Our Powerwall has just told me it has activated storm watch and is now sitting fully charged until the forecast event is over (8pm Friday night). Never had this before but then we have never had a red weather warning from the met office before. However I hate using expensive grid power to run the house but if I cancel the storm watch we’re bound to have an outage!
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Powerwall has activated storm watch
- Thread starter Tonybvi
- Start date
ACarneiro
Active Member
For the peace of mind, a couple of quid are surely worth it?
Good luck up there.
Good luck up there.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Indeed ... although when Storm Watch is activiated the battery will then immedaitely charge to 100% (and stay there) which might be on Peak Juice
Can't get my head around whether staying on 100% since last night's cheap rate is any different in consumption compared to discharge then set to 100% and fill back up again. I expect its the same (less any losses)
ACarneiro
Active Member
Thanks for asking. Very heavy rain and high winds. Red alert doesn’t kick in until 6pm now so seems there is worse to come. So far we are ok although the SSEN power outage map shows lots of cuts around us - every time I look at the app there are more! Hunkered down indoors in front of the log burner with a full PW so feeling relatively smug.
ACarneiro
Active Member
Fingers crossed for tonight, then.I hope you mange to get some rest!
My parents in Lisbon are also running on solar and battery at the moment as the storm has hit them fairly hard with strong winds and lots of rain damaging the power line that feeds their property.
Good job I decided to leave the PW in active storm watch. Power outage now and it’s getting even windier and wetter outside.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Recommend you turn off all non essential items - for me that includes the freezer (and then we don't open it) and avoiding using anything that has high kW draw - cooker / kettle / heaters etc.. No telling how long the outage might be, especially if you are rural.
One of my, many!, big regrets is that when we rewired the whole house we didn't create separate Essential / Non-essential consumer units - so I could just throw a breaker and be sure all the non essential stuff was OFF! We have a generated socket (on outside of the house) for if we get a prolonged outage, and same problem of having to walk round disabling stuff, otherwise the generator trips ...
Thanks for that. I’ve already set up the generator to do most of the heavy duty stuff (cooking, dishwasher, kettle etc - luckily we have a load of low wattage stuff we use in the motorhome), unplugged the cars as I don’t want them charging from the PW but hadn’t thought about the freezers - good call there. Last time we were off was for 6 days after Storm Arwen but if it’s not sunny no way can the PW last that long!
ACarneiro
Active Member
Hope you’re holding up OK
Has the powerwall kept you going? Did it make any appreciable difference to your disaster resilience?
Has the powerwall kept you going? Did it make any appreciable difference to your disaster resilience?
Powerwall has been brilliant. We still have the outage and the PW has been running all the light loads convenient for everyday living (lights, radios, TV’s, oil fired central heating, power shower etc and the odd kettle. Turned the freezers off overnight and put them back on for a couple of hours this morning. All “heavy” stuff run off the 3kw generator (cooking, kettles, dishwasher, etc). Started the outage with PW at 98% and now nearly 24 hours later it’s at 68%.
re resilience I reckon we’re now in a good place. When we were off for 6 days after Storm Arwen it was pre-PW days. Although we managed ok with the log burners and generator it was nowhere near as comfortable and convenient, having to run extension leads all over the house and plug standard lamps in, etc.
I was pretty impressed with how the PW activated Storm Watch automatically, charging to 100% and retaiming that charge. It switched to back up power pretty seamlessly as well.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
I suppose the solution to that might be:
Turn off freezer. Turn it back on periodically - maybe once every 24 hours is enough if you don't open it? And maybe put it on boost at that time?
But, definitely put it on when PowerWall is down to its last, say, 1 hour. i.e. give the freezer priority at that point, in the hope that power is restored before everything rots ...
But with a generator things are much better
Should be able to plod along with generator on for parts of the day, to run the house and re-fill the PowerWall. Before PowerWall it probably involved getting up at 03:00 to put some fuel in the Generator!!That exactly what I did with the freezers - turned them off yesterday evening once my wife had finished raiding them, then put them back on for a couple of hours this morning. Haven’t worked out how to use the generator to charge the PW yet.
