Sunshine, lollipops, and...

... a shiny new app to play with!

We were given the go-ahead on Friday night to turn on our system. Way ahead of what we thought was "schedule", but we're not going to argue! Woohoo!!!!

Since it was already dark, and there was this to contend with, we decided to wait until Saturday. Who plants holly bushes in front of hose bibs and meters? Builders who don't have to live with the consequences of their landscaping choices, that's who! This will not be staying.






Saturday morning was taken up with quartet rehearsal, but as soon as I got home I took my laptop outside and started following the (very thorough) instructions for which box(es) to open and which switches to flip. There are a couple more boxes further inside the yard, beyond the fenceline seen here, in addition to the inverter (solar to A/C) and the PowerWall battery. It was clear, once the faceplates were opened, which boxes were meant to be touched by me, the consumer, and which were solely for those with the proper tools and know-how (those were well sealed against accidental "civilian" access).

The screen on the inverter only stays lit for 15-20 seconds (and I couldn't really make much sense of what it was telling me), but the green light was glowing. The PowerWall had a lovely green strip glowing as well once I turned it on, and I could hear little clicks going on in both systems.

The Power Guide on the SolarCity site was confirming that I had, indeed, successfully turned on the entire system:

and was giving a real-time read-out of what the panels were doing.

 That's the extent of the information I can access through my laptop. The real fun is reserved for mobile devices, in the form of the Tesla app. With it, we get a view of where the power is coming/going at any time.

All the elements are selected and shown in this graph

This is a full day's view of the comings and goings of our system (Sunday, 11/19, the first full day of having the system on).

Sunday's narrative starts with our decision to use our PowerWall's stored energy through Sunday night. The system's default is to draw from the PowerWall only when The Grid is down, but we have the choice to customize that. For our first full day and night, we decided to set it up so that we'd leave 50% of the stored power in reserve, and have the remaining available for our use to supplement the solar panels and be our sole source of power at night. Without really knowing what the full capability of the PowerWall was, we thought 50% seemed a good starting point.










Each element can be split out. The blue icon is our home consumption of power, and the yellow is the solar panels' output of power. In these Fall days, the solar energy peters out by 5pm.

The power supplied to or from the PowerWall is in green, and The Grid is represented in white/gray.

What you see happening is this: our home consumption is pretty stable through the day, and up until 8 am was supplied by The Grid. At that point, the sun passed our neighbor's roof line and hit our panels with gusto, at which point our home needs were met and the excess energy fed The Grid (where the light portion of the graph falls below the line). There was a 3-hour period of time when the excess solar energy was used to fully charge the PowerWall (big blank in The Grid graph, big hunk of below-the-line greenage in the PowerWall graph), after which the excess went back to feeding The Grid.

'Round about 3 pm, our usage starts to increase but the solar energy from the panels is decreasing. The PowerWall starts to provide the difference. The Grid flatlines now, because we are neither feeding any power to it, nor asking for any power from it.

Elements can be combined to your heart's content

The app shows us the status of the PowerWall, either charging or discharging, and the available percent of power remaining. It'll also show a cute little graphic (with moving dots of lights) indicating the paths to and from all the energy sources. At 6 pm, no more solar power is being generated, so our power is coming in from the PowerWall.


Is this fun, or what?


Today, Monday, we explored the system some more. From late Sunday afternoon to roughly 7:30 this morning, we drew freely from the PowerWall. Neither of us made any changes to our nightly routine. The results: we still had 55% of the stored energy left in the PowerWall. We didn't need to draw from The Grid at all through the night.








It's interesting to see how various appliances affect the graph, and how clearly our morning routine is plotted. The cats start caterwauling at 4:30 am, but Hubby doesn't give in until after 5. Lights come on, and once the cats are silenced with food, the first cuppa is nuked in the microwave. Spike! A while later, another cuppa nuked: Spike!

We wondered how 220V appliances would be handled. They are not supported by the PowerWall; in the case of a complete power outage of The Grid, we'd be without air conditioning (and possibly central heating) and a clothes dryer for the duration. So, after the PowerWall was fully charged this morning, we ran the dryer. The solar panels handled most of it and the PowerWall supplemented the solar panels for the 110V needs when the heating element cycled on in the dryer. The graphics changed back and forth; whenever the heating element was off, the excess solar energy was being fed to The Grid.

Candid shot of Hubby peering at and me photographing our newest obsession:

Once a year there's an accounting of the energy we've used and the energy we've contributed to The Grid, and if we've generated more energy than we've used we get paid for those kiloWatt hours (at the same price we buy those kiloWatt hours). Hubby's now, finally, become consciencious about turning off lights when he leaves a room, and watches with glee as the white dot moves toward The Grid. I guess we all know what his incentive is to reduce his carbon footprint!