Powerwall discharging before system turns on

[dhquigley]

My powerwalls (3) were installed a week or so ago and my solar roof will finish up next week. When installed, the powerwalls had 15 or so percent. They are now down to 5 percent. Do I need to do anything? Presumably, they will test the system Tuesday when they finish, but should I be concerned? My understanding is you do not want these to fully discharge.

 

[Vines]

Do not worry, the Powerwalls will keep enough power in reserve to come alive again no proiblem.

You can turn off the enable switches on the right side of them, that will turn them totally off and prevent further discharge.

 

[JayClark]

Do not worry, the Powerwalls will keep enough power in reserve to come alive again no proiblem.

You can turn off the enable switches on the right side of them, that will turn them totally off and prevent further discharge.

That's what I did. Just turned them off via the switch on the actual PW until we were commissioned by our utility to go live.

 

[LadyLion]

Do not worry, the Powerwalls will keep enough power in reserve to come alive again no proiblem.

You can turn off the enable switches on the right side of them, that will turn them totally off and prevent further discharge.

is there a risk that the PWs will have to be rebooted or need a 12V boost if a PSPS happens while the PW switches have been turned off and you want to turn them on for “emergency” use?

Also, Would setting the PW “Reserve to 100% “ avoid them from discharging further
while you wait for PTO? (@JayClark )

 

[BrettS]

is there a risk that the PWs will have to be rebooted or need a 12V boost if a PSPS happens while the PW switches have been turned off and you want to turn them on for “emergency” use?

If the powerwalls are off and the power is out then you would need to jump start the TEG to get the powerwalls to come on during the outage. If you know the outage is coming and you turn them back on before the outage then they will take over when the power fails and no jump start will be needed.

Also, Would setting the PW “Reserve to 100% “ avoid them from discharging further
while you wait for PTO?

This won’t prevent the ‘vampire drain’ that causes them to lose a couple of percent a day. It will prevent your house from attempting to run on the powerwalls if you have the system in self powered or advanced mode.

Unless your powerwalls are at a very low state of charge (like 10 or 15%) I wouldn’t worry about turning them off.

 

[Cstreet]

I ran into this as I had mine sitting at empty but I noticed they would still pull a little bit of power from the grid from time to time I assume to keep them at a basic level of charge. So I left them on for a few weeks till they provisioned my inverter and they have been fine.

 

[JayClark]

Also, Would setting the PW “Reserve to 100% “ avoid them from discharging further
while you wait for PTO? (@JayClark )

What BrettS Said. Should be no worry. If the PWs are on, they will still burn through 20-40 watts each just maintaining and staying "ready" for use even with 100% reserve. That reserve just tells the system not to power your home circuits, but minimal power will be used just staying awake. I just turned mine off while waiting for PTO.

I think there were some other threads where people run their systems if "off-grid" mode. And there are some situations when running truly "off-grid", and when there is no solar coming in, and no grid connection where it can be kind of tricky to get the PWs to restart. But in a normal grid connected environment it's not something that needs to be worried about, the PW and Gateway will be fine and take care of everything when you're commissioned to turn everything on.