PowerWall - Power Cut ... Grid Restored ... still running on battery

[WannabeOwner]

We're having a once-in-a-decade storm over here in the UK.

Changed the settings yesterday to 100% for backup (Storm Watch triggered, so it might have done that by itself)

Had a power cut several hours ago ... thought I should check with Power Utility what the status was, so phoned them up "All power has been restored in your area Sir" ... she was very patient, when I explained about the battery, and waited for me to go out, open the meter cabinet, and indeed ... discovered that the meter was indeed lit up and alive

But PowerWall discharge is still 100% from battery, and as this storm is scheduled to have very high winds for next two days I'd prefer to keep PowerWall charge-up at 100% in anticipation of more disruption

Any advice for how I force? PowerWall to toggle back to Grid? I imagine it is supposed to do that automatically, so presumably something in Install was not done right, or there is a fault of some sort ... or something else?

Thanks

 

[im85288]

Hmm no idea as never used the 100% backup option. Perhaps toggle Self Powered then back to Backup only. Or maybe toggle storm watch on and off.

 

[bob_p]

There may be a delay (5 minutes?) before the Tesla Backup Gateway will switch back to grid power after being off grid. Same may be true in turning the solar panels back on after they've been turned off (when the grid is down and the PowerWalls are full).

We had two brief power outages yesterday. In each case, even though the grid power was quickly restored, we continued to operate off the grid and draw power from the PowerWalls for several additional minutes.

I've tried to bypass this delay by switching between backup and self-powered modes or changing the reserve percentage and also restarting the Gateway - and it doesn't appear there's anyway to avoid the delay once the Gateway has decided to wait before moving back to grid power.

Before getting concerned wait at least 5 minutes, and see if the system returns to normal operations. And if it doesn't try changing the Gateway configuration through the Tesla app - and if that doesn't work, try restarting the system. And if now progress is made after 15-30 minutes, call Tesla Energy Support as a last resort.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Thanks

Sorry I should have mentioned the steps that I had tried

Customise : Select Self-powered and then increase "reserve for power Outages" to 100% (well above current battery level)

That didn't make any difference.

Turned Storm Watch OFF ... waited a bit (kW changed slightly, so there was some sort of handshake/update) and then back ON again

After a cuppa! I then changed SELF_POWERED back to BACKUP-ONLY again

still no change I don't know when Grid came back on (not sure I have any way to know except looking int he meter cabinet?) but its an hour since I posted this thread, so doesn't look like its going to sort itself out by itself ...

I'll give Tesla Energy Support a ring, thanks.

Still showing the same thing at 15:28

Tried Self-Powered, and then changed back to Backup-only

Solar not doing much ... surprised its anything at all! 52.5N, overcast and horizontal rain at times!

 

[WannabeOwner]

call Tesla Energy Support as a last resort.

"Our offices are now closed"

+44 800 0988064 #7 (Energy products) #1 (Home owner of energy product)

 

[jjrandorin]

My opinion on this is that while the grid may be up, the powerwall cant sync with it for some reason. Usually there is a delay for the gateway to sync with the grid. if you are SURE the grid is actually up in your area, you could always try turning off the powerwalls, turining off the breaker for the powerwalls, and turning them back on after a wait of 30 seconds or so.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Thanks, I had also got to the point of thinking there must be some sort of synchronisation issue. Whilst Tesla Support may not be available my installer is

He says there is a switch behind the service tab in the gateway ... but only supposed to switch that if told so by Tesla. Well ... they aren't around to be consulted, so decision is made in their absence.

I'm inclined to wait until battery is close to exhausted before I do that - in case I wind up with no power at all. That would be bedtime-ish, so worst case we can just go to bed and summon support Monday morning.

Begs the question whether I am likely to have this sync. problem every time (i.e. if there is some problem with my supply), and how I actually go about testing that (I don't think I have isolation switch that will allow simulating a power cut, so perhaps I would have to get one fitted so that I can do a "fire drill")

 

[gpez]

Thanks, I had also got to the point of thinking there must be some sort of synchronisation issue. Whilst Tesla Support may not be available my installer is

He says there is a switch behind the service tab in the gateway ... but only supposed to switch that if told so by Tesla. Well ... they aren't around to be consulted, so decision is made in their absence.

I'm inclined to wait until battery is close to exhausted before I do that - in case I wind up with no power at all. That would be bedtime-ish, so worst case we can just go to bed and summon support Monday morning.

Begs the question whether I am likely to have this sync. problem every time (i.e. if there is some problem with my supply), and how I actually go about testing that (I don't think I have isolation switch that will allow simulating a power cut, so perhaps I would have to get one fitted so that I can do a "fire drill")

Couple of thoughts:

1) Are there any other breakers/fuses between the utility and your home? Before my Powerwall off-grid frequency setting was fixed my AFCI/GFCI breakers would randomly trip when the Powerwall kicked in, presumably due to the frequency change. Even if a breaker looks like it is closed give it a cycle (open it then close it again). My thinking here is that if something tripped your meter could be powered but a link to your home is still open somewhere. Of course I'm in the US so I'm not familiar with how UK homes are hooked up.

2) You can query the Powerwall directly via the APIs to see what the last grid fault was. This may not be super helpful as it's coded but it may be revealing as to why it's not thinking grid power is available. If you're tech savvy and feeling adventurous details on how to query the Powerwall directly via command line tools are here: Powerwall 2 Gateway API Documentation (look for "/api/system_status/grid_faults")

 

[boaterva]

I had the power fail three times over the space of two hours for ten minutes each a week ago. Each time when the power came back, the PWs/gateway went back to grid power within a few minutes. Not sure what would be stopping that in your case.

As was said, I could guess if it doesn’t like the quality of the power it would be an issue. (I also run only in 100% backup mode. Stormwatch shouldn’t matter as that only means the batteries are charged more than usual, not that transfer is done any differently.)

All the power should go directly to the gateway so it’s strange that it doesn’t ‘like’ the grid power especially if the meter is on, as they told you and you verified.

My gateway has a reset button inside the main cover which may be something to try. You just push a non-conducting rod through the hole to reset the gateway (TEG) itself, if it’s stuck somehow. I had to do that when the local wifi would not come up one time.

 

[sashton]

I had a Backup Gateway 2 which after functioning correctly for three months started to refuse to switch back to grid mode after grid power was restored. Sadly it happened at a weekend and it was at that point I discovered that Tesla do not offer weekend support. Eventually I managed to contact a director of Tesla UK who just told me to peel off the warning sticker and push the slider to reset the contactor. I did and all was OK again. After this happened three times Tesla replaced the BuG and we have had no issues since.
PS on the BuG V2 this is separate to the reset button which just reboots the gateway but does not reset the contactor.

 

[jimbo_hippo]

I had a Backup Gateway 2 which after functioning correctly for three months started to refuse to switch back to grid mode after grid power was restored. Sadly it happened at a weekend and it was at that point I discovered that Tesla do not offer weekend support. Eventually I managed to contact a director of Tesla UK who just told me to peel off the warning sticker and push the slider to reset the contactor. I did and all was OK again. After this happened three times Tesla replaced the BuG and we have had no issues since.
PS on the BuG V2 this is separate to the reset button which just reboots the gateway but does not reset the contactor.

Just to help with debugging this, we didn’t suffer in the storm but we did have 3 outages of varying lengths in December from a big 2 hour one to a 2 minute one and each time the grid was reinstated swiftly and automatically.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Are there any other breakers/fuses between the utility and your home?

No, but I do think an isolator switch would be handy (for testing, / forcing grid-powercut simulation)

So ... we got to 10PM and a few minutes before that I had seen APP that PowerWall was at 6%, so I had torch in hand ready for the manual switch-over and ... everything went off ... (so I assume PowerWall had got to critically-low).

Grid did not come back on by itself.

I opened the Gateway cabinet, peeled off the "Don't use this unless Tesla tell you to" sticker and slid the rod-slide-switch.

Power came on

I waited a couple of minutes and slid it back again ... nothing appeared to happen, lights stayed on ...

I looked at the APP and it was back to showing big X for the grid, and 5% battery and after a very short time everything went off. So I went back and slid the slider-switch to get the grid back again, and then left it like that.

I haven't had a chance to call Tesla Support yet, but planning to do that shortly.

 

[WannabeOwner]

You can query the Powerwall directly via the APIs to see what the last grid fault was

I fancy having a go at that, although would prefer something off-the-shelf if there is a TeslaFi equivalent for PowerWall? I'm techie enough to do the programming, but not got the time to spare

 

[JohnRatsey]

I fancy having a go at that, although would prefer something off-the-shelf if there is a TeslaFi equivalent for PowerWall? I'm techie enough to do the programming, but not got the time to spare

You don't need a lot of programming expertise to type " https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/api/system_status/grid_faults " into your web browser address bar. The browser should turn the result into something readable.

 

[bob_p]

Is there a list of the "api" pages for the Gateway web server?

 

[cwied]

Is there a list of the "api" pages for the Gateway web server?

vloschiavo/powerwall2

 

[bob_p]

Thanks!