We run a 40-panel array with two Tesla inverters on our own roof, and the Tesla app is the first thing I open with my morning coffee. Not because anything is usually wrong — it almost never is — but because five minutes of looking at the same screens every day is how you learn what “normal” looks like for your roof, your shade, and your season. Once you know normal, spotting a problem takes seconds.
This guide walks through what the Tesla app actually shows you, screen by screen, and ends with the weekly checklist we actually use. No third-party tools required — everything here is built into the app that came with your system.
What the Tesla App Actually Shows You
If your system includes a Powerwall, the Tesla app tracks four things: what your panels are producing, what your house is consuming, what your battery is doing, and what’s flowing to or from the grid. Solar-only systems (no Powerwall) get a simpler view centered on production, because without the Powerwall’s gateway hardware there’s no home-consumption metering.
The main surfaces you’ll use:
- The live power flow screen — an animated diagram showing real-time flow between Solar, Home, Powerwall, and Grid.
- The solar production graph — your generation curve for the day, plus history views by week, month, year, and lifetime.
- Energy history — stacked bar charts showing where your energy came from and where it went, including grid imports and exports.
- Powerwall controls — charge percentage, backup reserve, and operating mode.
That’s the whole toolkit. It sounds simple, and it is — the skill is in knowing what each screen should look like on a good day.
The Live Power Flow Screen
The home screen animation is more useful than it looks. Watch the direction of the flows and you can diagnose most situations at a glance:
- Solar → Home midday means your panels are covering your load directly. This is the cheapest electricity you will ever use.
- Solar → Powerwall means the battery is soaking up surplus. On our two-inverter system, we typically see this ramp up mid-morning once the house load is covered.
- Solar → Grid means the battery is full and you’re exporting. Whether that’s good news depends entirely on what your utility pays for exports.
- Grid → Home during daylight hours on a clear day is the flag worth investigating — it can be as innocent as an oven preheating, or a sign production is underperforming.
The number under Solar is instantaneous power in kilowatts (kW). It will bounce around constantly with clouds — that’s normal, not a fault.
Reading the Solar Production Graph
Tap into the energy view and you get your production curve for the day. On a clear day it should be a smooth arc: rising after sunrise, peaking around solar noon, tapering to sunset. Clouds turn it jagged. Neither is a problem.
What is worth attention:
- A flat-topped curve at the same value day after day can mean your inverters are clipping (producing at their maximum) — usually fine and by design, but good to know about your system.
- A recurring notch at the same time every clear day usually means shade — a tree, a chimney, a neighbor’s new addition. We caught a slow-growing shade issue on our own array exactly this way: the same small dip, same time, every clear afternoon.
- A step change down that persists across sunny days is the one that warrants a call to your installer.
Use the week and month views to smooth out weather noise. Comparing this month to the same month last year (once you have a year of history) is far more meaningful than comparing to last week.
Powerwall Charge, Backup Reserve, and Operating Modes
The Powerwall card shows the battery’s current charge percentage and lets you set two things that matter:
- Backup reserve — the percentage the Powerwall holds back for outages. Set it higher during storm season, lower if outages are rare and you’d rather use the capacity daily.
- Operating mode — Self-Powered prioritizes running your home on solar and stored energy; Time-Based Control optimizes around your utility’s peak and off-peak rates, charging when power is cheap and discharging when it’s expensive. If you’re on a time-of-use rate plan, Time-Based Control is usually the money setting.
The app also includes Storm Watch, which automatically charges the Powerwall to full when severe weather is forecast for your area. When it activates you’ll see it labeled in the app — don’t be surprised to find your battery pulling from the grid ahead of a storm. That’s it doing its job.
Grid Import and Export Numbers That Drive Your Bill
The energy history charts break each day into where energy came from (solar, Powerwall, grid) and where it went (home, Powerwall, grid). Two numbers here connect directly to your utility bill:
- Grid imports — what you bought. Watch when these happen. Imports at 2 a.m. on a cheap overnight rate are a very different story from imports at 6 p.m. on a peak rate.
- Grid exports — what you sold back. If your utility credits exports at a low rate, big export numbers mean your Powerwall filled early and surplus went out the door at a discount — a hint that shifting flexible loads (laundry, dishwasher, EV charging) into the afternoon could capture more of your own production.
We watch this daily on our own system, and shifting a couple of household routines into the solar window was the single easiest behavioral change we made after installation.
A Weekly Five-Minute Monitoring Routine
Daily glances are for curiosity; the weekly check is what actually catches problems. Here’s the routine, in the order we do it:
| Check | Where in the app | What “good” looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production vs. a recent clear day | Solar graph, week view | Clear days within a similar range for the season | A persistent step down across multiple sunny days |
| Shape of the daily curve | Solar graph, day view | Smooth arc on clear days | A notch at the same time every clear day (new shading) |
| Powerwall behavior | Powerwall card + power flow | Charges during the day, discharges evening/overnight | Battery stuck at one percentage for days |
| Grid import timing | Energy history | Imports mostly off-peak or overnight | Regular imports midday or at peak rates |
| Grid export volume | Energy history | Modest exports after the battery fills | Large exports paired with evening imports (missed self-use) |
| App connectivity | Any live screen | Live data updating | ”Last updated” hours ago — check your gateway’s internet connection |
| Alerts and notifications | App notifications | None | Any inverter or Powerwall fault alert — contact your installer |
Five minutes, once a week. That cadence is enough to catch shading, hardware faults, and connectivity drops within days instead of discovering them on a surprise utility bill.
When the Numbers Look Wrong
Before assuming hardware failure, rule out the boring causes: weather (check the week view, not one day), dirty panels after a dry, dusty stretch, seasonal sun angle (production falling from September to December is physics, not failure), and a gateway that’s simply lost its internet connection and stopped reporting.
If production is genuinely down on clear days and the app is showing inverter alerts, that’s installer territory — monitoring’s job is to make sure you place that call in week one, not month six. The Tesla app won’t fix anything for you, but used consistently, it makes sure nothing stays broken quietly.