Dispatch battery power

The Teslemetry: Dispatch battery power action charges or discharges the Powerwall of a Tesla energy site at a set power for a set time. It is sent directly to your Powerwall over your local network, so the energy site must be paired for local control.

Use it to take direct control of your battery for a while, for example to discharge into the grid during a demand response event, or to charge from the grid when your electricity price is negative.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To dispatch battery power from an automation or a script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger. They run when something else calls them.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. From the search box, search for and select Teslemetry: Dispatch battery power.
6. Select the Energy site to control.
7. Enter the Power in watts. A positive value discharges the battery, a negative value charges it.
8. Enter the Duration in seconds.
9. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required. For how an automation or a script is built in YAML, refer to Automations in YAML and Scripts.

In YAML, refer to this action as teslemetry.dispatch_battery_power. A basic example looks like this:

action: teslemetry.dispatch_battery_power
data:
  device_id: 0d462c0c4c0b064b1a91cdbd1ffcbd31
  power: -5000
  duration: 1800

This charges the battery at 5 kW for 30 minutes, then the Powerwall returns to its normal operation.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• A new call replaces the power and duration of the previous one.
• To end the dispatch before its duration ends, use the Resume battery operation action.
• Your Powerwall still applies its own backup reserve and grid limits, so the battery power it actually reaches can be lower than requested.
• The action needs Powerwall firmware that supports battery dispatch. On older firmware, the action fails with an error saying so.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Open Settings > Tools > Actions, search for this action, fill in the fields, and select Perform action. You see what happens on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more] without writing a line of YAML.

Still stuck?

To test the action on its own, run it in the automation editor with Run action, and check the message that it shows. To see what the action did when the automation ran, open the trace of that run. For details, refer to Testing automations. For common problems and their solutions, refer to Troubleshooting automations.

If that doesn’t help, the Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

Explore related actions:

• Resume battery operation: Ends a battery power dispatch early and returns the Powerwall to its normal operation.

• Time of use settings: Updates the time of use settings for a Tesla energy site.