matter too much, we had plenty to get to our destination, and if we had have pushed it, almost enough to get back. In the end we took a brief stop at a Supercharger on the way home.
Now a ‘smarter’ App should have had an on-screen warning that because my SoC was above the CoS minimum, then no scheduled charging would occur. And that would have led to the ‘a-ha’ moment and I would have either changed my CoS settings, or turned it off.
So a trap for the unwary…
Interesting comments re. people wanting to prioritise home over car battery. I can understand this for some, but I'm the opposite.
I want my car ready to drive at earliest convenience during the day and are happy to have the home battery filling up later when there's more chance I'm out driving, ready for the night.
It's no big deal to turn down my "charge to" car percentage if I want the home battery to top up 1st (because of projected dark overcast day).
Though a simple option in the app to prioritise destination of solar power would be nice.
Even when I need the car 100% full for an early morning get away it just needs a few steps to turn off Charge on Solar, and set up a 2nd (phoney) Off-Peak/High-Peak schedule so that in the wee hours the car uses my PW 1st (down to a set low limit) then charges from the grid getting to 100% just before I hop in to drive off at a "Departure time".
I want my car ready to drive at earliest convenience during the day and are happy to have the home battery filling up later when there's more chance I'm out driving, ready for the night.
It's no big deal to turn down my "charge to" car percentage if I want the home battery to top up 1st (because of projected dark overcast day).
Though a simple option in the app to prioritise destination of solar power would be nice.
Even when I need the car 100% full for an early morning get away it just needs a few steps to turn off Charge on Solar, and set up a 2nd (phoney) Off-Peak/High-Peak schedule so that in the wee hours the car uses my PW 1st (down to a set low limit) then charges from the grid getting to 100% just before I hop in to drive off at a "Departure time".
I’m hoping the software will develop to the point where we have some control over the charging logic.
For my use case then it would be house -> Powerwall -> car up to my usual set limit if sunshine available. If the car isn’t charged when the sun goes down, then start charging from the grid on the set schedule (for me midnight onwards).
Then I can just plug the car in and forget everything. I will be able to self-consume more of my solar output and not have to think about fiddling with CoS settings if I want CoS during the day but need a specific SoC the next morning.
I’m wondering what the logic issue for the software engineers is. Not suggesting that the engineers are illogical, but instead wondering what the barrier is with the current software.
For my use case then it would be house -> Powerwall -> car up to my usual set limit if sunshine available. If the car isn’t charged when the sun goes down, then start charging from the grid on the set schedule (for me midnight onwards).
Then I can just plug the car in and forget everything. I will be able to self-consume more of my solar output and not have to think about fiddling with CoS settings if I want CoS during the day but need a specific SoC the next morning.
I’m wondering what the logic issue for the software engineers is. Not suggesting that the engineers are illogical, but instead wondering what the barrier is with the current software.
Tesla defines what gets priority (battery or car) based on the Powerwall configuration (https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-app/charge-on-solar):
I have mine on Self-Powered but I'd like to prioritise the Powerwall, they should have it as an option.
- Storm Watch (if detects an event coming) - Powerwall gets priority, then Car
- Backup reserve - Powerwall gets priority (up to the set Backup reserve percentage), then Car
- Self-Powered - Car get priority (until limit), then Powerwall
- Time-Based Control - Powerwall gets priority (during Peak), then Car
- Go Off-Grid - it depends
I have mine on Self-Powered but I'd like to prioritise the Powerwall, they should have it as an option.
Mine is set to Self-powered, but has been charging the battery initially. I can't work out the pattern, but it adds roughly 10% to the battery before it stops and switches to charging the car (and then eventually charges both when the solar production reaches a high enough level.Tesla defines what gets priority (battery or car) based on the Powerwall configuration (https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-app/charge-on-solar):
- Storm Watch (if detects an event coming) - Powerwall gets priority, then Car
- Backup reserve - Powerwall gets priority (up to the set Backup reserve percentage), then Car
- Self-Powered - Car get priority (until limit), then Powerwall
- Time-Based Control - Powerwall gets priority (during Peak), then Car
- Go Off-Grid - it depends
I have mine on Self-Powered but I'd like to prioritise the Powerwall, they should have it as an option.
I meant that it adds about 10% above my reserve (so I end up with 20% or so in the battery) before it prioritises charging the car.
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