Frequent Backup History Events (Outages) Reported by Powerwalls

[jgator]

My system:
10.8 KW Solar - non Tesla
2 x Powerwalls
Gateway 2
Install date July 17, 2020

I have only had the system for 18 hours. But this morning I had 2 "power outages" each lasting 5 minutes. I have a friend that has had a system for a couple of months and he noticed he has had 14 "outages" over the past month and questioned why so many. We never had this many outages BEFORE the powerwall, so why is it registering so many AFTER?

One theory is if there is a flicker in power, one that without the system you would just see the lights flicker and not really notice any affect, BUT when the TESLA system catches it, the system switches to BATTERY instantly then waits 5 minutes before it returns you to grid power. Seems plausible.

Thoughts?

 

[aesculus]

Microwave clocks and non laptop computers are usually good indicators of momentary power outages. If none of these tripped off before or now then it may not really have been an event and you would need your system checked out.

You would need some way to log your voltage and frequency to see if power quality is an issue. If it is then you need to contact your power company. Usually those events would last more than a few moments (such as a bad transformer). It could be a loose connection somewhere too from the utility through your PW system.

There is another thread on this forum about someone who has been struggling with a similar situation for months on a very large system in a rural area.

 

[gpez]

One theory is if there is a flicker in power, one that without the system you would just see the lights flicker and not really notice any affect, BUT when the TESLA system catches it, the system switches to BATTERY instantly then waits 5 minutes before it returns you to grid power. Seems plausible.

This is exactly correct.

You may notice short (exactly 5 minute) outage reports by the Powerwall as that's the 300 second reconnect time for both full grid outages but also for abnormal grid conditions even short "blips". Without a Powerwall you'd notice these "blips" as lights flickering or computers rebooting, with the Powerwall it will take over your house completely and call it a outage for 5 minutes. Neighbors may not have even noticed the blip but the Powerwall records it.

This happened to me recently as a large section of the city lost power late at night due to a tree branch. We weren't affected by the outage but for the brief second when the grid had to adjust to block off the area to compensate for the downed line our power blipped and the Powerwall took over.

If this is common in your area you can:
1) Reach out to your local utility and tell them you're noticing multiple "out of spec" incidents with your grid connection. They may send someone out to investigate.
2) Reach out to Tesla to tweak the tolerances of your system. This is less desirable but the Powerwall is pretty sensitive and likely can be tuned to be less so if your area is simply more glitchy (especially common in more rural areas).

 

[jboy210]

A Tesla Energy gateway that comes with a Powerwall installation is a very sensitive device. If you power from the grids has drips or small off frequency periods the gateway will ensure you home is isolated and continued to be powered in milliseconds and record the event. We have been working along and not even noticed the power losses/sinks neighbors mention later in the day. No lights dimming, no clocks flashing, no UPS on the computers kicking in.

 

[GaitherBill]

Happened here just this morning, and once last week.

Grid sends some bad power, just enough for the gateway to clam up and take us off grid until things are back to normal.

 

[BrettS]

One theory is if there is a flicker in power, one that without the system you would just see the lights flicker and not really notice any affect, BUT when the TESLA system catches it, the system switches to BATTERY instantly then waits 5 minutes before it returns you to grid power.

Like the others have said, that’s about the gist of it. The problem is that the gateway wants to switch as quickly as possible in the event of an outage, to minimize the impact on your appliances and such. However, when a little power glitch happens the gateway has no way of knowing if this is going to be something that lasts a fraction of a second, or the start of a 3 day outage (or something in the middle) so it will have the powerwalls take over as soon as it detects any problems with the power. It’s quite possible that it was just a little glitch that might never have been noticed by you, but if it wasn’t and the gateway took longer to transfer the power then the transfer would have been much more noticeable.

And then once the powerwalls are running the house and the grid comes back the gateway will monitor the grid power for 5 minutes to make sure that it is stable before it transfers the house back to the grid. After an outage it’s not unusual for the power to flicker a bit as it comes back online, so the gateway wants to make sure that things are stable and it’s not just going to have to transfer back to the powerwalls right away. So that’s why each ‘outage’ will be a minimum of 5 minutes, even if it was caused by just a flicker.

 

[gpez]

To be clear, this is the default behavior of the Powerwall rather than it being designed to be overly sensitive. All of the grid spec values, specifically frequency and voltage, are configurable from Tesla's end. This is primarily to accommodate different interconnection agreements across utility providers. There are different configurable set points for how long the Powerwall will "ride through" abnormal grid conditions.

That said: just because the Powerwall supports wider tolerances that doesn't mean Tesla would be OK with changing your settings (especially if the change risks violating your interconnection agreement). You'd have to chat with them first. But even then you're just addressing a symptom of a bigger problem of an unreliable grid which is something your utility needs to address.

Powerwall Inverter Adjustable Settings - Tesla Powerwall 2 AC Installation Manual [Page 44] | ManualsLib

 

[MorrisonHiker]

To be clear, this is the default behavior of the Powerwall rather than it being designed to be overly sensitive. All of the grid spec values, specifically frequency and voltage, are configurable from Tesla's end. This is primarily to accommodate different interconnection agreements across utility providers. There are different configurable set points for how long the Powerwall will "ride through" abnormal grid conditions.

That said: just because the Powerwall supports wider tolerances that doesn't mean Tesla would be OK with changing your settings (especially if the change risks violating your interconnection agreement). You'd have to chat with them first. But even then you're just addressing a symptom of a bigger problem of an unreliable grid which is something your utility needs to address.

Powerwall Inverter Adjustable Settings - Tesla Powerwall 2 AC Installation Manual [Page 44] | ManualsLib

Thanks for your post! Back in May we asked Tesla to adjust the frequency that the our Powerwalls use to disable solar when there is a grid outage. They obviously adjusted our Voltage Ride-Through (and perhaps our Frequency Ride-through setting) as well and this has caused our gateway to report hundreds of outages in the past 3 months. While Tesla and our utility are working on a solution to the dirty power that the utility is providing, we asked Tesla to revert our settings. The phone support tech that we spoke with last week said the problem was greatly reduced recently. I tried explaining the reduced outages were entirely due to me extending the peak period and that the problem still existed but he closed the ticket anyways. Now that I know the terminology they use for these settings, I'll try getting them to revert the Voltage and Frequency Ride-Through settings.

 

[jgator]

Thanks for everyone's input. I reached out to my local electrical engineering expert (He built a homemade power wall using old Tesla Model 3 battery packs from wrecked car). His explanation:

The Tesla powerwall and gateway is UL1741 certified for anti-islanding. The UL1741 specification defines that if there is an outage or issue with the grid it automatically disconnects from the grid for 5 minutes and checks the grid availability (checking if the sine wave form in the grid is clean) to turn back on. So, what is happening is their is a small glitch for a moment but the grid doesn’t really go away. For you, the powerwall makes the whole electrical experience clean. No more glitches. So, you really didn’t have lot of outages, just small grid variation.

So far very happy with my new toy. Now I kind of hope for an extended power outage

So looks like we solved this issue. Pack it up boys!

 

[gpez]

Thanks for everyone's input. I reached out to my local electrical engineering expert (He built a homemade power wall using old Tesla Model 3 battery packs from wrecked car). His explanation:

The Tesla powerwall and gateway is UL1741 certified for anti-islanding. The UL1741 specification defines that if there is an outage or issue with the grid it automatically disconnects from the grid for 5 minutes and checks the grid availability (checking if the sine wave form in the grid is clean) to turn back on. So, what is happening is their is a small glitch for a moment but the grid doesn’t really go away. For you, the powerwall makes the whole electrical experience clean. No more glitches. So, you really didn’t have lot of outages, just small grid variation.

So far very happy with my new toy. Now I kind of hope for an extended power outage

So looks like we solved this issue. Pack it up boys!

This is exactly correct however I would clarify one point: the UL1741 certification just asserts that when configured that way the device meets the trip times ("ride through") specified at the specified limits. Different locales, utilities, and scenarios require different limits and ride through settings. Even the reconnection time is configurable as UL1741 doesn't specify what the value needs to be, just that the device disconnects for that period of time when a ride through is exceeded.

It's a subtle difference but sometimes the UL1741 certification can be confused with what is required by law or by the utility, which is not correct

Now, if you're interested in more check out IEEE 1547 which was established as the United States national interconnection standard in 2005 and actually defines 59.3hz as the absolute minimum frequency and 60.5hz as the absolute maximum frequency before disconnect. Of course this is for the US as other places in the world have different frequency standards. Reconnect times may still vary.

"Some inverters may use an intentional, programmed time delay to return to service following a trip. IEEE Std. 1547-2018 Requirement 4.10.3 requires an adjustable range of the minimum intentional delay between 0–600 seconds, with a default of 300 seconds (five minutes)."

https://www.nerc.com/comm/OC_Reliab...rter-Based_Resource_Performance_Guideline.pdf (see page 41)

 

[CoolKiwi]

I have my Tesla Powerwall 2since two weeks and have on average 340 backup events per day, usually 1 or 2 seconds, whereas we never have power outages in this neighbourhood. Tonight the Tesla powerwall and the grid fell away so now we are sitting in the dark, with the dead app saying battery at 79%.

 

[jboy210]

I have my Tesla Powerwall 2since two weeks and have on average 340 backup events per day, usually 1 or 2 seconds, whereas we never have power outages in this neighbourhood. Tonight the Tesla powerwall and the grid fell away so now we are sitting in the dark, with the dead app saying battery at 79%.

Wow! Log a call and have your installer come back out. Something is not right.

 

[BGbreeder]

I have my Tesla Powerwall 2since two weeks and have on average 340 backup events per day, usually 1 or 2 seconds, whereas we never have power outages in this neighbourhood. Tonight the Tesla powerwall and the grid fell away so now we are sitting in the dark, with the dead app saying battery at 79%.

Sorry to hear it.

x2 Definitely call your installer.

Remotely diagnosing this from a couch, and as a non-expert, it could be a number of things, but one that leaps to mind is a loose connection somewhere that makes intermittent connections. There was a recent post here of someone whose meter had a bent contact, but the meter design is, I believe, different in your area.

Keep us posted!

All the best,

BG

 

[CoolKiwi]

Thanks guys. They are coming this friday, tesla claiming they have never seen anything like it.
Is there any chance this now over 2500 times 1-2 second backup warnings could have done any damage to my 130'000 $ battery.gateway ?

Thanks so much for your help !

 

[jboy210]

Thanks guys. They are coming this friday, tesla claiming they have never seen anything like it.
Is there any chance this now over 2500 times 1-2 second backup warnings could have done any damage to my 130'000 $ battery.gateway ?

Thanks so much for your help !

I have never heard of anything like this. Hopefully, they will cover any damage.

 

[Flick75]

Thanks guys. They are coming this friday, tesla claiming they have never seen anything like it.
Is there any chance this now over 2500 times 1-2 second backup warnings could have done any damage to my 130'000 $ battery.gateway ?

Thanks so much for your help !

Did you try the reset button in your gateway? It's worth a shot at this point. It definitely sounds like something is going on with your GW.

 

[CoolKiwi]

Yes I did, I had Tesla on the phone, and they asked me to remove the white sticker in the gateway and shift the grey button. This relieved and gave mains power for about 1 minutes. Then dark again, and that switch flipped back by itself, just like when it trips.

 

[CoolKiwi]

I am just afraid that in a way my new battery got damaged with this 2700 times in 2 weeks now switching on and off. I will probably not know, as there is no way I can measure this.

20 Q-cells 355 Watt with Enphase micro-inverters M215
Powerwall 2 Tesla

 

[BGbreeder]

I doubt that the battery suffered much damage. Battery life is about temperature, time, throughput, intensity of charge/discharge (the latter three regulated by Tesla to reasonable amounts), and state of charge, none of which are really affected by your issue.
I don't know if the gateway uses a mechanical or solid state relay. 2500 cycles on a mechanical relay is a fair few cycles, but once this is fixed, it should cycle many more times. 2500 cycles is nothing for a solid state relay.

All the best,

BG

 

[MorrisonHiker]

As I mentioned in post #8 above , you might have them check the Voltage and Frequency Ride-Through settings and see if they changed. We had several hundred "outages" last summer due to the dirty power our utility company was providing. In our case, we don't know how long each "outage" was but our solar was shut down for 5 minutes each time and then resynched with the grid. This caused us to lose dozens of hours of solar production during peak and part-peak periods last year.

Eventually, our utility company installed a new transformer at the pole by our house so we no longer shared it with 5 other houses. This fixed our problem without needing to revert the Voltage and Frequency Ride-Through settings.