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Automation reference: every trigger & action
The complete list of everything SolDial’s automation engine can watch for and do — every trigger and every action. Build rules by describing them in plain English, or pick these directly on the New Automation screen.
How a rule works
Every automation is when a trigger happens → do an action. You can combine up to three triggers with AND / OR, and stack multiple actions on one rule. A few actions that can affect your utility bill (exports, grid charging) ask for a one-time permission in Account → System Info. You can build any of these by typing what you want in plain English on the New Automation screen, or by picking them directly.
Triggers — what a rule can watch for
Time
| At a set time | Fire at a specific clock time, on the days of the week you choose. |
| At sunrise / sunset | Fire at local sunrise or sunset, with an optional offset (e.g. 30 min before sunset), on chosen days. |
| Between two times | True for a whole start–end window (wraps past midnight). Fires once when the window begins — and inside AND/OR combinations it gates the other conditions for the full span (“solar above 5 kW between 10 and 4”). |
Powerwall
| Charge rises to / falls to | When Powerwall charge crosses a level you set — charged up to X%, or discharged down to X%. |
| Reached backup reserve | When the Powerwall discharges down to its backup-reserve floor. |
Vehicle (EV)
| Car charge reaches % | When a car’s charge hits a level you set — any car, or a specific one. |
| Charging started / stopped | The moment a car begins or ends charging — any car, or a specific one. |
| Car plugged in / unplugged (Tesla) | When the car’s charge cable is connected or removed, at any location. As a condition, “is plugged in” guards a charge-start so the rule only runs when there’s actually a cable to charge through. |
EV charger (OCPP)
| Charger starts / stops charging | The moment a connected OCPP wall charger begins or ends a charge — any charger, or a specific one. Works for any EV brand plugged into it. “Stops” includes the car simply finishing: once it draws under 0.5 kW for two minutes it counts as stopped, even if the charger keeps the session open. |
| Charger goes offline / comes back | When the charger loses or regains its connection to SolDial — useful for a “charger dropped off WiFi” alert. |
| Car plugged in / unplugged | When a car connects to or disconnects from the charger. As a condition inside a combined rule, “has a car plugged in” guards a start so the charger only starts when a car is actually connected. |
Power flow
| Meter crosses a threshold | When a chosen meter rises above or drops below X kW. Meters: home use, solar, grid import, grid export, Powerwall charging, Powerwall discharging. |
Price
| Import or export price crosses | When your current $/kWh (import or export, from your rate plan) rises above or drops below a value you set. |
| Import price is in / leaves the cheapest or priciest N slots | On a real-time plan (Octopus Agile, Ameren, ComEd), fire when the current price enters the cheapest (or priciest) N price slots — or when it leaves them. Self-tuning to each day’s prices, no fixed threshold. “Leaves the cheapest N” is how a charge window ends: pair “grid-charge when the price is in the cheapest 12” with “stop grid charging when it leaves the cheapest 12” and the stop fires exactly when prices stop being cheap — including mornings, before Octopus posts the day’s last hour around 4 PM. Powers Autopilot’s grid-charge, stop and hold rules. |
Grid, weather & solar
| Grid status change | When the system goes off-grid (an outage) or comes back on-grid. |
| Weather forecast | When today or tomorrow is forecast sunny, partly sunny, cloudy, rainy, stormy, or snowy — pick one or more, and choose is or is not. Think of it as a solar signal: a rainy tomorrow means less generation. “Is not” is how a daily rule steps aside on a bad day (“at 6 AM, unless today is stormy”), and it stays true if the forecast is unavailable, so a weather-service hiccup never pins your rules. For “might the power go out?” use Outage risk below. |
| Outage risk | When a storm that could knock out power is possible or severe, today, tomorrow, or either. SolDial combines Tesla Storm Watch, official warnings (NWS in the US, the Met Office in the UK) and severe conditions in the forecast — thunderstorms, damaging wind, ice, heavy snow. “Is at least possible tomorrow” is the evening-before trigger for a storm-prep rule (pair it with a time so it fires once, when the day’s solar has already filled the battery); “is below possible today” is the guard a daily reset carries so a reserve raised for a storm holds through the storm day. While Storm Watch is active this always reads severe, so nothing you build can lower a reserve Tesla is holding. |
| Solar estimate | When estimated solar generation for today or tomorrow is at or above / below X kWh. The estimate is the same forecast your dashboard shows (your arrays modeled hour by hour on that day’s forecast from five weather models), refreshed every 15 minutes while the sun is up — so a cloudy day really does read low. |
| Grid import today | When today’s cumulative grid import reaches X kWh — a “your bill is climbing” signal. |
Combine: join up to three triggers with AND (all must be true) or OR (any one). Inside a combination each trigger is evaluated as a state — "charging stopped" means "not charging right now", "goes off-grid" means "is off-grid" (the pickers re-word themselves accordingly). A combined rule can also pin its firing moment to one side: "when the car stops charging (while off-grid)" fires only at the car-stops moment, with the other conditions required to already hold — the editor’s Fires selector lets you choose either behavior yourself (“when all become true, any order” vs “only at the moment” of a chosen condition), and the plain-English writer sets it automatically for event-plus-condition sentences.
Actions — what a rule can do
Powerwall
| Set backup reserve | Set the Powerwall reserve to a fixed % (0–100). |
| Preserve Powerwall charge | Snap the reserve up to the current charge so the Powerwall stops discharging and holds where it is. (The classic “preserve my battery when the car starts charging” rule.) |
| Set operational mode | Self-Powered, Time-Based Control, or Backup-only. |
Grid connection requires Powerwall pairing
| Go off-grid | Disconnect your home from the utility grid and run on your Powerwalls — solar keeps charging them while islanded. Every rule carries its own safety floor, “only if Powerwall above N%” (minimum 5, default 20): if the battery is below it, the rule skips rather than islanding a low battery. If the home is already off-grid, SolDial skips the command entirely. |
| Reconnect to grid | Reconnect the home to the utility grid and resume normal operation. The switch-over is seamless, is never blocked by a charge floor, and is skipped automatically if you’re already on the grid — so a “reconnect when home drops below 5 kW” style rule can run freely. |
Exports & grid charging one-time permission
| Set energy exports | Solar only, Everything (includes battery), or None. Both exporting options need your export permission in System Info. “Everything” is a permission Tesla acts on only in Time-Based Control: in Self-Powered or Backup the Powerwall never sends stored energy to the grid, so an export rule should switch the mode too (the builder says so before you save). Whether exporting stored energy pays is a rate-plan question: on a flat 1:1 plan it never does; on a 1:1 time-of-use plan only inside the peak window; on net billing / NEM 3.0 only in hours where the export credit beats the import price. |
| Grid charging on / off | Allow or prevent charging the Powerwall from the grid when it’s cheap. |
Vehicle
| Start / stop charging | Begin or end charging on a specific car. Plug-aware: if the car isn’t plugged in when the rule fires, the start is skipped with a plain “not plugged in” note (and a one-time nudge) instead of a confusing failure. |
| Set charge limit | Set a car’s target charge % (doesn’t force a charge to start). |
| Set charge window | A persistent “don’t charge before X” schedule — stays on the car until you change it. Clear it to let the car charge on plug-in. |
| Set ready-by time | A persistent “be ready by X” departure schedule. Tesla works backward to start charging at the right moment, optionally aligning to off-peak and preconditioning the cabin. |
EV charger (OCPP)
| Start / stop the wall charger | Command a connected OCPP charger itself — any EV brand plugged into it. Plug-aware: a start on an empty connector is skipped as “nothing to start” rather than sent. Chargers that haven’t proven remote control yet are marked untested; one that failed a control test is never commanded by the AI. |
Notify
| Send notification | A custom push notification + in-app banner. No Tesla command is sent. |
Most actions fire once, the moment the rule runs. Set charge window and Set ready-by time are persistent — they stay set on the car until a rule changes them. Export and grid-charging actions need the one-time permission in System Info, since they can change what your utility bills you.
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