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Grid outage, Powerwall drops loads for minutes
- Thread starter arnolddeleon
- Start date
I just had a power outage and the Powerwalls did not pick up the load at all. First there was a momentary glitch but about 30 minutes later there was a hard outage. The Powewalls did not support the house loads even though they were already discharging for TBC during Peak hours.
Since the whole house was OFF except my UPS backed loads, I went out to the meter area. The Gateway was clicking every few seconds. Then that stopped. I wasn't sure what to do, so I connected my phone to the TEG SSID and opened a web browser to the Gateway page. There was no power flow shown, all the source and destination targets were grayed. There was only the Stop System and Go Off-Grid buttons. First I tried Stop System and when it finished, I pressed Start System. Nothing. With nothing left to try, I pressed Go Off-Grid. There were some chimes and a click and the Powerwalls came on.
While I'm glad I got the system working, I'm actually kinda pissed that I had to do that. I really want to know why the system fell so flat on its face.
Since the whole house was OFF except my UPS backed loads, I went out to the meter area. The Gateway was clicking every few seconds. Then that stopped. I wasn't sure what to do, so I connected my phone to the TEG SSID and opened a web browser to the Gateway page. There was no power flow shown, all the source and destination targets were grayed. There was only the Stop System and Go Off-Grid buttons. First I tried Stop System and when it finished, I pressed Start System. Nothing. With nothing left to try, I pressed Go Off-Grid. There were some chimes and a click and the Powerwalls came on.
While I'm glad I got the system working, I'm actually kinda pissed that I had to do that. I really want to know why the system fell so flat on its face.
Frankman60
Member
I had the same experience as you, as I described earlier in this thread. After more than two months with an open support ticket Tesla Energy never responded to me what the problem was. I contacted support by phone at least 5 times during the two months and always got the same crap that Tier 2 support was still working on it. I finally gave up and only hope that it won’t happen again. Please post any updates you have that might help figure out what happened. This may be a more wide spread problem.
My system was installed in March 2018 and has a Gateway 1 running 22.9.1 firmware. Is your system similar? Were you able to get it running, or did you have to wait for the grid to return?
I can imagine that this is could be a bug affecting older hardware that wasn't sufficiently tested in newer firmware releases.
Since PG&E drastically improved the grid reliability in my area, I haven't noticed power outage performance or even bothered to have Tesla turn down my curtailment frequency from 65Hz to something more UPS friendly like 62.5Hz.
Frankman60
Member
Same Gen 1 gateway and also the same Firmware. In my case before I decided what to do to get the PWs working, the grid power was restored 9 minutes later. I am glad to know that you were able to get the PWs to back up the house using the Go Off Grid function using the Tesla app. Would that have worked if you were not at home when the grid outage occurred?
I had a similar drop everything for minutes outage about 7 months ago, also gateway 1. I think I was speculating that the grid did not go away cleanly, that it browned out first.
I was not able to do it in the app because I never paired my phone to the Gateway and my internet was down because of the power outage. My phone and the Gateway could theoretically also use cellular. What I actually did was go out next to the Gateway, connect to the TEG SSID with my phone and open the web interface on my phone. I keep forgetting the TEG IP address, so I just look at the Info in the WiFi connection to get the Gateway address. It's 192.168.92.1.
I don't think I could have brought the Powerwalls back up if I was not home. Perhaps if I paired my phone with the Gateway, it might work. I should probably test that this weekend when I test cutting the power by throwing the main breaker.
When you hit Go Off Grid to get the PW working, did you remain Off Grid until the utility power was restored? Did you have to manually Go On Grid after that?
Frankman60
Member
I want to throw out one more factor that might have contributed to the problem. One of the Tier 1 tech support reps I spoke with said that the Gateway firmware was updated the day I experienced the problem and she speculated that maybe that the firmware was in the update process at the time of the grid outage. Does that seem feasible?
I wasn't home when it occurred but based on my wife's description the lights just went out as well. The reason I suspected a brownout was I couldn't find a clean outage marker (I'll have to do some digging to see if I posted about with more details). It was not the first time it had occurred (power goes out and Powerwalls take a long time to kick in). I believe the Powerwalls have a ride out capability and try to stay connected to grid. My theory is that if the grid doesn't "cleanly" go away the Powerwall can get into a "bad state" that results in it not taking over.
When the utility power returned, I had to manually select Go On Grid to restore normal operation. Basically, it seems that the Gateway was not detecting the grid voltage properly. The app was still showing the X on the Grid line in the power flow diagram even after utility power returned.
I am experiencing the same problem with my Powerwalls now. My Powerwalls have been in operation with no issues from any brownouts for close to 2 years and now it can't function at all. Now Tesla has all sorts of incorrect excuses to explain the brownouts causing this, even though they were always happening. I was told they can't deal with brownouts somehow magically, I was told we didn't have enough power in the Powerwalls though we had plenty of reserve still to run for the amount of time the brownout happened, that our solar power had dropped dramatically when actually it was higher, and I was then told that we were drawing too many amps at the time except the Tesla rep clearly can't calculate amps. I can see the active wattage both in the Tesla app and in Sense also and they show the same amount which is well under the amps for the Powerwalls. I have increased the reserved power for now but we had another brownout and the Powerwall still dumped the house load. Tesla insisted I needed to go back to our power company, FPL about the brownouts but I can guarantee they can give me data proving the voltage fluctations were no different in the past when the Powerwalls functioned normally. Yes I do believe it is a malfunctioning Home Energy Gateway, it's already had problems in the past when it was first commissioned and the gut were replaced then. They told me with the last event they detected the Home Energy Gateway tried to switch me over to the Powerwalls 19 times. I have lots of events they never even detect.
Alysa
System specification?
how many power wall?
solar size?
whole house back up or critical back up only?
I had a 19 hour outage starting just before 6pm January 4th. Once again, the Powerwalls did not pick up the load at all. I got Tesla Energy Support on the phone in about 2 minutes shortly after the outage started, but the rep was unable to resolve the issue. No amount of toggling Powerwall switches or other things could get them to supply power to the house. The Tesla rep told me to contact my installer for a field service visit to do more detailed troubleshooting.
We made it through the overnight outage by connecting an inverter to my RAV4 EV's 12V battery and running an extension cord into the house and powering the UPS input to my APC Transfer Switch (UTS-10BI). With that, I was able to power my fridge, tankless gas water heater, and the critical lighting. My Comcast Internet was also down because neighborhood amplifiers were also without power. Cellular service was also worse than normal with no usable signal in 90% of the house. We normally get by with WiFi Calling, but having WiFi doesn't do anything when there's no internet.
I was busy today, so I didn't get a chance to contact Swell Support. The power went out again for 20 minutes this evening and the Powerwalls worked perfectly. Very puzzling. I have no idea what's going on with my system. How can it fail so hard and then work perfectly the next day?
We made it through the overnight outage by connecting an inverter to my RAV4 EV's 12V battery and running an extension cord into the house and powering the UPS input to my APC Transfer Switch (UTS-10BI). With that, I was able to power my fridge, tankless gas water heater, and the critical lighting. My Comcast Internet was also down because neighborhood amplifiers were also without power. Cellular service was also worse than normal with no usable signal in 90% of the house. We normally get by with WiFi Calling, but having WiFi doesn't do anything when there's no internet.
I was busy today, so I didn't get a chance to contact Swell Support. The power went out again for 20 minutes this evening and the Powerwalls worked perfectly. Very puzzling. I have no idea what's going on with my system. How can it fail so hard and then work perfectly the next day?
The obvious questions:
Did the toggling of swithes include opening the main breaker? I would imagine it would have but just in case it got missed I figured I would mention it. I'm also assuming that they had you test just have no loads (i.e. opening all the load breakers).
When we had the outage last night it was a messy transition. I'm guessing the ride through features had the Powerwalls following the grid down to a brownout stage before it decided it was time to open the transfer switch.
Did you ever find out why your PW didn't pickup in prior outages before this latest one? Good thing you got the RAV4 backup power.
aesculus
Still Trying to Figure This All Out
Do we know what the criteria is for cutover? ie ranges of voltage, current and frequency?
No, I did not follow up on the prior incidents. That's my bad. I should have also done more simulated outages by opening the main breaker. The fact that it did finally work after not working about 3 times in a row complicates things a little bit. I will probably do several simulated outages (maybe 5) before I call for a service call. There's nothing worse than having a technician come out and then it works as expected when they are on-site.
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