For those of us with solar (non-Tesla) and no powerwall, how do we take advantage of Powershare?

[MilliM]

Btw, to clarify I would want to use Powershare as designed and intended and am inquiring what minimum hardware I need (I own nothing Tesla yet, but presumably the Cyberbeast is coming with that Powershare credit).

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[anionic1]

No one knows how Tesla is going to do it yet. It’s very likely that you are going to need the Tesla gateway which acts as a transfer switch and main communication hub. They gateway will cut power to the utility to ensure you don’t put power back on the grid during an outage which is illegal. Tesla can either divert power to a specific emergency panel that has been wired with your emergency circuits. Or it can divert power to the entire main panel as it is currently wired using the Tesla Backup Switch. There is a chance that all you need is the universal charger and the backup switch. If Tesla is smart that’s how they will do it. So the backup switch goes between your meter and panel to disconnect the utility and when there is an outage it communicates directly with the universal charger to disconnect the utility and allow the charger to backfeed the whole panel. That would be the simplest solution if the universal charger had the smarts in it to accomplish that, which would seem easy enough.

 

[anionic1]

Btw, to clarify I would want to use Powershare as designed and intended and am inquiring what minimum hardware I need (I own nothing Tesla yet, but presumably the Cyberbeast is coming with that Powershare credit).

Ok, so I think I am correct. I just dug further into the powershare details. See below. See the Installation equipment is exactly what I listed. It looks like in the recent Powerwall 3 installations they are getting rid of the gateway and integrating the smarts directly into the powerwall. So the simple backup switch is used which is a super simple installation but requires an application process through your utility technically. Some utilities allow it meter adapters, i dont know if they all do. I believe in most locations you technically need utility approval to install a meter adapter. So its tough to tell from the info below if the meter adapter and the universal charger alone will be enough to handle the power switching or if you will also need the gateway. I would love to know if you find out.

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