Received email: Free Supercharging for a year.

[wtibbit]

Most power backup systems as I understand them offer the option to pick 6 to 10 of your favorite circuits for backup power. I always thought this was daft and wanted exactly what Tesla offered, which is a full house backup, opening the power feed to the house behind the meter. I was told this approach is approved in other power company jurisdictions, but PG&e is evil. I can see some concern about having to manage power, especially if you've got a bunch of high power 240 volt loads, but I sure hope PG&e gets off their ass and approves it because it is miles better than having to pick something like 25% of your circuits.

I'd be unhappy with only 6 to 10 circuits backed up.

My home has two 200 amp distribution panels that are individually connected to the power company's transformer. My Tesla-approved installer said that he couldn't design a system to back up a panel with more than a 200 amp rating, otherwise he would have to add a sub-panel for the backed up circuits. Happily, he said he could design a system to back up one of my 200 amp panels.

With two separate 200 amp panels, I picked the one with the greatest number of circuits I needed to be backed up. Then I swapped eight circuits between the two panels to have one panel containing all of the circuits I needed to be backed up. The backed up panel contains three 240v circuits and 34 120v circuits. My furnaces and hot water are natural gas. All my lighting is LED so the loads on my 120vac circuits are all relatively low.

Of course I'll have to manually control loads, especially the two backed up air conditioners and the induction cooktop. Unexpected power outages in my service area are rare and usually caused by grid overload during extremely hot or cold weather. In those situations I'll make sure that only one of the two backed HVAC systems is operating at any one time and I won't use the cooktop.

 

[loki]

I contacted Tesla who told me I had to contact my electrician to communicate the choice. Finally got the free year of supercharging.

 

[Riddleric]

Has anyone heard back from the electrician or Tesla after receiving their 1 year free supercharge? Are they ever going to finish and activate the backup panel?

 

[Jim Waller]

A few weeks ago, Tesla sent someone to make what was described as a firmware update to my gateway. He didn't know about bypass switch installation or approval. I fail to understand how this setup is fundamentally different than a powerwall with whole house backup. I'm annoyed with PGE and Tesla's lack of communication. Tesla is a big forcing function, I wish they would lean into PGE via politicians, press or however else to get this done. Grrrr