Interesting. I always read they would kick in fast such that the house would not lose power. Guess will find out one of these days
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How come power changeover was not seamless during power outage blip?
- Thread starter h2ofun
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skepticcyclist
Member
The house doesn't lose power; it is just a blip that you may notice on some appliance, and it doesn't happen to everyone all of the time. When I flip my breaker after the batteries are full, it is seamless most of the time. Some times I will get a light flicker or two. I never have to reset the clocks or any timers
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That is what happened the one time I flip the breaker, but I was not looking to see if the batteries were charging the house or not before I did. Still way better than the generator, which I know shuts everything down.
I think the definition of non-seamless is important.
For most people without a dedicated monitoring device or very sensitive electronics, the transition will be largely seamless. You may see a small light flicker at most. No clocks needing reset or things like that. However, sensitive electronics like computers might drop if not protected by a UPS. Hearing the UPSes click in is one way we have detected loss of the grid. But our TVs or ovens and other appliances have never shut down in an outage. Since we don't have a special dedicated standalone monitor, we usually detect the loss of the grid by the click of the UPS or a message from the Tesla app. But our lives are not impacted in any way.
Yes this can be an issue, but with a few very small UPS its not a huge issue. Just make sure to get the UPS that are not terribly sensitive to frequency shifting, so they do not fight the Powerwall, as it tries to frequency shift the PV when nearly the batteries are near full.
charlesj
Active Member
I have one as well for the same setup. Cable doesn't necessarily go down with power failure. It can if the outage hits the station that feeds my sector also is down.
jrweiss98020
Tessa's Tesla
Once more, you WANT your UPS to be frequency sensitive! Your computer may NOT be tolerant of overfrequency, so it is better that the UPS takes over at 63 Hz.
Again the word “seamless” is being used incorrectly—that said, if the batteries state of charge is say at 60% & the PV is producing when the outage occurs, the transition SHOULD be “seamless”!
The question is what is the % charge that is the cutoff and how does each system determine this “line in the sand”? Is it 60%? 80? 90%?
Along this line, if you don’t have sensitive equipment or the transition is seamless, how do you know you are having a power outage at your home or in the neighborhood.
I have often wondered if I might be operating during a PGE outage and don’t even know it!
The Tesla app should (though there are a number of users who have issues with it) give you a notification for an outage exceeding 6 minutes, and I would think the app notification would be the official answer. Beyond that, without having something else that monitors power, you would need to check the app or notice something is off (like at night you could probably tell if there was an outage affecting others, or you might notice if something like a microwave/stove clock was running fast due to the frequency change.)
You should get a message on your phone/tablet that is running the app if the grid goes down. Also, you can look at the "Backup History" in the app and see the outage dates and their duration. We have had 6 grid outages since November, ranging in duration from 24 seconds to 1.5 hours (planned grid maintenance).Along this line, if you don’t have sensitive equipment or the transition is seamless, how do you know you are having a power outage at your home or in the neighborhood.
I have often wondered if I might be operating during a PGE outage and don’t even know it!
Neighbors will come over and ask if they can watch TV at your place
I just checked the backup history in the app. “No events” is the message since my instalation on September 18, 2020.
I guess our area on the other side of the bay has not had any grid maintenance.
I had wondered if that section on the app reports such events. Thanks.
Seamless means no blip in the context. You can interpret it any way you want but It has been commonly used to describe the difference between line-interactive and online UPS's for years before home battery systems or Tesla existed. You are just adding confusion by bringing up battery SOC. As I and others have explained it's about whether PW is powering your house when grid power drops regardless of the reason why PW is powering your house or not at the time.
The blips are short and whether it really matters is completely customer dependent. For those that want completely seamless transition and money is no object then they should look at home scale microgrids (e.g. YouSolar) that is always powering their house. Such systems provide seamless transition just like online UPS for your whole house and there is never any frequency shifting to the house loads and generators are easily supported.
If you want to confirm the section is working and you are getting notifications, just flip the service disconnect breaker some night (after sunset if you don't want to lose out on solar production.) Around 6 minutes later, the app should give you a notification of the outage, and once you restore the grid connection, the outage should get logged in the backup history.
Just went through doing this (flipping the breaker and running off grid for a couple days) a couple weeks back as a planned test of the system, just to make sure everything works as expected.
Do you have Gateway 1 or 2 generation? We got Gateway 1 perhaps as left over contractors equipment installed last year when Gateway 2 was readily available to others.
Had 7 grid outages many were not seamless even when home running on Powerwalls after sunset. Swell Energy contractors swapped circuit breakers in Essential Circuit Panel, next grid shutdown still not seamless.
Any thoughts on requesting upgrade to gen 2?
James
Had 7 grid outages many were not seamless even when home running on Powerwalls after sunset. Swell Energy contractors swapped circuit breakers in Essential Circuit Panel, next grid shutdown still not seamless.
Any thoughts on requesting upgrade to gen 2?
James
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