Howdy,
My first post here and I’ve done a bit of lurking and searching in this forum to see if there is an answer to this but no luck so here goes hopefully the wisdom of the internet will have an answer.
We have recently had a 8KW system installed with a Powerwall and gateway installed. Our primary rationale was resilience and we were particularly keen to ensure we would have a system that would continue to operate when the grid was down.
As luck would have it, 2 days after the system was installed Cyclone Gabrielle hit NZ and this knocked our grid offline for almost 50 hours. The powerwall had 50% capacity at the point the grid went down and throughout the day we gradually tracked downwards (whilst removing heavy loads to prolong the battery life) but eventually everything died and we were out of power till the grid came back on, which meant we were were without power for almost 2 days. What was frustrating to me was that the sun was shining outside and the Powerwall and inverter were dead and as soon as the grid came back on the inverter fired into life and started recharging the Powerwall, which implies that our system is still grid tied.
My expectation (perhaps misinformed!?) was that while the grid was down our PV system should have activated our inverter and started recharging the Powerwall and allowing us to start drawing an AC load from the Powerwall when sufficiently charged. This use case seems very reasonable to me and frankly rather important in a scenario where the grid goes down for an extended period of time so I’d like to figure out a solution. Here are some possible options :-
Any other ideas ?
My first post here and I’ve done a bit of lurking and searching in this forum to see if there is an answer to this but no luck so here goes hopefully the wisdom of the internet will have an answer.
We have recently had a 8KW system installed with a Powerwall and gateway installed. Our primary rationale was resilience and we were particularly keen to ensure we would have a system that would continue to operate when the grid was down.
As luck would have it, 2 days after the system was installed Cyclone Gabrielle hit NZ and this knocked our grid offline for almost 50 hours. The powerwall had 50% capacity at the point the grid went down and throughout the day we gradually tracked downwards (whilst removing heavy loads to prolong the battery life) but eventually everything died and we were out of power till the grid came back on, which meant we were were without power for almost 2 days. What was frustrating to me was that the sun was shining outside and the Powerwall and inverter were dead and as soon as the grid came back on the inverter fired into life and started recharging the Powerwall, which implies that our system is still grid tied.
My expectation (perhaps misinformed!?) was that while the grid was down our PV system should have activated our inverter and started recharging the Powerwall and allowing us to start drawing an AC load from the Powerwall when sufficiently charged. This use case seems very reasonable to me and frankly rather important in a scenario where the grid goes down for an extended period of time so I’d like to figure out a solution. Here are some possible options :-
- This is a common use case and it should just work as you expected so the fact it didn’t means there is something wrong.
- Can the Powerwall be configured to never go to 0%, perhaps provide a 5% margin that can be used for the inverter to jump back into life (when the sun start shining) and start recharging the powerwall when sufficient PV power is available?
- Is there a way to jump start the Powerwall or gateway with an external power source to activate the PV/inverter?
- or if none of these can be made to work do I need to get a generator and wire it into the gateway so that it auto starts when the battery run down and the grid is disconnected?
Any other ideas ?