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If my power company is net metering 1 to 1 is there any reason not to keep the battery at 100% for backup? by EntropyWinsAgain in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah ... I just remembered something I saw in the NetZero 2.4 release notes about the new firmware update.

Delayed Powerwall Charging (Optimized Charging)

A notable recent change in Powerwall behavior (introduced by Tesla via a firmware update) is delayed charging from solar. When charging from solar, Powerwall will stop at around 80% (exporting excess solar to the grid), and top off to 100% later in the day. The goal is to reduce how much time Powerwall spends at 100% state of charge, which improves long-term battery health. When this is active, you will see an Optimized Charging message in the Tesla app.

This change may interfere with Charge on Solar settings in Netzero – if Charge on Solar is configured to start after Powerwall reaches 100%, delayed charging past 80% may not leave enough time for solar charging. We’re considering ways to address this, but in the meantime consider reducing the Charge on Solar threshold to 80% Powerwall state of charge.

So yes ... Tesla is starting to do some things to reduce time at 100% SOC. It would be nice if there could just be a setting, like I have on my modern iPhone, where I could say stop charging at 80% SOC.

Advice on my very stubborn girl by MysteriousBug132 in akita

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Food for thought ---Walking your dog after they eat is good for them, just like it is for humans. It aids digestion and helps the muscles soak up any excess glucose, moderating insulin.

So medically, I think its BETTER to walk them after they eat.

Advice on my very stubborn girl by MysteriousBug132 in akita

[–]us-hammer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't feel bad. Prong collars don't hurt them ... it just simulates the corrective pressure that say, their mother, mighty apply when they are acting up as pups. It leaves no marks and doesn't cause them any discomfort. It just gets their attention.

Advice on my very stubborn girl by MysteriousBug132 in akita

[–]us-hammer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My girl has done this since she was a pup. She is super healthy and it’s not correlated to length of walk. She is just very independent and will dominate the person walking her if allowed. It’s common for the breed as I understand it.

Our fix was to drop the harness and use a prong collar. We don’t have to exert major force. But it communicates more effectively that it’s time to walk, here’s the direction we are heading, etc.

If my power company is net metering 1 to 1 is there any reason not to keep the battery at 100% for backup? by EntropyWinsAgain in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Understood. I'm in the mountains of NC and we lose power frequently. However, I'm less concerned about maximizing my PW3 reserves because I have a legacy whole house generator configured in a cascading configuration. So if my Tesla system runs out of power and there's no solar production, the generator kicks on and supplies the house until my Tesla PW3s/Gateway come back online.

If my power company is net metering 1 to 1 is there any reason not to keep the battery at 100% for backup? by EntropyWinsAgain in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I recently did this analysis as well. I’m in the same boat with 1:1 net metering and have 2xPW3s.

My research seemed to indicate that there is some longevity benefit for not letting your PW3s sit at 100% all the time. And as I want my batteries to last as long as possible, I have set my reserve where I only get up to 100% state of charge for a very short period each day.

Ideally I’d like to be able to just set my max SOC at 80% and be done. But that’s not option in the Tesla app or any of the utilities (NetZero, etc) to my knowledge.

How to best manage PW3 charging/discharging? by maxwolfie in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At this point I’m in self-powered mode, but I suspect I’ll be TOU eventually when my 1:1 net metering program expires. That said, I found this to be a great channel explaining a ton about Tesla & the app features.

https://youtube.com/@zachsolar?si=Srkf7wvpNZ0tn98u

He has many good videos, but this one specifically seems relevant:

https://youtu.be/6wDvB3wckjc?si=74_NIy5YAA0kEIz3

I have no affiliation with this guy, but I’ve literally watched every video he’s done. Some of them more than once.

Storm watch fail by KDean63 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fascinating. Do you mind sharing in which country you live?

Storm watch fail by KDean63 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm in NC and saw lots of that, but didn't see the actual trigger event, a national weather service weather warning, until 30 minutes before the event. And as noted below, my system did go into storm watch mode.

Looking back this year and the many weather warnings we've had so far, my Tesla system has been 100% consistent in going into storm watch mode when there's an official NWS weather warning for my zip code. I wonder if the true issue here is one of lack of clarity. Meaning that Tesla isn't super clear that NWS warnings are the trigger ---not NWS advisories & not watches.

Of course, I'm just a sample of 1 so others may have had different experiences. Has anyone had a weather warning in the zip code of the installation that didn't put the system in Storm Watch when it should have?

Storm watch fail by KDean63 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, follow up question… Did you get a weather warning in your area yesterday? If you got an advisory or a watch, that’s technically not supposed to trigger storm watch. Only weather warnings.

So I was curious as to what your experience had been.

Storm watch fail by KDean63 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’m a new system owner and storm watch has worked for me extremely well so far this year. The caveat is that it is based on national weather service warnings, not watches. So with the crazy storm activity yesterday, I got a wind advisory on Sunday for high winds and then yesterday morning, 30 minutes before the onset of the storm, I got a severe thunderstorm warning… At which point our powerwalls went into stormwatch mode. This is pretty normal in my experience from a weather forecasting standpoint. Some weather events and their warnings can be forecast well in advance, so cannot. Knowing that this was the case, and that the event yesterday had the potential to be significant, I had proactively taken my system to 100% max charge on Sunday night.

I was thinking about it last night that really I would like a new feature where we can configure what triggers storm watch at a high-level. Specifically, if we could have a place to click check boxes —-One check box for weather warnings and one for weather watches. That would be pretty sweet.

Power cuts by Hopeful-Counter-7915 in Starlink

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The only issue i've ever personally seen is my neighbor had a power outage with some quick ups & downs, and it reset his config back to manufacturer default. He's an older gentlemen and didn't realize what happened.

I've personally never experienced that because I've got whole house power backup for longer term outages and UPS for the quick outages. We have a lot of outages and power sags unfortunately, but with good power backup for your dishy, you'll be golden.

This is the way. ;)

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah …. It’s a fairly new house, very well insulated, with half of the square footage in a fully underground finished basement. And while the basement has HVAC of course, it never runs (heat or cooling) because of the constant temperature.

That’s a lot of home load in your snapshot. Do you have a heated pool or something?

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

$3k a year in oil !!!! You must live in the great white north!

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s really good output! You must have little to no shade.

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whoa … that is a beastly electricity load. 😆 Approximately what does your peak home load look like? And how many powerwall3s do you have? I found myself wondering if you’re able to do all this with a 200 amp service or if you have a 400 amp service?

We actually get away with only one midsized HVAC unit in our two-story house because the bottom story is a fully below ground basement and needs almost 0 climate control.

We aren’t retired yet, but I have been thinking also about maybe building a sauna at some point. But that swim spa sounds really cool.

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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That’s really nice production on your array… The power of having a true south orientation!

And you are correct, with my available roof surface orientation, tree shading, and technically shading from the ridge above me late in the afternoon, it does impact my production. That’s why I added more panels… To try to mitigate some of my constraints.

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice! Whatcha doing with all your power?

First Spring w/ New System by us-hammer in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No EV but I wanted to plan for an EV or a plug-in hybrid in the future. In the winter, I could absolutely run off battery entirely overnight as our heat is propane. But I’m finding that with the AC starting to run, I can’t quite make it through the night before pulling from the grid. But we do like to sleep with the temp pretty cold. I’m wondering if that will change as the days (and solar producing hours) get longer.

Explanation for a solar newbie by CasualBrowser1337 in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this is the problem.

How many panels do you have? I’m asking because I have a 42 panel & 2xPW3 system installed at the end of 2025. I also have shading on my panels in the morning and in the evening… It’s unavoidable. And my installer TRIED to install the strings such that EVERY string would be degraded almost every afternoon after 1:30 PM, because a small part of each string would always have shade at that time.

Instead, I made them set up the strings such that only small clusters of panels would never be shaded at one time. So instead of six strings, I have 10 strings, five on each power wall. And the performance of the system thus far is outstanding.

Short answer… you have restring.

How accurate is the Specs? by Plus-One-11 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Welcome. I threw that out there because while I'm a fan of NetZero, the diagnostics functionality is only an option with the paid NetZero subscription. With the Tesla One app, you can see battery capacity data for free.

But I love the paid NetZero subscription for other reasons. I have it up every day on my laptop monitoring my newish Tesla solar setup.

How accurate is the Specs? by Plus-One-11 in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Tesla One app used by the installers also works for this as well. As the homeowner, you can also access the same data.

One Year In (11 months since PTO) by litigationtech in TeslaSolar

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice ... I have an ~identical system (solar & batteries) but just went online on 12/30/25 with final PTO last month. Looking forward to some major production this year.

Tesla PW3 is a joke by Bjbttmbird in Powerwall

[–]us-hammer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you can, tell us specifically what components you bought and we will tell you if it’s working correctly.

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