Powerwall 2 + UPS Connundrum - and solution

[GaitherBill]

How they escalate this to tier 2 seems to be somewhat hit or miss (but they will always have to escalate it). Some people have had to get a truck roll to come inspect their situation, and others have not.

I would detail that you "have issues with your UPS battery backups because of the 65Hz frequency, as well as lights flickering and issues with your microwave". Be prepared with your make and model of inverters if tesla did not do your install, as well as letting them know you have Cyberpower UPS devices (brand) which tolerate up to 62hz".

They should (hopefully) tell you that they are taking all that information down and escalating it to tier 2 (or, alternatively, that they will need to send someone out). No idea what triggers one vs the other.

I think I’ll ask my installer to see if they can get it done for me. I have three panels that still think the ac frequency is wrong after a brownout yesterday. Maybe I can roll it all into one fix.


Plus, It’s not super urgent with the Eaton unit I ordered.

 

[GaitherBill]

Called Tesla, the Tier 1 support person knew exactly what I was talking about and created a ticket to kick up to Tier 2. Sounds like they'll change it to 63hz without an issue.

I was told it might only take a few days.

 

[wjgjr]

Called Tesla, the Tier 1 support person knew exactly what I was talking about and created a ticket to kick up to Tier 2. Sounds like they'll change it to 63hz without an issue.

I was told it might only take a few days.

You definitely want to push for 62Hz or lower if you have UPS devices that have a 3Hz range - 63Hz may still trigger them.

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

I'm checking in to report that after a 1hr test this weekend, we are now also good to go with no longer beeping UPSes and a flickering refrigerator LED light (first world problems, I know...)

As @GaitherBill just mentioned, this was the same procedure for me after experiencing the weirdness of "no solar production during a power outage, beeping UPSes, even though Powerwalls were in the low 90% range..."

I spoke to a helpful Tier 1 Tesla Energy support rep who took down my info and asked for specific make/model of our UPSes (save them and you time by having that stuff on-hand before calling). We have a bunch of different models from APC to CyberPower and even a TrippLite we picked up somewhere along the way. As I told the rep each specific model#, I was also able to do a quick Google search and found the specs for each one, and ALL of them where 60Hz +/- 3Hz, meaning 65Hz wasn't going to work for us.

I then got an email from Tesla about 3 or 4 days later saying they had adjusted the frequency accordingly.

This past weekend was a pure-blue sky day and perfect for a test, so when the Powerwalls were at 100%, I threw the main breaker by the meter. The UPSes chirped for a split second, but then continued as if nothing happened - success! Our solar production immediately ceased with the Powerwalls providing all power and the output from the [your ip address]/api/meters/aggregates page showed just under 63Hz - perfect for us.

I took the opportunity to drain down the Powerwalls a bit by charging the car, and once they got to around 95% or less (I wasn't watching it like a hawk, so somewhere in that range) our solar production resumed on what seems like about a 5 minute delay (expected), and our frequency was now around the 59-60Hz range getting a combination of solar + Powerwall, depending on the active draw.

The test concluded after about an hour and I am now confident we can ride out longer duration outages, so long as the sun makes an appearance every so often.

Kudos to Tesla Energy support overall - I have only had to speak with them only a few times, but NEVER waited on hold for more than a few minutes to speak with somebody. The techs have always been super friendly and helpful, never dismissive, and while communication has never been Tesla's strongest area, they have always gotten back to me.

 

[GaitherBill]

You definitely want to push for 62Hz or lower if you have UPS devices that have a 3Hz range - 63Hz may still trigger them.

Yeah, I'll see what happens. The person I spoke to didn't ask for any UPS details, maybe Tier 2 will.

 

[GaitherBill]

Heard back from Tesla.

They adjusted the frequency down to 62.5Hz.

I'll see how it goes. I think it will be just fine.

 

[jjrandorin]

Heard back from Tesla.

They adjusted the frequency down to 62.5Hz.

I'll see how it goes. I think it will be just fine.

What I am finding interesting about this, is the gradual convergence of:

1. Speed with which they make this change as requested

Forum members are now reporting turn around times of a week or less for tesla to make this change. When someone calls tesla energy support, tier 1 people understand what the issue is, and (more importantly) what they need to do to escalate it successfully to tier 2 to correct the issue for the end users.

@BrettS actually was able to get his installer to call in and get it corrected for him at the end of Install, and is the first person I remember reading on the forums that was successful in that (vs calling in yourself "later")

2. The frequency that tesla seems to be willing to set this to for customers is creeping "higher and higher". Early trailblazers got tesla to set it to 61 or 61.5 Hz based on equipment. In my own case, in January of this year (2020) they set mine to 62 Hz. I have all tesla equipment (solar city solar, tesla powerwalls) so they knew the exact specs of my equipment because its in my files.

@BrettS and @GaitherBill got their set to 62.5 and it sounds like @Cirrus MS100D is set to either 62.5 or 63. @aesculus reported that he was unable to get tesla to lower it lower than 62, even though he has equipment that is still impacted by 62hz, and no amount of escalation seemed to get tesla to do anything about it.


So, on one hand, its much easier for us, as consumers, to get tesla to change this, but they seem to be very very reluctant to go lower than 62.5, and seem to have some "hard stop" on anything below 62 hz (in the US at least). Something for future people to keep in mind if they have equipment that doesnt like 62 hz.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

What I am finding interesting about this, is the gradual convergence of:

1. Speed with which they make this change as requested

Forum members are now reporting turn around times of a week or less for tesla to make this change. When someone calls tesla energy support, tier 1 people understand what the issue is, and (more importantly) what they need to do to escalate it successfully to tier 2 to correct the issue for the end users.

@BrettS actually was able to get his installer to call in and get it corrected for him at the end of Install, and is the first person I remember reading on the forums that was successful in that (vs calling in yourself "later")

2. The frequency that tesla seems to be willing to set this to for customers is creeping "higher and higher". Early trailblazers got tesla to set it to 61 or 61.5 Hz based on equipment. In my own case, in January of this year (2020) they set mine to 62 Hz. I have all tesla equipment (solar city solar, tesla powerwalls) so they knew the exact specs of my equipment because its in my files.

@BrettS and @GaitherBill got their set to 62.5 and it sounds like @Cirrus MS100D is set to either 62.5 or 63. @aesculus reported that he was unable to get tesla to lower it lower than 62, even though he has equipment that is still impacted by 62hz, and no amount of escalation seemed to get tesla to do anything about it.


So, on one hand, its much easier for us, as consumers, to get tesla to change this, but they seem to be very very reluctant to go lower than 62.5, and seem to have some "hard stop" on anything below 62 hz (in the US at least). Something for future people to keep in mind if they have equipment that doesnt like 62 hz.

We don't know the exact frequency that ours was lowered to but either it was set too low or our power is really dirty. I mentioned a few weeks how we've been experiencing dozens of reported "outages" a day since our frequency was lowered. We're now at over 350 "outages" in the past two months. We found a couple weeks back that we could avoid most "outages" by extending the peak period hours. Now we're down to 0 to 6 "outages" per day. We will call Tesla tech support one of these days to find what frequency they set it to...but we're currently working with both Tesla and our utility company to resolve the dirty power issue caused by a failing transformer. We've never lost power during any of these short outages but we've lost a lot of potential solar production since our solar production was being interrupted for several hours per day.

 

[BrettS]

We don't know the exact frequency that ours was lowered to but either it was set too low or our power is really dirty. I mentioned a few weeks how we've been experiencing dozens of reported "outages" a day since our frequency was lowered. We're now at over 350 "outages" in the past two months. We found a couple weeks back that we could avoid most "outages" by extending the peak period hours. Now we're down to 0 to 6 "outages" per day. We will call Tesla tech support one of these days to find what frequency they set it to...but we're currently working with both Tesla and our utility company to resolve the dirty power issue caused by a failing transformer. We've never lost power during any of these short outages but we've lost a lot of potential solar production since our solar production was being interrupted for several hours per day.

Can you define exactly what you mean by experiencing dozens of “outages” a day? Are you saying that your system detects a problem with the grid power and goes off grid?

Just to be clear, the powerwall frequency issue only affects solar production in one specific case. That case is when you are off grid and your powerwall is fully charged. When that condition happens, then the powerwall raises the frequency to whatever level has been set (by default that’s 65hz, but as has been discussed a lot in this thread, you can get that lowered to around 62.5hz). When the powerwall raises the frequency it will cause the inverters to shut down. This is necessary in this condition because when you are off grid and the powerwalls are at 100% there is nowhere for excess solar production to go.

Changing the powerwall frequency won’t affect the number of outages that you are having. If your utility is providing dirty power then that’s the problem. If your utility is providing dirty power and your system going off grid and your powerwalls are at 100% then the powerwalls will raise the frequency to shut off the inverters. This is absolutely necessary and will happen no matter what the powerwall frequency is set at.

 

[jjrandorin]

We don't know the exact frequency that ours was lowered to but either it was set too low or our power is really dirty. I mentioned a few weeks how we've been experiencing dozens of reported "outages" a day since our frequency was lowered. We're now at over 350 "outages" in the past two months. We found a couple weeks back that we could avoid most "outages" by extending the peak period hours. Now we're down to 0 to 6 "outages" per day. We will call Tesla tech support one of these days to find what frequency they set it to...but we're currently working with both Tesla and our utility company to resolve the dirty power issue caused by a failing transformer. We've never lost power during any of these short outages but we've lost a lot of potential solar production since our solar production was being interrupted for several hours per day.

I bought one of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0777H8MS8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It can show what frequency your power is at in the plug its plugged into. I think Killawatts can do the same thing, but I found this one and liked the display. I bought it to verify that tesla lowered my frequency when they said they did, but it also can be used to track usage etc like a killowat.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Can you define exactly what you mean by experiencing dozens of “outages” a day? Are you saying that your system detects a problem with the grid power and goes off grid?

Just to be clear, the powerwall frequency issue only affects solar production in one specific case. That case is when you are off grid and your powerwall is fully charged. When that condition happens, then the powerwall raises the frequency to whatever level has been set (by default that’s 65hz, but as has been discussed a lot in this thread, you can get that lowered to around 62.5hz). When the powerwall raises the frequency it will cause the inverters to shut down. This is necessary in this condition because when you are off grid and the powerwalls are at 100% there is nowhere for excess solar production to go.

Changing the powerwall frequency won’t affect the number of outages that you are having. If your utility is providing dirty power then that’s the problem. If your utility is providing dirty power and your system going off grid and your powerwalls are at 100% then the powerwalls will raise the frequency to shut off the inverters. This is absolutely necessary and will happen no matter what the powerwall frequency is set at.

We know how the Powerwalls and solar are supposed to work. They worked fine from July 2018 until early 2020 when we called to have them adjust the frequency due to the UPS issue. Since they made changes, the "outages" started happening up to 36 times a day. I don't know if they are just looking at the amps or perhaps the voltage drop as well. We've complained to our utility about voltage drops for years. Tesla confirmed the drops were happening at the meter and not due to our household. We're seeing them around 10 am every morning (give or take) when it starts to warm up. We think they are due to our neighbor's pool pump but they could be due to the town reservoir pumps kicking in. It could just be we have half a dozen houses all on one 25 kVA transformer. These outages are occurring even when our Powerwalls aren't fully charged. Sometimes the Powerwalls take over for 5 minutes and the solar stays on. Other times, the solar is shut off and then starts back up 5 minutes later. If we fake peak periods, the Powerwalls are able to power the house and solar is able to export to the grid without any issues. If we don't fake the peak period, solar charges the Powerwalls and powers the house but still pulls a trickle from the grid.

Before the frequency was lowered, we usually only had an "outage" every month or so and then the real storm related outages, of course.

Just a bit more information about our situation. The Powerwalls can work perfectly for days at a time when not connected to the grid. When the recent storm knocked out power for 40 hours, we never had any issues. Once power was restored, things worked perfectly for three days and we thought maybe the issue wasn't with the transformer serving our house but other transformers on the next pole over. It took a couple extra days for the utility company to replace those (which happen to serve the town reservoir pumps). After 3 days of no issues, things started up again.

Here's an example from June 15th, before I extended the peak hours to start at 10 am. As you can see, it cut our solar production greatly. While there were a few clouds that day, we should've easily produced over 140 kWh and we only produced 82 kWh. Looking at the graph, it incorrectly shows the current "fake" peak period, not the actual 2 pm to 6 pm that was originally scheduled for that day.

The animated gif below also shows a few of our outages.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I bought one of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0777H8MS8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It can show what frequency your power is at in the plug its plugged into. I think Killawatts can do the same thing, but I found this one and liked the display. I bought it to verify that tesla lowered my frequency when they said they did, but it also can be used to track usage etc like a killowat.

I plugged in a Killawatt by my desk and check it whenever I hear the UPS click. Unfortunately, it always shows 59.9 Hz. Before we called, I could see on the UPS that the Powerwalls were setting the frequency to 65 Hz.

 

[BrettS]

Something is definitely not right there and I get that the timing coincides with when the frequency change was made, but what I’m saying is that the frequency change has nothing at all to do with when/how the powerwall decides that the power is too dirty and disconnects your house from the grid. It doesn’t affect the powerwalls sensitivity settings or anything like that.

If it makes you feel better you can certainly go back and have them raise the frequency again, but I am quite confident that this will make no difference in the number of outages that you are seeing. I think the timing is just a coincidence and you need to be looking elsewhere for the cause of the outages. I would start with calling your utility and see if they can check the power at your house. If it’s happening dozens of times a day it should be pretty easy for them to test.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Something is definitely not right there and I get that the timing coincides with when the frequency change was made, but what I’m saying is that the frequency change has nothing at all to do with when/how the powerwall decides that the power is too dirty and disconnects your house from the grid. It doesn’t affect the powerwalls sensitivity settings or anything like that.

If it makes you feel better you can certainly go back and have them raise the frequency again, but I am quite confident that this will make no difference in the number of outages that you are seeing. I think the timing is just a coincidence and you need to be looking elsewhere for the cause of the outages. I would start with calling your utility and see if they can check the power at your house. If it’s happening dozens of times a day it should be pretty easy for them to test.

We requested they change the frequency back but since they are in negotiations with the utility concerning the transformer, they said they have to leave it so they can log a history of the problems. As I mentioned above, we also have voltage drops before our meter. We mentioned the voltage drops to Tesla but didn't get a direct response that they could be causing the Powerwalls to kick in and report an outage.

We complained to the utility and they sent a workman with a heat gun. He plugged it in for a few minutes and said there was no voltage drop. We complained they need to come at a certain time, when we see the issue, such as 11 am, not 8 pm. They said we'd have to pay $10,000 to have a study done. If the study agreed that there's a problem, we would get a refund. If not, we'd be out $10k for the "engineering" study.

 

[BrettS]

We requested they change the frequency back but since they are in negotiations with the utility concerning the transformer, they said they have to leave it so they can log a history of the problems. As I mentioned above, we also have voltage drops before our meter. We mentioned the voltage drops to Tesla but didn't get a direct response that they could be causing the Powerwalls to kick in and report an outage.

A voltage drop absolutely will cause the powerwalls to kick in and report an outage, but the question is how much of a voltage drop. Going from 240 to 230 might not, but going from 240 to 200 probably would. Just how much of a voltage drop are you seeing?

We complained to the utility and they sent a workman with a heat gun. He plugged it in for a few minutes and said there was no voltage drop. We complained they need to come at a certain time, when we see the issue, such as 11 am, not 8 pm. They said we'd have to pay $10,000 to have a study done. If the study agreed that there's a problem, we would get a refund. If not, we'd be out $10k for the "engineering" study.

That’s crazy. I mean I can get how intermittent problems can be difficult to track down, but when they are happening that frequently it certainly shouldn’t be that difficult. Are your neighbors also experiencing problems? If so I wonder if it would be worth going to your local news station or even your city council or something to see if they can make the utility do something.

 

[miimura]

We requested they change the frequency back but since they are in negotiations with the utility concerning the transformer, they said they have to leave it so they can log a history of the problems. As I mentioned above, we also have voltage drops before our meter. We mentioned the voltage drops to Tesla but didn't get a direct response that they could be causing the Powerwalls to kick in and report an outage.

We complained to the utility and they sent a workman with a heat gun. He plugged it in for a few minutes and said there was no voltage drop. We complained they need to come at a certain time, when we see the issue, such as 11 am, not 8 pm. They said we'd have to pay $10,000 to have a study done. If the study agreed that there's a problem, we would get a refund. If not, we'd be out $10k for the "engineering" study.

I would never pay for the study. I would sooner buy a energy monitor solution like The Energy Detective or eGauge for $300 to $600 and log the data myself to present to the utility. eGauge has 15 channels so you can really get granular and track specific loads over the long term.

 

[aesculus]

You can get the Energy Detective and put the loop inductors on your secondary feeder lines. I would do that. Then I would isolate your house and run the logging for a few days and measure the grid voltage and frequency.

Then repeat with your house connected. That way you can determine and prove it's either the grid side or your side.

 

[RobbL]

I have a Powerwall 2, and am disappointed to find that in the event of an outage it doesn't switch over fast enough to avoid a reboot of my Dell XPS desktop computer, cable modem and router. However, I assumed a UPS would take care of that issue, but understand from this thread that it may not. I have to say that my understanding of the issue discussed here is minimal as I am not technical. In any case, I haven't purchased one yet. Is there one in the $80 to $150 range that will avoid the issue that is discussed in this thread? I don't know what metric to look for in Ads. I only plan to plug in the three pieces of equipment listed earlier. Would one as basic as the CyberPower LE850G UPS Battery Backup with Surge Protection do the trick? If not, what would you recommend? Or would it be easier to just purchase that Surge Protector and request Tesla make the change discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Thank you very much in advance for recommendations and guidance.

 

[jjrandorin]

I have a Powerwall 2, and am disappointed to find that in the event of an outage it doesn't switch over fast enough to avoid a reboot of my Dell XPS desktop computer, cable modem and router. However, I assumed a UPS would take care of that issue, but understand from this thread that it may not. I have to say that my understanding of the issue discussed here is minimal as I am not technical. In any case, I haven't purchased one yet. Is there one in the $80 to $150 range that will avoid the issue that is discussed in this thread? I don't know what metric to look for in Ads. I only plan to plug in the three pieces of equipment listed earlier. Would one as basic as the CyberPower LE850G UPS Battery Backup with Surge Protection do the trick? If not, what would you recommend? Or would it be easier to just purchase that Surge Protector and request Tesla make the change discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Thank you very much in advance for recommendations and guidance.

Purchasing a surge protector will not change how fast the system does or does not respond. You will find that sometimes it switches fast enough that your equipment wont notice, and other times it wont. In my (very) limited testing, it seemed to be depending on house load and whether your powerwalls were already providing power to the home (vs being charged from solar at the time).

In any case, if you want to use the UPS you mentioned, you will need to get tesla to lower the frequency, because the cyberpower UPSs are rated up to 62hz I believe ( i have 3 of them and thats what I remember). If you dont want to contact tesla, and want to get a UPS that can handle the 65hz frequency, you can get this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EIGUDE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The Eaton brand UPSs can go up to 70hz I believe, so "avoid" the issue. The one I linked to is a 550. To get closer to the power output of the cyberpower, you could get the eaton 750

https://www.amazon.com/Eaton-750va-...onics&sprefix=Eaton+3s,electronics,241&sr=1-1

If you want a recommendation, it would be to contact tesla and see if you can get the frequency lowered, and then buy the UPS you want. Once you get the frequency lowered, the cyberpower would work fine. Remember, you really only need a few seconds of UPS power at most, just long enough to cover the swap to powerwall power. Lowering the frequency will not prevent your need for a UPS to cover that gap, it will just open up your options on UPS devices for that, AS WELL AS help prevent damage the higher frequency could cause to things with motors, or microwaves, or some lighting, etc

 

[Stormwind]

Does anyone know of any short-run-time (but reliable and long lived) capacitor-based UPSes that could provide just the few seconds of power needed when the gateway switches to Powerwall provided power? I hated my old lead-acid battery UPSes because they were so unreliable when the battery would get old and need replaced.