More Powerwall Monitoring Options…

Yes, just in case your Powerwall2-monitoring-OCD is not satisfied by the Tesla App, or PVOutput, there is yet another 3rd party option available, and finally a use for the otherwise-banished Metro interface on Windows10.

This time I’m going to introduce you to Powerwall Companion, a Windows 10 “app” that can be used on your desktop with low impact, and also makes a great always-on home monitoring display if you have an older tablet or notebook going spare.

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You get this from the Windows App Store here – it’s a 58mb download, a quick install, and it will update in the background if the Author, Thirty Hippos, adds new features. There’s even a Windows Phone version, if you are one of the handful of people who have this phone in Australia….

Once installed, add your credentials and it will retrieve the PW2 states and live data from your Tesla account – no need for a local connection to the PW2 via Wifi, which will suit people who were given the 3G connection by their installer.

Screenshot 2018-03-26 10.56.33

It has a default view of the charge state and power flows in landscape mode.

Screenshot 2018-03-26 11.30.17

It can be scaled up or down without quality issues. Here’s portrait mode above.

Screenshot 2018-03-26 10.56.40

There’s a graphing page that loads in a few seconds and has an export function. You can select the same date ranges as the Tesla official app.

Screenshot 2018-03-26 11.13.33

Screenshot 2018-03-26 10.56.49This shot above is the year to date since my install In June 2017. Unlike the App, it does not give you the totals on the screen though.

Screenshot 2018-03-26 10.57.03

There’s also a view for just the charge state of the PW2 over time.

The settings screen just has a place for your credentials, so no screenshot for that one. If it fails to work one day, as mine did, you have to sign out and sign back in again, as it appears Tesla expires the logins from time to time.

Even more monitoring from your power provider?

I use Powershop, as they have a neat phone app, and a website that shows your power consumption with half-hour reads – their prices are reasonable too, although you need to interact with them to buy “powerpacks” in order to get a discount off the base rates every so often.

Whilst they don’t show anything for the solar contribution beyond a FiT credit on the bill each month, it’s interesting to see what effect the PW2 had on reducing my grid-import via their handy usage graph:

Screenshot 2018-03-28 11.36.34

You can see when the PW2 was installed – just prior to July 2017 – and the steep drop-off in grid-import consumption that followed the install is really obvious. Note that my usage above includes charging an electric car overnight pretty-much every day for this period, so if you don’t have an EV, your grid-import usage would be even less, perhaps zero, after installing a PW2.

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27 thoughts on “More Powerwall Monitoring Options…”

  1. Glad you like the app Mike! The mounted tablet is very cool. I have something similar using an old Windows Phone.

    – Tom (app author)

    1. Hi Tom,

      Love the app – a suggestion, if you read this – put a clock on the top-left area, in a font as large as, or larger than, the charge percentage. It’ll make the app more useful as a in-house display.

      1. Good call – I’ve just pushed out an update that has this as an option (selectable on the Settings page). Should be pushed out to you from the store in the next couple of days.

    2. Tom
      An excellent app. Is it possible to switch to another Tesla account. My Gateway was replaced and in the process I was left with a second gateway registration. The app continues to log into the now defunct account. Hopefully Tesla will rectify the account problem at some time, but in the meantime I’m missing valuable data download.

  2. Hi Mike
    The Windows 10 App which I have setup on a Surface will not show today or yesterday. Is this normal.
    Just wondering if it anything to do with the difference in US time to our date and time here in Aus
    Peg.

    1. The Tesla login token seems to be killed periodically, so I have found you need to log out and log back in again to fix this.

  3. Thanks Mike
    Nothing would work. However after a couple of days all just came together and is now O.K. once again. Technology going its own way. The windows App on my surface is just great.
    Thank you for such an informative site.
    Regards Peg

  4. this app seems real buggy. Played for 10 minutes and I am giving up, its slow and crashes a lot

    1. Really – never crashed once for me. Only issue is Tesla expiring the auth token every so often, which requires a logout/login again to fix. Maybe there is something else wrong with your PC.

  5. Hi, Installed this a couple of days ago and I wonder if it has command line instructions. I’d like to export Yesterdays data and append to a file. That way, If I put this in a scheduled batch file, I can build up a rolling file so that I can view the data each day in a graph and see what’s happening over a few weeks etc. Brilliant app – Thanks.
    Dave

  6. I may have done something wrong as my post never gets updated? I have a further question, on an old laptop in Windows 10 in safe mode, export always works, on my Windows 10 main laptop, export always crashes the app and only part data is exported?

  7. Mike,

    Does the Powerwall Companion still work with the 1.31 version of the Powerwal firmware? It never seems to recognize my login and password. Is it the same as used in the iOS app login?

    Thanks in advance,

    Tony Vece

  8. I tried to get this to work, and it installs easily enough, though it has never logged in and I know my tesla username and password are correct. i’m on 1.29 for the PW software. disappointing as I would like to record and monitor my usage over time.

  9. I’m wondering where the application pulls the data from? Directly from the TEG (“https://x.x.x.x/api/meters/aggregates”) or from Solar City data (“/installations/{InstallationGUID}/summary?Period={Period}&StartTime={StartTime}&EndTime={EndTime}&IncludeCurrent={IncludeCurrent}”), Etc.. as i see there is a lot of data available in the export.

  10. It appears to log in, but doesn’t give any information on my solar/powerwall production. There is a red dot in the upper right hand corner… Any suggestions?

    1. Red dot means it didn’t successfully authenticate with Tesla. Try your login in the official app or their website to verify the password is correct.

      1. I have done this. I’ve also changed the password to insure that I’m using the correct one. The only screen that “works”, sort of, is the second one, but I don’t believe it is correct — it shows the green graph (battery), but no others. The phone app works ok, but would like to get it on PC.

        Thank you for your attention to this.

  11. Hi Tom,
    Downloaded your app to be used with PowerWall 2, everything works fine.
    Is there a way you can schedule the export to CSV to be set for a specific time, or to be emailed to you (similar to Fronius)?

  12. When i try to use my Tesla account email and password it says failure. Yest I am able to see the powerwall. what am i doing wrong.?

    1. I have the same issue. I can login to my Tesla account through Chrome and then use the exact same credentials for Powerwall Companion and get an Authentication failure. Iy worked fine up to about 3 weeks ago.

      1. I’m not seeing this, I use it on 2 different PCs and they are logging in just fine. THe only change I have seen is that the app occasionally get a yellow border around it.

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