First Power Outage with PW2, have a few questions

[furuike]

I got my solar / PW+ system installed and turned on in late November. My solar is about 8.6kW peak, two strings wired into two of the MPPT inputs in the PW+ inverter.

Today was the first day I had a grid outage. It happened during a storm watch event, so my battery was charged to 100%. Looking at the data from the Powerwall data logging utility I run, I notice that when the grid went out, my powerwall raised by house frequency to about 64Hz. I was under the impression the frequency rises only in a case where it needs to shut off power to microinverters. As my solar panels are wired as strings to the inverter, and the inverter can directly change power output simply by changing the I-V operating point, I was curious why the frequency would rise. Maybe this just happens by design, regardless of what kind of solar you have?

Also having a grid outage made me wonder what actually happens if the battery runs out of energy. The Tesla website says it will shutdown and try to turn on each hour between 8AM and 4PM the next day. Has anyone ever tested this to confirm? I'm curious to know.

 

[miimura]

If you have any devices that didn't like the 64Hz power from the Powerwalls, Tesla Energy Support can change the setting so it only goes up to 62.5Hz. I have UPS units that go to battery above 63Hz, so this is necessary to avoid the UPS units running out of energy before the Powerwalls drain enough to lower the frequency.

 

[buckets0fun]

It did this because as you wrote “powerwalls at 100%” due to storm watch. Upped freq to shut down the PV side.

Also having a grid outage made me wonder what actually happens if the battery runs out of energy. The Tesla website says it will shutdown and try to turn on each hour between 8AM and 4PM the next day. Has anyone ever tested this to confirm? I'm curious to know.

yes, when the sun comes up it’ll recharge and start the process over(charge as high as it can before no sun and drain as long as it can before no energy left). Assuming you’re still in an outage.

Not sure why that’s stuck in a quote box.

 

[lodar]

Also having a grid outage made me wonder what actually happens if the battery runs out of energy. The Tesla website says it will shutdown and try to turn on each hour between 8AM and 4PM the next day. Has anyone ever tested this to confirm? I'm curious to know.

There is another thread about jumpstarting a Powerwall:
Help: Powerwall Cold/Jump started without grid power [resolved]

In extreme cases, if the Gateway is down, then it cannot command the batteries on. No battery, no reference AC signal. Without a reference AC signal, solar inverter will not activate despite adequate sunlight and you are stuck.

There is a way to hookup a 12V battery to the Gateway to jumpstart the system.

 

[ucmndd]

There is another thread about jumpstarting a Powerwall:
Help: Powerwall Cold/Jump started without grid power [resolved]

In extreme cases, if the Gateway is down, then it cannot command the batteries on. No battery, no reference AC signal. Without a reference AC signal, solar inverter will not activate despite adequate sunlight and you are stuck.

There is a way to hookup a 12V battery to the Gateway to jumpstart the system.

This should only be necessary if the gateway has lost power from ALL sources, including the Powerwalls themselves. My understanding is PWs shut down at about 5% state of charge to ensure they have enough juice to make it through the night, keep the gateway powered, and start looking for solar again in the morning.

 

[buckets0fun]

This should only be necessary if the gateway has lost power from ALL sources, including the Powerwalls themselves. My understanding is PWs shut down at about 5% state of charge to ensure they have enough juice to make it through the night, keep the gateway powered, and start looking for solar again in the morning.

1. 12v jump start almost never needs to be done. Maaaayyyyybe if they’ve been sitting disconnected for 14mo, sure. Installed and zero percent for a week? Not likely.

2. If you set them to zero reserve, you can absolutely drain them to zero. At one point we ran a few weeks at zero, due to a contractor messing about. no need to jump start. Don’t stress on it, the warranty is plenty long that if an issue is detected, your app will show a service req like your tesla vehicle would/does.

- there does seem to be a bit of pack that can only be accessed when in storm watch/grid outage, to keep the TEG up(while showing zero soc). But the amount of that and when it disappears? -unknown.

 

[keydiver]

I got my solar / PW+ system installed and turned on in late November. My solar is about 8.6kW peak, two strings wired into two of the MPPT inputs in the PW+ inverter.

Today was the first day I had a grid outage. It happened during a storm watch event, so my battery was charged to 100%. Looking at the data from the Powerwall data logging utility I run, I notice that when the grid went out, my powerwall raised by house frequency to about 64Hz. I was under the impression the frequency rises only in a case where it needs to shut off power to microinverters.

I thought this was the way for the Powerwalls to control the inverter power output, in a master/slave arrangement? The higher the frequency, the higher the output demanded from the inverter, no? I had 4 power outages this morning, and the beeping of my UPS units was driving me crazy. I do need to call my installer or Tesla to change it to 62.5 Hz. But, as long as it was dark out, and the inverter wasn't yet operating, the Hz was still around 60 Hz, so no beeping UPS units.