Tesla Energy announced Heat Pump Optimization for Powerwall 3 and Powerwall 3P in Europe on 30 October 2026. The feature lets the battery system tell a heat pump to run harder when the roof produces more solar power than the house uses, or when grid electricity is cheap. In its post Tesla called the heat pump "one of the biggest electrical loads in your home". The idea is to shift that load away from expensive hours by storing heat instead of electricity.

How it works

There is no cloud integration with the heat pump maker and no new protocol. Tesla uses SG-Ready, the label issued by the German Heat Pump Association (BWP) for heat pumps that accept an external control signal. SG-Ready works with simple relay contacts, so the setup is a two-wire, low-voltage cable from a dry contact in the Powerwall system to the heat pump's SG2 terminal.

According to Tesla's installation manual, the cable connects either to the LC+ and LC- terminals on the Tesla Asset Controller (TACO) inside the Powerwall 3, or to the Aux 3 and 4 terminals on the Backup Gateway 2. Tesla uses only one relay and wires it to SG2. The manual warns installers not to connect the SG1 (blocked or forced) terminal.

The relay has two states:

  • Normal (relay open): the heat pump follows its own thermostat and schedule.
  • Boosted (relay closed): the heat pump raises its targets and stores extra heat in buffer tanks or hot water storage.

What triggers the boost depends on the Powerwall mode chosen in the Tesla app. In Self-Powered mode, the heat pump is boosted only when there is excess solar. In Savings mode, it is also boosted when the electricity price is low, and it returns to normal at mid or high prices.

Limits worth knowing

Heat Pump Optimization is configured by the installer during commissioning in the Tesla One app, under Settings > Advanced Settings, where the load control relay is switched to "SG2 Contact (Smart Grid Ready)". Only after that can the homeowner switch it on in the Tesla app.

The same dry contact also handles Tesla's load shedding feature, so a system cannot use both at once. Enabling heat pump optimization overrides any existing load shedding setup. The manual also notes that the relay opens if the TACO loses power, when the Powerwall is switched off or stopped, briefly during firmware updates and in some fault conditions. In practice the heat pump falls back to its own programming, which is the safe default.

The heat pump has to carry the SG-Ready certification, and on some models the function must be enabled in the heat pump controller first. The BWP keeps a database of certified models.

A simple approach

SG-Ready is blunt compared with newer standards such as EEBus or Matter energy management, because it only signals a few fixed states. In return it needs no account linking or API on the heat pump side. For Powerwall owners who already have solar and a battery, the house and the hot water tank become a second, cheaper store of energy.

Powerwall 3P is the three-phase, all-in-one model that Tesla started selling in Germany in April 2026. BASENOR, citing a Tesla Energy post from 26 October, reports that installations are now under way in the Netherlands too.