No Notification on PowerWall Grid Failure, App Bug? V 3.10.5, iPhone

[charlesj]

Assuming you have an iPhone, the notifications are sent by the app, but the iPhone settings are what controls how the notifications are displayed and whether there is a sound or not. On your iPhone, go to the settings app, then notifications, then Tesla, and make sure that “Sounds” are enabled. Of course, the obvious also applies here... even if sounds are enabled you won’t get a sound if your phone is in silent mode.

Also make sure that “Badges” is enabled. The “Badge” is the little red dot that shows up by the app icon on the home screen, however, the badges require support from the app to appear and I don’t know if the Tesla app will get a badge when the power fails. Since it’s still not working on my phone I can’t confirm one way or another about the badges, but perhaps someone else can let us know if they see one.

Thanks for all this. Yes, I have an iPhone5S.
I went through several times with all those suggestions, sound is checked on, banner is in persistent mode,
phone is not silenced.
No badge on Tesla and have seen it on my Gmail app there.

I did see a banner today, briefly, but it disappeared before I realized it.
No sound. Maybe it is coming.

Charles,

I certainly sympathize! On my first test, the notification came on my Apple Watch, just a banner, no sound I think. But I was not expecting it and accidentally cleared the notification before I knew what it was. As a result, I thought I was not getting notifications at all, silly me.

It turns out the if one has an Apple Watch, and the watch App is set to mirror iPhone notifications, then when the watch is on the wrist and is not locked, notifications go to the watch and not to the iPhone. Uh... makes sense, but it is not simple. My preference would be notification on both the watch and phone, but that is not possible, it seems. So, I turned off Tesla notifications on the watch and tried again.

On my final test, notifications did come on the iPhone as a banner on the wake-up screen, about 6 minutes after I threw the breaker. I did not notice a sound or haptic. Sadly, unlocking with my fingerprint cleared the notification. So, when I open my phone, the same button press which shows the unlock screen also unlocks the phone, so the notification disappeared right away! Sigh.

I would prefer to just get an email or a text. But I did get notifications about 5 minutes after both when the grid went down, and again on grid back up, so it works. Could be better, but it appears to function as designed.

In your case, try the usual steps: • Delete and re-install the app. • Power down and restart you phone. • Confirm that the iPhone Settings App, in the Notifications menu, has notifications turned on for the Tesla icon. • If you have a watch, turn off Tesla notifications in the watch app.

I think that after installation, on first sign in the Tesla App asks for allowing notifications, which I figure links the Tesla App to the iPhone Notifications system. Clicking No, Don't Allow, just turns the notification off in the iPhone app, where they can be enabled later.

Thanks. I think my last effort is to delete and reinstall it.
I have turned phone off in the evening and on in morning. Maybe that allowed it to update to that .7 version.
I do have that "allow notifications" on and can turn it off at will then the lock screen notification center and banners go off. But it comes back when I switch to on again.

I would really like to get the sound notification as well as I don't read email, usually on the phone. I see a banner, no sound as I turned it off for email, and may or may not look, not that crucial to me. Do most in desktop.


Thanks all.

 

[charlesj]

Here are two locations in the iPhone I made sure to have it set up.

Not sure what that "allow Tesla to access" and "Contacts" being on does.
I had it both ways no, still no sound and this morning, no banner either following another test.

I am ready to just give up.

 

[swedge]

... snip...
I would really like to get the sound notification as well as I don't read email, usually on the phone. I see a banner, no sound as I turned it off for email, and may or may not look, not that crucial to me. Do most in desktop.

One other thing to check would be Sounds and Haptics in the iPhone Settings app. Some alerts volumes controlled by the slider there. However, some folks have found that certain apps make alert sounds which are instead controlled but the "media" volume, i.e. how loud music plays. The five minute delay in grid failure alerts sure makes it tough to try out the possibilities! Frankly, I stopped testing notifications after one success, so my confidence in the reliability of the notifications is pretty low.

One other thought would be to phone support and let them walk you through it. That was how I found that my Apple Watch was preventing notification on the iPhone. This was after I got the option on my app settings menu, but was not seeing the notifications on my iPhone. The support person logged her Tesla App into my account, and watched as I opened the grid breaker. Five minutes later, she got notification, which localized the problem. At the same time I noticed the watch did have an alert, so we realized what was going on. Anyway, they might possibly be able to help you find the problem. Plus it helps Tesla know how temperamental but important this function is.

At moments when I have nothing productive to do, I am wondering if there isn't some other way to accomplish this, perhaps a program to monitor the Gateway via the local web interface. But as an engineer friend of my likes to quip ironically, it is SMOP, a simple mater of programming. That is to say a whole other can of worms.

The other thing that I ponder in idle moments is a way to interface a small generator to the PowerWall so I could top if off during extended outages during winter or cloudy weather. That one would be a power electronics project. Like text totificatins, also nice to have, but creating either are outside my wheelhouse.

SW

 

[BrettS]

I’m kinda dragging an old thread back up, but I have never gotten grid down notifications from my app. I didn’t worry about it too much before I got PTO, but now that I have PTO I figured I should probably try to do something about it. I have an old android phone and I installed the tesla app on that device. I also deleted and reinstalled the tesla app on the iPhone that I use all the time. I then turned off the service disconnect to simulate an outage and... no notifications on either device.

I called Tesla today and briefly spoke with one agent who said that the app doesn’t send notifications for outages that are less than 6 minutes. That seemed a little odd to me, but I said thank you and hung up. I then went out and turned off the service disconnect for 11 or 12 minutes and still no notifications on either device, so I called Tesla back. I spoke with another agent who seemed to take the issue a little more seriously.

He said if you click on the gear icon in the Tesla app and go to notifications there should be options there for notifications from the powerwall, but I only have options for notifications from my car. He also said that they have a way to connect to my app so they can see what I’m seeing and he did that and confirmed that I don’t have the powerwall notification options that are supposed to be there. He said that he will escalate my issue to tier 2 support and they should get back to me within a few days.

(On a completely unrelated side note, I discovered that the little ‘electrons’ on the power flow screen move considerably slower in the android app as compared to the iPhone app)

 

[wjgjr]

I’m kinda dragging an old thread back up, but I have never gotten grid down notifications from my app. I didn’t worry about it too much before I got PTO, but now that I have PTO I figured I should probably try to do something about it. I have an old android phone and I installed the tesla app on that device. I also deleted and reinstalled the tesla app on the iPhone that I use all the time. I then turned off the service disconnect to simulate an outage and... no notifications on either device.

I called Tesla today and briefly spoke with one agent who said that the app doesn’t send notifications for outages that are less than 6 minutes. That seemed a little odd to me, but I said thank you and hung up. I then went out and turned off the service disconnect for 11 or 12 minutes and still no notifications on either device, so I called Tesla back. I spoke with another agent who seemed to take the issue a little more seriously.

He said if you click on the gear icon in the Tesla app and go to notifications there should be options there for notifications from the powerwall, but I only have options for notifications from my car. He also said that they have a way to connect to my app so they can see what I’m seeing and he did that and confirmed that I don’t have the powerwall notification options that are supposed to be there. He said that he will escalate my issue to tier 2 support and they should get back to me within a few days.

(On a completely unrelated side note, I discovered that the little ‘electrons’ on the power flow screen move considerably slower in the android app as compared to the iPhone app)

Probably because you said it was an old android - takes a lot of CPUs to get those electrons moving.

My experience matches with what Tesla reports in terms of short outages. I do not seem to get notices for the very brief flickers that cause 5-6 minute outages, according to the backup history log. Anything more, and I get a notice. But it sounds like you do have that bug where for some reason your account is not setup to allow those notifications. Hopefully, once that gets resolved as it was for others, you should get the notifications once the outage exceeds the 6 minute timeframe. I assume that was chosen to avoid sending alerts for these brief flickers which still (at least for some of us) trigger that 5-6 minute wait before the gateway will re-establish the link to the grid.

 

[BrettS]

My experience matches with what Tesla reports in terms of short outages. I do not seem to get notices for the very brief flickers that cause 5-6 minute outages, according to the backup history log. Anything more, and I get a notice. But it sounds like you do have that bug where for some reason your account is not setup to allow those notifications. Hopefully, once that gets resolved as it was for others, you should get the notifications once the outage exceeds the 6 minute timeframe. I assume that was chosen to avoid sending alerts for these brief flickers which still (at least for some of us) trigger that 5-6 minute wait before the gateway will re-establish the link to the grid.

Seems like it would be nice to have that as an option. I feel like I would like to get a notification for even a little flicker, since they don’t happen too often around here. But I remember someone was getting those little flickers and brief outages tens or hundreds of times a day. I can see how they might not want a notification for each one

 

[wjgjr]

Seems like it would be nice to have that as an option. I feel like I would like to get a notification for even a little flicker, since they don’t happen too often around here. But I remember someone was getting those little flickers and brief outages tens or hundreds of times a day. I can see how they might not want a notification for each one

Yeah - maybe a slider/text box to set the minimum outage length for alerts, as I would also like to know about all of them. Generally, I know when they are likely (electrical storms) and have caught them by watching the app (and sometimes the UPS beeps) but if I am not home or not expecting it, I would still like to get a notice, even if it is brief.

 

[swedge]

I’m kinda dragging an old thread back up, but I have never gotten grid down notifications from my app. I didn’t worry about it too much before I got PTO, but now that I have PTO I figured I should probably try to do something about it. I have an old android phone and I installed the tesla app on that device. I also deleted and reinstalled the tesla app on the iPhone that I use all the time. I then turned off the service disconnect to simulate an outage and... no notifications on either device.

I called Tesla today and briefly spoke with one agent who said that the app doesn’t send notifications for outages that are less than 6 minutes. That seemed a little odd to me, but I said thank you and hung up. I then went out and turned off the service disconnect for 11 or 12 minutes and still no notifications on either device, so I called Tesla back. I spoke with another agent who seemed to take the issue a little more seriously.

He said if you click on the gear icon in the Tesla app and go to notifications there should be options there for notifications from the powerwall, but I only have options for notifications from my car. He also said that they have a way to connect to my app so they can see what I’m seeing and he did that and confirmed that I don’t have the powerwall notification options that are supposed to be there. He said that he will escalate my issue to tier 2 support and they should get back to me within a few days.

(On a completely unrelated side note, I discovered that the little ‘electrons’ on the power flow screen move considerably slower in the android app as compared to the iPhone app)

Brett,

I have forgotten. Do you have a Notifications item in the Settings menu, the little gear icon it the upper left corner. I also don't recall if you have a Tesla car. I don't, but that puts the PowerWall notifications into a sub-menu, I think.

In my case, I did not get notifications and there was no Notifications item on the Settings menu. I called Tesla energy support and after I had them log into my account and see the lack of the menu item for themselves, they opened a ticket. I was told it went up to software engineering, or some such, and couple weeks later it was fixed, both the menu item and the notifications after the grid is down for 5 minutes.

I assume the 5 minute delay is to prevent nuisance notifications on momentary outages.

I am helping a friend who's PW was just installed, and they have the same problem. Called support, asked to please open a ticket and they did, though we are still waiting for the menu item to appear.

The problem is not with the app, but rather somewhere in the setup of your account in Tesla's back-end servers. If you logged into my account you would see the menu item and, assuming nothing else is wrong, you would get a notification 5 minutes after I pulled my grid breaker. PM me if you'd like to give that a try to see what it should look like on your account. (I think the notifications are wimpy, and that they should send a text SMS and/or email from the Tesla server rather than my cell phone for cry'n out loud!). Mine and my friend's were installed by Semper Solaris, and I wonder these third party installations may be the common factor in creating the problem.

If you do have the Notifications menu item, be sure they are enabled. On my iPhone, I also need to enable notifications from the Tesla app in the iPhone settings app.

I hope this helps! Keep us posted on your progress.

Scott Wedge

 

[charlesj]

...

He said if you click on the gear icon in the Tesla app and go to notifications there should be options there for notifications from the powerwall, ...

I have that option and checked but I don't think it works well. I may have seen an fleeting notification but I was looking at the phone. No sound for sure so I would not know if and when grid went down unless I check my phone.

 

[swedge]

I have that option and checked but I don't think it works well. I may have seen an fleeting notification but I was looking at the phone. No sound for sure so I would not know if and when grid went down unless I check my phone.

In addition to the setting in the Tesla App itself, on the iPhone at least, there are additional settings in the iPhone Settings App, Notifications item, scroll down to Tesla App and set what kind of notifications you want. I agree that the notifications are wimpy and transient. I recently change mine from Temporary too Persistent, but have not tested to see if that really helps. I guess I'm waiting for a power failure...

In the mean time, I am thinking of writing a program to monitor the PW status and send me an email or text when the grid goes down. The PW has a web interface available on the local LAN where this can be checked, say once each minute. I mention this only to emphasize how poor the notifications are. I will no doubt "think" a long time before actually trying this.

 

[BrettS]

@swedge thanks for the reply. I do have a tesla car and my app does have a notification menu, but the only options in that menu are for the car... nothing for the powerwalls. I called support and like you they were able to connect to my app and verify that I didn’t have the notification options that they said should be there. They said that they were escalating it to Tier 2 support, so hopefully I will have the same results as you in a week or two.

I do get notifications from the car, so I know that the tesla app is allowed to send notifications on IOS.

 

[charlesj]

In addition to the setting in the Tesla App itself, on the iPhone at least, there are additional settings in the iPhone Settings App, Notifications item, scroll down to Tesla App and set what kind of notifications you want. I agree that the notifications are wimpy and transient. I recently change mine from Temporary too Persistent, but have not tested to see if that really helps. I guess I'm waiting for a power failure...

In the mean time, I am thinking of writing a program to monitor the PW status and send me an email or text when the grid goes down. The PW has a web interface available on the local LAN where this can be checked, say once each minute. I mention this only to emphasize how poor the notifications are. I will no doubt "think" a long time before actually trying this.

Yep, have all set, no badges and no sound comes on.
Text would be great as I have beeps for that but not for emails.

 

[zƬesla]

My most consistent notifications are from my UPS. Although the other day we had a power blip (< 1 minute grid outage) that led the TEG to keep us off-grid for 15 minutes triggering a Tesla app notification. I wish these very brief power interruptions wouldn't result in us staying off-grid for a quarter hour.

 

[BrettS]

My most consistent notifications are from my UPS. Although the other day we had a power blip (< 1 minute grid outage) that led the TEG to keep us off-grid for 15 minutes triggering a Tesla app notification. I wish these very brief power interruptions wouldn't result in us staying off-grid for a quarter hour.

Very brief interruptions shouldn’t result in you staying off grid for 15 minutes. If it’s just a brief flicker the TEG will go off grid, but then it will bring you back on grid in 5 minutes. Once it has determined that the power is good it will monitor it for 5 minutes. As long as the power stays good during that time, then it will switch back to on grid. It sounds like you may have continued to have power issues during that time and it took 15 minutes before there was a 5 minute period with no power issues.

 

[bmah]

In the mean time, I am thinking of writing a program to monitor the PW status and send me an email or text when the grid goes down. The PW has a web interface available on the local LAN where this can be checked, say once each minute. I mention this only to emphasize how poor the notifications are. I will no doubt "think" a long time before actually trying this.

There's a REST-like API that you can poll (not sure if that's what you meant by a "web interface") to get this information and much more. Some calls require authentication but the ones that read the grid state and the various power meters do not.

Powerwall 2 Gateway API Documentation

I have a poller that does multiple calls to this API a lot more often than once a minute (more like every 10 seconds). Long story short, this is prompting me to figure out how to do alerts in Grafana, which is where the data ends up.

Bruce.

 

[zƬesla]

Very brief interruptions shouldn’t result in you staying off grid for 15 minutes. If it’s just a brief flicker the TEG will go off grid, but then it will bring you back on grid in 5 minutes. Once it has determined that the power is good it will monitor it for 5 minutes. As long as the power stays good during that time, then it will switch back to on grid. It sounds like you may have continued to have power issues during that time and it took 15 minutes before there was a 5 minute period with no power issues.

So another power outage a short while ago. UPS reported being offline 4.20 minutes. Grid connection showed in app at 5 minute mark after initial UPS notice. Solar started producing again at 15 minutes after initial UPS notice. This is more inline with what i’d expect. At some point I may need to dig into the UPS some more. Oh, and no app notification (< 5 min outage)

 

[swedge]

@swedge thanks for the reply. I do have a tesla car and my app does have a notification menu, but the only options in that menu are for the car... nothing for the powerwalls. I called support and like you they were able to connect to my app and verify that I didn’t have the notification options that they said should be there. They said that they were escalating it to Tier 2 support, so hopefully I will have the same results as you in a week or two.

I do get notifications from the car, so I know that the tesla app is allowed to send notifications on IOS.

BrettS,
Sorry to be so long in getting back you you. My experience was that there was no notifications item for PowerWall in the in-app settings. The fix was to write and pester Tesla support, who eventually fixed it after escalating it to some internal software department. However, they did not tell me what they did to fix it, so I can not share that vital info.

Along the way I figured out that the problem was in Tesla's back end server's info or some hidden setting on my PW itself. This we knew because when a friend logged in to my account, they saw exactly what I saw, no Notifications item. Tried it on an android too, same thing. So it was not the app. Others could see the settings item and get notifications, so it was not a system wide problem.

A friend recently got a PW installed, and has the same problem, so it is not exactly uncommon. Both of us used a 3rd party installer adding PW to pre-existing 3rd party solar, which is the only common thread I notice.

My ticket with support was INQ20200508-846

Here is the email letting me know it had been fixed. Note the email address, perhaps Robert could look up what fixed mine and do it to yours...

Hello Scott,

I received and update about not getting Notification. The issue has been resolved. Please let us know if issue still persists or any other issue thank you


Best Regards,
Robert L. | Powerwall Specialist, Energy Customer Support
6569 Las Vegas Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89119
p.+1 (888) 765-2489 | [email protected]

I hope this helps!

 

[BrettS]

My issue is in support limbo right now. I called about it a few weeks ago and they said that they escalated the case, then emailed me a week later letting me know that the problem should be resolved. Only it wasn’t. So I emailed back and they said that they would escalate it again. I should probably call support again to see where it stands.

For what it’s worth, my system was installed by Tesla, so I don’t think it’s related to the third party install.

 

[swedge]

My issue is in support limbo right now. I called about it a few weeks ago and they said that they escalated the case, then emailed me a week later letting me know that the problem should be resolved. Only it wasn’t. So I emailed back and they said that they would escalate it again. I should probably call support again to see where it stands.

For what it’s worth, my system was installed by Tesla, so I don’t think it’s related to the third party install.

Brett,

I guess it is good news that Tesla installations have the same problem too, maybe it'll get fixed...

Pestering helps. I learned today that mine was solved by "engineering", but they included no notes in the INQ record as to what they did to fix it. But perhaps if you reference my INQ#INQ20200508-846, the lower tier's of support will send it up more quickly to the folks who can actually fix it. The smoking PowerWall gets the ...uh... fix.

Mine took from 5/8 install date till 7/3, roughly 8 weeks with multiple pester phone calls from me, some of which resulted in escalation to the people who could fix it. One trick was to have the support person log in themselves to my account and see that there was no Notifications item for Power Outage in the in-app settings menu. That quickly ruled out the reboot, delete and re-download the app non-help.

Hang in there, they can fix this, even if they don't know it yet.

Oh, and when it did finally work, my iPhone sent the notification to my Apple Watch where I did not see it. Adjusting the persistence of the notifications in the Apple settings helped. How nice it would be for them to just send an email or SMS text. Maybe somebody should write a script for an NAS or Mac or PC or Pi to do that...

SW

 

[BrettS]

One trick was to have the support person log in themselves to my account and see that there was no Notifications item for Power Outage in the in-app settings menu. That quickly ruled out the reboot, delete and re-download the app non-help.

When I first called about it that’s exactly what happened. The support person logged herself in and couldn’t see the notification option. But oddly when they emailed me to tell me that they thought they had fixed it, they said that the tier 2 team was able to see the option when they logged in as me. But I tried logging out of the app and logging back in and reinstalling the app from scratch on both iOS and android with no luck. After I emailed back to let her know that it wasn’t working I believe she did say that she was escalating to engineering, so hopefully that’s a good sign.