A Lot of 1 minute outages?

[SolarBob]

I have 2 PW, 48 panels. Short outages, this is happening a lot, 6 times in September, I get outages, a few seconds, or one minute.

No one in my area is having any power glitches, or spikes. PG&E has load tested, and my equipment is perfect performing perfectly.

I have complained to Tesla about this behavior, and for a while it improved, then started again.

Does anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this short glitches.

Some of my remote controlled LED Lamps come on when this happens.

That is how I know when it happened or I probably would not even notice it.

The outages are logged in the Tesla app in the Backup History.

So they are documented.
Comments? Thanks

 

[BGbreeder]

Upfront: I think that intermittent problems are a bear to solve.

Well, it could easily be a loose connection, anywhere (your wiring or PG&E's), or a failing piece of equipment, or a tree branch touching a wire. Depending on where you are specifically, your grid may have detailed sensors on it, or not, and the accuracy of PG&E's statements of things checking out may have more data behind them. I don't put much weight on your neighbor's observations as they may, or may not, be good observers. E.g. You yourself are a good observer only because of your particular LED lights.

The fact that it got better after you complained to Tesla could mean that they altered a line voltage sensitivity, or it could be random.

I would raise it again with Tesla, and see if they can see anything in their logs that suggest an issue.

All the best,

BG

 

[jjrandorin]

I think @MorrisonHiker had problems chasing this for a while with their utility. I could be mis remembering it, though.

 

[EVRider-FL]

I’ve had that issue ever since my system was installed in 2021. The outages are typically 5 minutes. I never notice when they happen, so I stopped worrying about it.

 

[arnolddeleon]

Upfront: I think that intermittent problems are a bear to solve.

Well, it could easily be a loose connection, anywhere (your wiring or PG&E's), or a failing piece of equipment, or a tree branch touching a wire. Depending on where you are specifically, your grid may have detailed sensors on it, or not, and the accuracy of PG&E's statements of things checking out may have more data behind them. I don't put much weight on your neighbor's observations as they may, or may not, be good observers. E.g. You yourself are a good observer only because of your particular LED lights.

The fact that it got better after you complained to Tesla could mean that they altered a line voltage sensitivity, or it could be random.

I would raise it again with Tesla, and see if they can see anything in their logs that suggest an issue.

All the best,

BG

+1000

Intermittent issues are big ass bears.

I've have an old Solar City inverter that would drop out when the other inverters in my system do not. I opened an issue with Tesla but never really got anywhere. I suspected that the grid voltage would just go outside of the spec for that inverter and in the old days the directive was drop the grid as soon as possible. Now that's kinda flipped, grid interactive are supposed to "ride out" small glitches.

My guess in your situation is that grid is going out of spec and the Powerwalls are following along (not disconnecting). This is what you probably see with your LED lights. The grid out spec probably goes either long enough or bad enough that the Powerwall will mark an outage.

I have devices appear to sense a power outage but no event recorded by the Powerwall. For example a microwave losing the current time. I suspect these days those are grid "events" that the Powerwall "rode through".

If you are going to troubleshoot this you are going to high fidelity logging equipment and either a lot of patience and expertise on your end or a very interested other party (utility or Tesla which is highly unlikely)

I've learned to pretty much just ignore them if they have no material impact.

 

[zƬesla]

Mine aren't frequent but I do occasionally get 5 minute outages. These usually end up being branches hitting the power line down the road or some kind of voltage fluctuation. If I didn't have PWs, I would probably notice lights flickering and that's all (as confirmed with neighbors). With PWs, the gateway takes the grid offline to protect the house systems and the 5 minute reconnect delay is built into the GW.

 

[taphil]

I've had them since the beginning. Never notice them unless I look in the app.

 

[Matt-FL]

Might be worth setting up Powerwall Dashboard, as it will capture voltages and frequency through the day. That app would provide additional data to present to Tesla or your utility in case there are voltage drops or frequency shifts that maybe causes the intermittent 'outages'. Or, perhaps it happens when your AC or other large draw kicks off, in which case a sense or emporia vue may help locate the culprit.

 

[jboy210]

I think @MorrisonHiker had problems chasing this for a while with their utility. I could be mis remembering it, though.

Yes. I think their issue turned out to be an intermittent transformer issue.

 

[SolarBob]

When I originally had this happen it was really bad. These spikes, short interruptions actually caused all my equipment in house to freeze, blinking lights, etc, really bad. Tesla told me it was PG&E so I went through a lot of trouble with PG&E., and they were really supportive and helpful. PG&E installed load testers, tested the transformer, installed new meters, etc. There was absolutley nothing wrong with PG&E service. It was perfect, and none of my neighbors had any power spikes.

I contacted Tesla again about this issue telling that solar equipment was destroying our home electrical gear. I had 30 instances outages in one day and it was continuing that way for the week or two. Anyway Tesla listened and magically the spikes disappeared, and for many months everything was perfect, not even one spike. I had no idea what they did to fix the issue????????? It just disappeared.

Now these short outages are back again although nothing even close the to that outage history.

I am a little concerned with this being a big problem at one time.

I contacted Tesla about this, and I think they are monitoring my installation, although no one from Tesla has contacted me.

I see where one the of posters to this thread is getting 2 or 4 these a month, just like our installation.

Anyway, just hoping someone might know something about why we are getting these spikes again

Based on our history I am a little paranoid about this getting bad again.

It is a Tesla Issue.


My feeling is someone in the back support center at Tesla has installed updates in the equipment, adjusted the frequencies, etc.

It is not so bad 1 second short glitch, some of the remote controlled LED lamps turn on (the only way I know I had glitch).

I just need to know why?????

 

[BGbreeder]

I would keep calling Tesla, as in daily polite calls to check for updates and status. "Tier 2 is working on it" is a perfectly reasonable reason to keep calling the next day. Each time, I would ask the Tier 1 person what it shows in the file for what was done previously. There are notes. Eventually, with luck, you should encounter a helpful Tier 1 person who will tell you, or put an inquiry through to Tier 2 for details.

It does sound as if PG&E has probably cleared their side of any issues.

If you had a third party installer do the installation, I would ask them to come recheck all of their connections, power, neutral, ground, bonding, the works. If Tesla did it, I would lean in on the same request.

All the best,

BG

 

[ARKEBUS]

When the batteries are fully charged and the powerwall takes over during a power outage, your house frequency is shifted from 60 Hz to 66 Hz . The shift tells the PV system to shut down, as there is nowhere to send power with the grid offline.

The shift can cause problems for some loads. When this happened in my house I called Tesla and they reduced the frequency shift.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I think @MorrisonHiker had problems chasing this for a while with their utility. I could be mis remembering it, though.

Yes. I think their issue turned out to be an intermittent transformer issue.

Yes, we had a problem with a lot of short outages. I don't remember the exact amount but it was something like 800+, sometimes with 30 separate 1 to 5 minute outages per day at one time. Our neighborhood had one transformer for five houses and it wasn't sufficient. They finally put in a new transformer that is shared between our house and our neighbor's house and those daily outages have disappeared. We have had 13 outages this year but we didn't get notified about any of them since they were all less than 5 minutes each. I honestly didn't know about them until I checked the app just now. I see we did have several outages back in late June when some major hail storms went through and knocked out power for many parts of town.

If the OP has only had half a dozen outages, I wouldn't worry about it. It's probably just due to temporary surges or drops. If you start having half a dozen per day, every day, then it would probably be time to escalate it.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

When I originally had this happen it was really bad. These spikes, short interruptions actually caused all my equipment in house to freeze, blinking lights, etc, really bad. Tesla told me it was PG&E so I went through a lot of trouble with PG&E., and they were really supportive and helpful. PG&E installed load testers, tested the transformer, installed new meters, etc. There was absolutley nothing wrong with PG&E service. It was perfect, and none of my neighbors had any power spikes.

I contacted Tesla again about this issue telling that solar equipment was destroying our home electrical gear. I had 30 instances outages in one day and it was continuing that way for the week or two. Anyway Tesla listened and magically the spikes disappeared, and for many months everything was perfect, not even one spike. I had no idea what they did to fix the issue????????? It just disappeared.

Now these short outages are back again although nothing even close the to that outage history.

I am a little concerned with this being a big problem at one time.

I contacted Tesla about this, and I think they are monitoring my installation, although no one from Tesla has contacted me.

I see where one the of posters to this thread is getting 2 or 4 these a month, just like our installation.

Anyway, just hoping someone might know something about why we are getting these spikes again

Based on our history I am a little paranoid about this getting bad again.

It is a Tesla Issue.


My feeling is someone in the back support center at Tesla has installed updates in the equipment, adjusted the frequencies, etc.

It is not so bad 1 second short glitch, some of the remote controlled LED lamps turn on (the only way I know I had glitch).

I just need to know why?????

I forget the exact variable, but there's a setting that can be made to allow for higher fluctuations in the grid frequency, amps, etc. Perhaps they changed the values for your system. If whatever is causing the frequency, voltage or amps to fluctuate has gotten worse, then possible the changes they made are no longer sufficient.