The way I explain Time of use compared with self powered is this:
Thank you! BTW do you know the answer to the Powerwall 3 LED light on the Tesla logo on the front, is it an LED light? My manual says it is but I cant find a single source explaining what it does or means when it lights up and mine never lights up that I can see. I assume most here do not have the 3 as it is so new so I dont expect anyone to know this but thought I would ask anyway.
No, I dont know anything about powerwall 3s that isnt posted here. have you called Tesla energy support and asked them that question?
I think I saw you tell me this or just state it in general somewhere else here and it is one of the reasons I seem so confused. Maybe in my case, per the response from jjrandorin, self powered will cost me less? The reason self powered costs more is because it will draw from the grid "whenever" as opposed to only during low peak? But in my case if I dont need the grid most of the time, then what...I guess I will just have to experiment. I will use the TOU-C plan and see what but at first per jjrandorin I will use self-powered.. Thanks. Also I think I get paid 4 cents per kWh sold back as opposed to most of you getting more like .40 cents. That has to figure in here as well.
I can no longer make project advisor consults even though I am still waiting for PTO, city inspection and to pay, for some reason it wont make the appt, says it does but I dont get the email confirmation and it wont work. I then found a way to send a message thru somewhere on the app and it said they would respond in 48 hours, that was 5 days ago. I will try calling, not sure which # is the best. Thanks...
That was easy, I didnt even bother calling till now assuming there would be a long wait. Took 15 seconds to be connected and the LED light question he did not know the answer and had to put me on hold for several minutes, came back and said when powered up it goes red then green then off. That it only lights up red during operation if something is wrong. So that is good to know. I also asked about the rapid shutdown button, to turn it back on if pushed for any reason (someone here told me how but I asked anyway just to confirm) twist and pull till you see the yellow sleeve again.
If you are under the NBT, AKA NEM 3.0 then my advice above is maybe not relevant. I don't know much about the NBT.
Thanks, your advice will be good on hot summer days probably, and knowing I can switch back and forth anytime, from self-powered to time of use is great also.
I am getting from PG&E. I say it that way because my closest relative and best friend, my cousin, is a retired PG&E management field employee and we walk regularly together and he defends them no matter what and I whine no matter what so we have fun.Note that I didnt say anything of the sort (that self powered would cost you less). I said that self powered would meet what appears to be your desired operation, which has been stated by you as "I dont want to pull power from the grid, thats a problem".
I'm sorry and I forgot to answer that. My primary driver was to lower my electric costs from PG&E billing and have power during the planned outages that PG&E does here for up to 3 days (I realize one PW wont last more than one day) as their way of not having another horrible fire like we had in 2019 I think it was.
The right terminology isn't "time of use" it is "Time Based Control". "Time Based Control" is a mode where the algorithm tries to optimize based on basic utility pricing that includes time-of-day and day-of-week pricing to determine when to have the Powerwall start exporting. This works well when the pricing model is simple and there is reasonable export resell rate, however you are in California, with PG&E and under NEM3.0 which has a highly variable and very low resell rate that the algorithm can't fully understand. Using "Time Based Control" will very likely result in sub-optimal pricing decisions and a higher annual cost to you.
Under the "Self Powered" mode the Powerwall will start exporting when solar can't supply the entire house load and in your case it would be exporting 1.5-2.0kW until the A/C stops running. Under "Time Based Control" the Powerwall would only start exporting if the pricing algorithm decided there was a cost benefit to doing so based on the time and import vs export costs at that point in time versus expected future needs.
Thanks, that makes sense to me. I will remember the correct term as "TBC" or slightly different than "TCB" both Elvis's motto and a great song, "Taking Care of Business."
Frankly, I’d stop overthinking it. Unless you have zero production or have an idea of what to expect (re: generation), there is nothing you can do about it. You are now in a “dead zone” where you have no official contact with Tesla, until PTO (no installation support or Advisor, no post-PTO support). Even if there were issues, you will have to spend significant time trying to find someone to contact, and convincing them (beyond saying “something is wrong”) that there is/are issues, and for them to come out to fix it.
Thank you for your input. I was able to figure out how to look at the day by day hour by hour energy production graph and I can see that my solar so far has started anytime between 7 AM and 8 AM and sometimes it stopped at 7:30 PM but usually before 7 PM.
A good chuck of that depends on the position of the sun as well as the position of solar panels (in addition to weather in general). It's possible that it's still light outside, but the sun is fairly low and perhaps the solar panels aren't really pointing in a direction where that low sun is, so there really isn't much of anything that's hitting the panels that could be used to generate power.
