I had my first power outage today since the PW install

[NathanielHrnblwr]

It happened about 2p today. Solar was producing and PW's were at 100%. Exactly the edge case where the freq was raised to kick off the solar inverters. Lights flickered super fast and I heard the UPS's beep and that was it. Everything worked as expected and UPS's were back on line power from the PW's. Before I could double check the freq with the Kill-A-Watt, the power came on. 2 minutes was the time the grid was down. Gateway switched back to solar not long after and that was that.

At least I didn't have to go fix the clocks over a 2 min power outage!

 

[morbidz]

not needed to fix the clocks is the primary reason I bought PW as well!

 

[Doom Man]

That's how mine have worked, EXCEPT the most recent outage about 10 days ago -- I was without power for about 5 seconds before PW's kicked in, long enough to require clocks to be reset. Anybody know why I didn't get just the flicker that I usually get when switching form the grid? This was a manual grid separation to test the settings, but other manual tests have just resulted in a flicker, never a several-second delay until now.

 

[Watergirl]

I have had the power walls for one year today. The experience has been fairly good. The increase in frequency when the battery is 100% caused a few problems. A fan and light on my patio which is normally off and controlled by a remote goes on full speed with the light strobing. All of the UPS systems that we had our computers and TV/recording equipment hooked up to would go into back-up mode with the accompanying beeping. We eliminated the UPS for the most part, and now the fan going crazy is the only thing that alerts us to the fact that we are in an outage situation. This only happens with the battery at 100%.

Another issue that we had is that my Tesla Model 3 would not charge when in back-up. I got a message "Powerwall energy low - charging interrupted" on the car screen. This first occurred when I took a multi-day "gridcation" to see how things would go. I contacted my dealer and Tesla and over the next month got several emails and phone calls regarding the problem. Tesla pushed a firmware update to the Tesla Wall and this has solved that problem.

We have many 5-7 minute outages here. An almost 5 hour outage went un-noticed in April. A message from the power company was the only way that I knew the power was out.

For the year we have had 88 back-up hours including 78 hours of "gridcation". Did everything as normal including running the swimming pool during gridcation, but the weather was fairly cool so limited a/c, and it was pretty cloudy. During the gridcation, I turned the power back on once because my battery went down to zero overnight after 66 hours. Woke up in the morning with no power. I had turned my a/c cooler to sleep when the battery was already around 50% and that did it.

I have the whole house backed up on the powerwalls and will probably have to limit my use of heavy draining loads if we have an extended power outage as after a hurricane if it is hot out ( and if the house, panels and powerwalls don't blow away). Definitely want that A/C overnight. If there is a significant misery factor, a third PW may be an option,

 

[Watergirl]

That's how mine have worked, EXCEPT the most recent outage about 10 days ago -- I was without power for about 5 seconds before PW's kicked in, long enough to require clocks to be reset. Anybody know why I didn't get just the flicker that I usually get when switching form the grid? This was a manual grid separation to test the settings, but other manual tests have just resulted in a flicker, never a several-second delay until now.

Did you notice the charge level of your Tesla Wall? It behaves differently when at 100%. I wonder if that caused the 5 second delay.

 

[jjrandorin]

not needed to fix the clocks is the primary reason I bought PW as well!

unless they are all on battery backups, there will be times when you have to fix the clocks. Not every time, but definitely sometimes. In my limited testing, it appears to me that if the powerwall / solar is not already providing power to the home

That's how mine have worked, EXCEPT the most recent outage about 10 days ago -- I was without power for about 5 seconds before PW's kicked in, long enough to require clocks to be reset. Anybody know why I didn't get just the flicker that I usually get when switching form the grid? This was a manual grid separation to test the settings, but other manual tests have just resulted in a flicker, never a several-second delay until now.

In my limited testing of this, it seems to depend on whether your powerwalls are actually providing any power to the home at the time. If the powerwall is already providing power to your home (power flow from powerwall to home) then you dont notice it.

If the powerwall is NOT providing power to your home, then you may experience some "lag time" in between. Long enough to have to reset clocks and such.

I didnt extensively test though, its just how it appeared to me when I did test.

 

[wjgjr]

In my limited testing of this, it seems to depend on whether your powerwalls are actually providing any power to the home at the time. If the powerwall is already providing power to your home (power flow from powerwall to home) then you dont notice it.

If the powerwall is NOT providing power to your home, then you may experience some "lag time" in between. Long enough to have to reset clocks and such.

I didnt extensively test though, its just how it appeared to me when I did test.

In the (also limited) testing I've done so far, I have yet to have any noticeable lag time or clock resets killing grid power, even with the powerwalls not powering the home prior to the outage. Where I have seen issues is with real-world conditions where it is not a clean loss of power that you get by flipping a breaker. That is, where the power flickers or maybe has a bit of a brownout before failing. With those, I have noticed (brief light flicker, UPS beeping) indications of an issue. It makes me think that at least one possible source is cases where there is grid anomaly that the gateway doesn't immediately assess as requiring the PW to take over.

 

[Timothy]

Ah, PowerWalls! I set up to put them in 2 years ago. Tesla designed the system with both of my electric car chargers on the PowerWall system if there was a power failure. That made zero sense to me. They wanted to charge me an extra thousand bucks to do it the way I wanted. Since I generate enough electricity from my solar system for a zero electrical bill, I canceled the order.

Fast forward to our 'no climate change' increase in fires, mud slides, and power outages I decided to reconsider the PowerWalls. I had them put in by Swell Energy as their price was much less than Tesla as they had a better SGIP.

My system was installed just before Thanksgiving. The next day we had 20 guests for the holidays--and a power failure! The power was out for an hour and the system worked perfectly. No problem with computers.

I didn't really understand the system or the app fully, and in January a friend was visiting. He had his own system and inspected mine. Turns out the app on my iPhone was not working properly. It showed solar generation of electricity at night! Also, my two electric car chargers were ON the system, not off it as I requested.

I have been working with Swell and Tesla since. They plan to alter the chargers to get them off the PowerWall system per my request and fix the app--but nothing so far.

I'll bet I would have had a faster response if I hadn't paid the bill in full already!

 

[Apoztel]

Just starting to look into PowerWall and Solar Roof. Can you go completely off grid and still run a clothes dryer and an electric stove/range?

 

[jjrandorin]

Just starting to look into PowerWall and Solar Roof. Can you go completely off grid and still run a clothes dryer and an electric stove/range?

No, you are not going completely off grid. You are in almost all cases still connected to the grid.

 

[charlesj]

That's how mine have worked, EXCEPT the most recent outage about 10 days ago -- I was without power for about 5 seconds before PW's kicked in, long enough to require clocks to be reset. Anybody know why I didn't get just the flicker that I usually get when switching form the grid? This was a manual grid separation to test the settings, but other manual tests have just resulted in a flicker, never a several-second delay until now.

Boy, that would be unusual with ref to my forced grid power shut off and many here stating similarly quick enough that clocks went on without interruption.

 

[charlesj]

It happened about 2p today. Solar was producing and PW's were at 100%. Exactly the edge case where the freq was raised to kick off the solar inverters. Lights flickered super fast and I heard the UPS's beep and that was it. Everything worked as expected and UPS's were back on line power from the PW's. Before I could double check the freq with the Kill-A-Watt, the power came on. 2 minutes was the time the grid was down. Gateway switched back to solar not long after and that was that.

At least I didn't have to go fix the clocks over a 2 min power outage!

Yep, 2 min is not enough to get and plug in killawatt. Mine read 65Hz on a fully charged battery and forced grid power shut off. I bet yours is the same as many here have reported the same. I have a ticket to get it reduced. Still waiting.

 

[charlesj]

Just starting to look into PowerWall and Solar Roof. Can you go completely off grid and still run a clothes dryer and an electric stove/range?

Well, you can try by shutting off the breaker at the meter and see how far the stove and dryer(electric or gas) will discharge the battery or one after the other. If sun is out at the time, producing lots, you might be at minimum battery discharge. If weather not cooperating, you will be forced to reconnect to grid.

But, no, you cannot permanently disconnect from grid unless, perhaps you have a huge backup.

 

[Doom Man]

In my limited testing of this, it [flicker vs. outage for a few seconds] seems to depend on whether your powerwalls are actually providing any power to the home at the time. If the powerwall is already providing power to your home (power flow from powerwall to home) then you dont notice it.

If the powerwall is NOT providing power to your home, then you may experience some "lag time" in between. Long enough to have to reset clocks and such.

That's a good thought. It's possible I was running on Self-Powered mode when I had the simple "flicker" that doesn't even reset clocks, but was in Backup-Only mode when I had the blackout for a few seconds. I'll keep an eye on it next time.

 

[Apoztel]

No, you are not going completely off grid. You are in almost all cases still connected to the grid.

Thanks. Can you run the entire house off the powerwall or directly from the solarroof, or are there some things you would have to use grid power for?

 

[BrettS]

Thanks. Can you run the entire house off the powerwall or directly from the solarroof, or are there some things you would have to use grid power for?

The short answer is... it depends. It is possible, but to do so your roof needs to be big enough that you can get enough solar energy to provide at least a day (and night) worth of power from the sun. It needs to be able to cover your usage during the day and still have enough power to charge the powerwalls to cover your usage during the night when the sun is down.

Additionally you need to have enough powerwalls to cover your usage during the night.

Likely the system should be at least a little bit oversized so that even if you have a rainy day (or even a few rainy days in a row) that there will be enough reserve in the powerwalls to cover you during those low production days.

So it is possible, but a lot of it depends on just how much electricity you use, how many powerwalls you have, and how big your solar system is.

If you are connected to the grid and just looking at coverage for an extended power outage, then you can get by with a smaller system and fewer powerwalls under the assumption that you would be able to only power critical loads during the power outage or otherwise cut back on your power usage.

My system is set to be installed in about a week. I’m getting a 15.12kW solar system (panels, though, not a solar roof) and 4 powerwalls. I am connected to the grid, but I picked this size of a system because it should be big enough to allow me to run my house indefinitely during an extended power failure, including use of my central AC, limited cooking, clothes washing and drying, etc. I will need to be careful to try to conserve power during an extended power failure, but assuming I do so then I should be able to run indefinitely.

 

[cwied]

I'll add that in addition to having enough energy stored to get through the day, you also need to have enough power to be able to run your peak loads. In particular, starting motors for air conditioners or well pumps can be an issue, since each Powerwall delivers under 30 amps peak. The grid has no problem delivering the peak amps for the short amount of time needed to start the motors. So, even if you are running completely self-powered, it's advantageous to be connected to the grid to handle those peak loads.

 

[jordanX]

Medium system w/2 PWs installed late February; 6 panels installed on north roof where there were supposed to be none! (6 months of major screw-ups prior to install.)
We discovered an outage about a month ago by looking at the app when we woke up and found we were full on the grid. Called a neighbor to see if his power was back who said it was only a quick outage and power was back an hour ago! Checked breakers then called Tesla and told how to reset the system outside in the rain on our hill. Almost 10" rain in May--really didn't want to go outside if they could tell us how to reset another way.
When we asked if it should have switched back to solar by itself the answer, of course, was yes. When we asked why it hadn't the answer was don't know and if it happens again they will come out.

 

[jjrandorin]

Medium system w/2 PWs installed late February; 6 panels installed on north roof where there were supposed to be none! (6 months of major screw-ups prior to install.)
We discovered an outage about a month ago by looking at the app when we woke up and found we were full on the grid. Called a neighbor to see if his power was back who said it was only a quick outage and power was back an hour ago! Checked breakers then called Tesla and told how to reset the system outside in the rain on our hill. Almost 10" rain in May--really didn't want to go outside if they could tell us how to reset another way.
When we asked if it should have switched back to solar by itself the answer, of course, was yes. When we asked why it hadn't the answer was don't know and if it happens again they will come out.

I am a bit confused by your story. The part that confuses me is, you mention you expected the system to transition back to solar, but there was 10" of a rain storm outside (so likely cloudy and no solar). Maybe I am reading it incorrectly?

 

[jordanX]

It was light out and raining but not producing energy. It also wouldn't let us go on the grid as the PWs were getting close to the 30% we like to keep in reserve. We had a lot of rain in may and I didn't feel like sloshing outside if I didn't have to. Tesla support had us shut down the PWs first for several minutes then go outside and shut off the inverter and turn everything back on again. The array was back in business and the grid was again visible in the app. No problems since; just lots of Sun and only a half inch of rain so far in June.