Proper Solar App Setting to use grid/solar during day - pw at night?

[AnonNJ]

Just installed a 13.2 kW system and 2 powerwalls. Anyone find the proper set up to run house from sunrise to sunset on grid/solar while charging Powerwalls, and then discharging powerwalls overnight?

Self powered mode uses all PW while sun it still out which is really annoying.

I'm playing with timed settings currently but can't find the right combo.

Most of the day my house is self powered by solar. With AC in summer, I exceed solar for periods and use PW/Grid. But that nets me out to powerwall backup limit by evening. My goal is to have a full battery each day for the evening.

Any thoughts?

 

[cwied]

Why do you prefer to pull from the grid during the day rather than at night? It sounds like what you're looking for is timed self-consumption, which is not currently available, but it's not clear to me why there's any difference in the timing of when you use the grid. Either way the Powerwall would be discharging the same amount of energy.

 

[cwied]

You could try Advanced-Balanced with the evening set to partial peak and the day set to off peak.

 

[AnonNJ]

Why do you prefer to pull from the grid during the day rather than at night? It sounds like what you're looking for is timed self-consumption, which is not currently available, but it's not clear to me why there's any difference in the timing of when you use the grid. Either way the Powerwall would be discharging the same amount of energy.

My most frequent outages come from downed trees during afternoon T Storms or other overnight events. Going into the afternoon/evening full battery and drawing down to reserve overnight gives me greatest likelihood of always being ready, while still using self generated energy to offset grid.

 

[AnonNJ]

You could try Advanced-Balanced with the evening set to partial peak and the day set to off peak.

Thanks... in your use, does shoulder time behave differently than peak? I just set peak for the AM and failed that test as all solar was feeding back to the grid rather than my powerwalls!!!

 

[woferry]

Self powered mode uses all PW while sun it still out which is really annoying.

What do you mean by this? It's certainly not what my system does in Self-powered mode:

Sun comes up, house loads are supplied first, and any excess solar energy goes directly to PW charging. Once there's more solar than home+PW needs, the rest goes to the grid. As PW finishes charging it ends up just being solar-home going to grid. Once solar can no longer meet the home loads, PW makes up for the rest, once solar stops for the day PW provides 100% of the home load (provided you don't exceed the inverter rating, or drain the PWs to their reserve). So the only PW usage I see when the sun is out is a tiny bit in the morning/evening when there isn't enough solar yet to cover the home loads (the tiny bit of overlap of green/yellow in the above graph).

Okay, I guess re-reading I might understand the question a bit better. Seems like some folks are changing the PW settings throughout the day, bumping the reserve to 100% during the day should keep the PW from discharging. Just changing it in the GUI might take an hour or so to apply it seems, but it seems logging-in to the Gateway after changing in the app might force a faster sync. Sounds like those who are changing the settings frequently have it all figured-out & automated based on other posts I've seen, I haven't played with it myself so I don't have any experience there.

 

[AnonNJ]

What do you mean by this? It's certainly not what my system does in Self-powered mode:

View attachment 444692

Sun comes up, house loads are supplied first, and any excess solar energy goes directly to PW charging. Once there's more solar than home+PW needs, the rest goes to the grid. As PW finishes charging it ends up just being solar-home going to grid. Once solar can no longer meet the home loads, PW makes up for the rest, once solar stops for the day PW provides 100% of the home load (provided you don't exceed the inverter rating, or drain the PWs to their reserve). So the only PW usage I see when the sun is out is a tiny bit in the morning/evening when there isn't enough solar yet to cover the home loads (the tiny bit of overlap of green/yellow in the above graph).

Okay, I guess re-reading I might understand the question a bit better. Seems like some folks are changing the PW settings throughout the day, bumping the reserve to 100% during the day should keep the PW from discharging. Just changing it in the GUI might take an hour or so to apply it seems, but it seems logging-in to the Gateway after changing in the app might force a faster sync. Sounds like those who are changing the settings frequently have it all figured-out based on other posts I've seen, I haven't played with it myself so I don't have any experience there.

Thanks for the input. I wish my solar generation curve looked like yours... I have too many clouds and am facing NW so it is an ugly ramp up.

I'm looking for a set it and forget it approach rather than micromanaging which is all I've found through thread searches. I don't want to mess with the UI everyday.... seems like a lot to remember.

 

[woferry]

I'm looking for a set it and forget it approach rather than micromanaging which is all I've found through thread searches. I don't want to mess with the UI everyday.... seems like a lot to remember.

Sounds like some folks have automated it, so software is doing the micro-managing.

 

[AnonNJ]

Sounds like some folks have automated it, so software is doing the micro-managing.

Haha! I will search harder.

 

[Odiemac]

Haha! I will search harder.

I imagine he has more loads than you do Will. For example AC loads that tend to run big in the late afternoon as the sun starts to set. For example:



@AnonNJ, you (or a programmer) could write a script to automate setting the powerwalls reserve to 100% every day around 5pm, and then resetting it to 20% or so around 8pm. Here’s the documentation a programmer or very tech savvy person would need to do that:

vloschiavo/powerwall2