Smart Automations

Free Scheduled Adaptive

Smart Automations starts with one question: what do you want your battery to do? You pick your goals and answer a couple of follow-ups. Grid Getter then builds the automations from your goals and the rate plan it reads from Tesla. You don’t need to know what a demand floor, a reserve or a demand interval is. Your answers set them.

These are ordinary automations. You can edit, pause or delete any of them later, the same as rules you made by hand.

How it works

Go to Automations and click Smart Automations
Goals. Pick one or more answers to What do you want your battery to do?
Questions. Answer the follow-ups your goals need. Most setups get one or two. If yours needs none, the step doesn’t appear
Review. Check the automations Grid Getter recommends, untick any you don’t want, and adjust your demand target or reserve if you like
Click Create N automations. They appear in your list right away, and a toast offers View automations

On a phone the setup opens as a sheet from the bottom of the screen instead of a dialog.

If you already have automations

When your site already has automations, Smart Automations opens Suggested Setup first: the rules Grid Getter would build from your rate plan, which you can adjust directly. Click Help me decide to switch to the goals instead. From the goals, Edit my setup instead takes you back. Run Smart Automations again on the goals bar (see After you create) always opens the goals.

Your goals

Goal	What it sets up
Cut my demand charge	DemandGuard on each of your plan’s peak windows, holding your grid draw under a target
Cut my peak-rate energy cost	Peak Time on each peak window, running your home on battery through it
Keep backup for outages	Keeps a share of your battery for outages, both during peak and the rest of the day
Just protect my battery and leave me alone	One Battery Protection rule that keeps the battery from running too low. Nothing during peak
Other, I’ll set it up myself	Opens the full automation form instead

You can combine the first three. Just protect my battery and Other stand alone, so picking either one clears the rest.

Both cost goals also get Pre-Peak Charge, already ticked on the review screen. On Free and Scheduled, which can’t run Pre-Peak Charge, they also get an all-day Battery Protection rule. On Adaptive, Pre-Peak Charge takes its place (see All day).

The questions

Each question only appears when your goals need it.

Which matters more to you? You see this when you pick both cost goals. One automation type covers all your peak windows, so you choose between DemandGuard (demand charge) and Peak Time (peak-rate cost). If your plan has demand charges, demand is preselected.
How much battery should we keep during peak? This comes with either cost goal or the backup goal. Your peak rules stop using the battery at this level, so whatever is left stays there for outages. Pick 5%, 20%, 50% or 80%, or drag the slider to any 5% step in between. Below the choices you see what it costs in energy: “Usable during peak: about 10.8 kWh of 13.5”, plus your current Tesla backup reserve. With a cost goal, 20% starts selected, whatever your Tesla reserve is now. A high reserve would leave little for peak. With only the backup goal, the question asks how much to keep for outages, and your current Tesla reserve starts selected. 5% is the lowest you can pick, and 5% is only offered next to a cost goal.
How low should we let the battery go? This comes with Just protect my battery. Pick 10%, 20% or 30%. 20% is preselected.

If you pick the demand goal and Tesla doesn’t show a demand charge on your plan, setup also asks whether your plan has one. Tesla usually leaves demand charges out, so when Grid Getter recognizes your plan as one of the demand plans it knows (such as SRP E-27), it uses that plan’s demand charge and doesn’t ask. A plan whose name merely mentions a demand charge still gets the question.

Setup doesn’t ask whether the battery should be full when peak starts. Pre-Peak Charge (or Charge before peak on Scheduled) arrives already ticked on the review screen, and you can untick it there.

What gets created

Your rate plan decides when the rules run, and your goals decide what they do.

Peak windows

Each on-peak window on your plan gets one rule: DemandGuard for the demand goal, Peak Time for the peak-rate goal. If the same window repeats across seasons, it becomes one rule covering all those months.

Every peak-window rule from Smart Automations comes with these settings:

Keeps what’s left after peak. When the window ends, the battery holds whatever charge it still has instead of draining it.
Storm Watch doesn’t interrupt it. The rule keeps running through a Storm Watch alert.
It stops at the reserve you picked. The rule stops discharging at your answer to the reserve question and keeps at least that much after peak.
It starts 2 minutes before peak. A rule for a 5pm peak starts at 4:58pm. Tesla can take a minute or so to switch modes, and the early start means your Powerwall has already switched by the time the first peak interval is measured. The peak hours on the review screen still show your plan’s times.

If you already have a rule for the same window that starts right at peak, the review screen marks it as already set up and points out the 2-minute difference.

DemandGuard rules also get:

A demand target. If Grid Getter has measured your battery history, the target is the lowest peak your battery could actually have held. Otherwise it starts at a cautious 2 kW. You can change the target on the review screen before creating, or lower it later.
The demand interval from your plan, for example 30 minutes on SRP E-27.

Before peak

Pre-Peak Charge fills the battery to 100% before each peak window. It uses solar first and only buys grid power when the forecast falls short. See Pre-Peak Charge.

All day

On Adaptive with a cost goal there is no all-day rule. Pre-Peak Charge fills the battery before each peak, and your peak rules keep what’s left afterwards, never less than your reserve.

Otherwise, Battery Protection keeps the battery above a minimum and recharges it when it drops below. It runs whenever your peak rules aren’t. The minimum depends on your goals:

Goals	Minimum
Just protect my battery	Your answer (10, 20 or 30%)
Backup goal	Your reserve
Anything else	20%

It recharges to 50%, or 10 points above the minimum if that’s higher.

The review screen

The top of the review screen sums up what you’re about to get in one sentence. For example: “From 2 PM to 8 PM on weekdays, your automations keep your grid use under 4.2 kW, and keep 20% for outages. They start 2 minutes early so your Powerwall has switched over before peak is measured.” If your plan’s peak hours change by season, the sentence describes the current season and says so.

A chip under it tells you how much of your own data went into the numbers:

Based on your last 7 days means Grid Getter has a full week of your battery data, covering every day of the week.
Starting point · we’ll have better numbers after your first full week means it doesn’t yet.

The recommendations come in up to three groups, Before peak, During peak and All day, and each row shows:

what the rule does, for example “Keep grid under 4.2 kW · 30-min interval · keeps what’s left after peak”
why it’s there, for example “Demand charge goal → DemandGuard. Window and interval from SRP E-27.”

Below the rows you can change the demand target (when a DemandGuard rule is ticked) and the reserve (with either cost goal or the backup goal). Each change refreshes the recommendation. Create stays disabled until the refresh finishes.

If the recommendations can’t load, the screen says so and offers Retry.

On each plan

Every recommended rule is shown on every plan. A rule your plan can’t run shows a lock badge, a line on what upgrading adds, and a See plans link. You can’t tick it. A rule your plan can run sits directly beneath it, and that one is ticked.

Recommended rule	Free	Scheduled	Adaptive
DemandGuard	Locked; Battery at peak start on your first peak instead	Locked; Peak Time on the same window instead	Yes
Peak Time	Locked; Battery at peak start on your first peak instead	Yes	Yes
Pre-Peak Charge	Locked	Locked; Charge before peak instead	Yes
Battery Protection	Yes	Yes	With a cost goal, Pre-Peak Charge takes its place. Yes with Just protect my battery or the backup goal alone

Charge before peak is the Scheduled stand-in for Pre-Peak Charge. It’s a Battery Protection rule that charges from the grid for the 2 hours before each peak rule starts (so it ends 2 minutes before your plan’s peak), even on sunny days, because it can’t read a solar forecast the way Pre-Peak Charge does. When peak starts, it hands the battery reserve back to the level you picked for peak. Plans with different peak hours by season get one per season, named after the months.

Battery at peak start is the free stand-in for a peak rule. The free plan runs one scheduled automation, so it covers your first peak of the season: 2 minutes before that peak starts, it switches your Powerwall to Self-Powered, turns grid charging off and sets the reserve to the level you picked. It doesn’t switch anything back when peak ends, so your Powerwall stays Self-Powered afterwards. If you already have a scheduled automation, setup shows it instead, because the free plan can only run one.

On the free plan, setup can create Battery at peak start and Battery Protection.

Running it again

Run Smart Automations again as a check-up on what you already have. It compares each recommendation with your turned-on automations:

Already set up. An existing rule does the same job with the values your goals call for. Nothing new is created.
Already set up, but it differs. The rule exists, but a setting works against your goals. Each difference is spelled out, for example: “Keeps 80% in reserve; you chose 20%. About 2.7 kWh usable instead of 10.8.” DemandGuard’s target and Storm Watch setting are checked the same way.
You already have a rule on this window. A different rule covers the same peak hours, for example Peak Time where DemandGuard is recommended, or a DemandGuard with a different window. Turn it off or edit it first.

You can’t tick any of these rows, so setup never creates a duplicate. Edit this rule opens the existing automation in its normal editor. For Battery Protection that’s the Background Rules page. Setup never changes an existing rule for you.

After you create

Automations made by Smart Automations show a From your goals tag on their card.

At the top of your automations list, a bar shows the goals from your most recent setup and the date: “Set up from your goals: Cut my demand charge, Keep backup for outages · Oct 17”. Click Run Smart Automations again to reopen setup with those goals already picked, for example after a rate change.

What if my plan isn’t detected?

The cost goals need peak windows from your rate plan. If Grid Getter can’t find any, the review shows Energy Plan Not Detected with two options:

Set Up Energy Plan takes you to the energy plan setup page, where you can pick a preset plan (SRP, APS) or build a custom one. Run Smart Automations again once it’s saved.
Create Manually opens the normal automation form.

Just protect my battery and Keep backup for outages on their own work without a rate plan.

During onboarding

New accounts see the same goals, questions and review rows as part of onboarding, before they choose a plan. See Connecting Your Tesla.