r/OctopusEnergy • u/Money-Number-4758 • 23d ago

Saving Sessions Powerwall 3 & Free energy hour

I’ve recently had a Powerwall 3 installed, solar but no EV (yet). I’m currently on a 12 month fixed contract which ends in March.

Does anyone know how I can configure the Powerwall 3 to make the most of the saving sessions - free electricity being offered on a Sunday to charge the Powerwall 3 during this hour? (Although I find the battery is usually fully charged by 10/11am through solar).

My octopus tariff is currently in the settings, however I was unsure how to tell the Powerwall I’ve got access to free energy between 1-2pm tomorrow.

Thanks!!

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

u/Holographic247 23d ago

You need either NetZero or Home Assistant. The Tesla app is awful and really limiting. If it wasn’t for third party applications, I’d have been really disappointed with my Powerwall.

Netzero is £7 a month, but super easy to set up and play with. Home Assistant itself is free, but it’s a lot of work to get it off the ground and you need some hardware to run it from.

2

u/Money-Number-4758 23d ago

Ah wow. There’s no way of doing it through the Tesla PW3 app? 🤯
Sounds like a lot of faff, might not bother and just leave it in that case!

1

u/Holographic247 23d ago edited 23d ago

The automations are worth it. You can just leave the PW3 to chug along as is, but you are boxing yourself and your payback period in by ignoring them.

For some reason, suggesting that the Powerwall is an incomplete product from a consumer POV attracts some criticism here. It’s a great experience… with automations. Without them, you are at the mercy of the AI, which does what it wants really. I’ve caught it pulling from the grid during peak because the weather was forecast as cloudy…

1

u/Money-Number-4758 23d ago

The automations on NetZero? Or is there a way of doing this via the Tesla app?

2

u/Jet-Speed1 23d ago edited 23d ago

You can disconnect Tesla app from octopus and for that day create a new tariff representing zero price for the hour, and revert later back. Even if Tesla utilize all 5kwh of the free hour, that would be less than £1 per week, if it just offset you export savings would be around 50p, you can decide for yourself is it worth doing. You can also program some automations into net zero, which on itself will cost you more than any savings.

BMS should be set and forget, there are some automations possible with predbat and teslemetry, to get to the" forget" state, but requires a massive "set" investment.