Tesla Powerwall 2 Compatibility Beta
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Sapphire Solar were back this morning to reconnect our 2023 Powerwall 2 alongside the new Powerwall 3 + Expansion — the resolution we'd been waiting on since the Apr 13 install.
The catch: Tesla's compatibility firmware that lets a Powerwall 2 and a Powerwall 3 share a system isn't fully out yet. Sapphire arrived with a beta build, and we knew going in that we'd be among the first sites in the country to try it.
The morning went well. Covers off the gateway, off the PW3, fresh wiring runs to bring the PW2 back into the family. By 11 am the Tesla app was showing all three batteries — POWERWALL · 3x — pulling 2.8 kW out at 48% state of charge, with the system happily off-grid on a test run. 15 kW of sustained output, exactly what we'd been promised. Three years of Powerwall 2, now joined by a Powerwall 3 and a PW3 Expansion, all talking to each other.
It lasted about two hours.
By mid-afternoon the app was showing zero flow everywhere — solar 0 kW, home 0 kW, batteries 0 kW. I tried to manually push the system off-grid; it came back with "Couldn't Go Off-Grid — your system is having trouble disconnecting from the grid". I also tried cycling the batteries off and on again.
Several days later, we're still on grid and solar power only, with no automated battery flow. Solar generates fine. The house runs fine. But the new gear isn't being used — Tesla is investigating with Sapphire what the beta firmware tripped over.
This is the early-adopter price. We were one of the first sites in Australia to combine a Powerwall 2 with a Powerwall 3. I knew up front this would need some tweaking. The firmware will be back, and so will the batteries.
A follow-up will come once the system is back in full automated mode and we've watched it run a few full charge/discharge cycles.
Anyone else been on the receiving end of a beta firmware rollout — what went wrong, and how quickly did the vendor fix it?
Links
- Part 1 — install day, three weeks earlier Two new Powerwall batteries, installed by lunchtime
- The original announcement that started this saga Adding a second battery
- Sapphire Solar
- Part 3 — what finally fixed it The Powerwall fix I can't explain
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