Powerwall Reset During Grid Outage

[Ulmo]

I see your load go up at 2:20PM to 8kW. What's your PW max output? Mine used to be more resilient, but now when I put a huge load like an electric dryer on to them, they no longer can handle the startup, and just shut the whole house down. Now whenever I'm in off-grid mode, I go flip the dryer breaker off and call it good.

 

[Ulmo]

NEMA, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association recommends devices tolerate up to 10% over voltage, starting from 115V, so 126.5V/253V, nearly the same upper voltage.

That doesn't seem anywhere near right. 250VACrms is the nominal voltage, and 125VACrms the nominal split voltage. I've seen our actual VACrms closer to 254 on many sunny days for several hours, and I've even seen it around 256. Half of that would be 128VACrms. Your chart says anything above 120VAC (240VAC unsplit) is a no no for more than 3ms!! For the system to trip for a relatively normal voltage that is under the nominal voltage for the reason of being "too high" would be a really odd reaction. The original electric system design was 250VAC, but for some reason, they just kept lowering the name of it to 245VAC then to 240VAC due to typical line losses, so they settled on the standard of calling it roughly 240VAC for easier rough calculations. I heard in some cities they started even calling it 235VAC, but that's just being cheap. Your chart says 120VAC (half of 240) would be considered "prohibited", an absurdly insane remark, despite the name commonly used in most discussions and documents now saying 240VAC.

The voltage goes down at night here. Right now, I'm showing 122.7 on one leg, which would be 245.4VAC, at 23:26. I live in a suburban rural area, so plenty of lines to lower the voltage.

I wonder if because I live in a big State, that they want to keep the voltage higher than high density urban areas, so they get more value out of their wire thickness, whereas in scammy Eastern cities where they have tightly packed urban areas, they may want to prefer to spin the meter faster to bill more kWh per tariff rate. Either way, here, it's measured by kWh, since the new "smart" meters know both voltage and amps, so that scam doesn't work any more.

 

[Ulmo]

PW surge capability may have degraded?

Mine sure did. My two PW2's used to be able to handle a 6kW electric dryer starting without a glitch, and now they definitely cannot, dumping the whole house. Also, they used to seamlessly smooth any kind of grid problem; now, they momentarily drop electricity to the whole house while switching into backup mode, almost as if they have to warm up to a sudden new load, causing a glitch. Some of the computers I have with oversized bigger power supplies skate through that just fine with no glitch, but everything else with smaller power supplies shuts down and restarts (I guess because of the capacitor capacity in the power supplies).

 

[aesculus]

I see your load go up at 2:20PM to 8kW. What's your PW max output? Mine used to be more resilient, but now when I put a huge load like an electric dryer on to them, they no longer can handle the startup, and just shut the whole house down. Now whenever I'm in off-grid mode, I go flip the dryer breaker off and call it good.

Mine is 10KW but that is after the event. See the gap. And in fact that is my big load (heat pumps) and when the power went out they reset and that is why they were set to come on. So this pretty much proves it was not them.

I am still calling BS on the big load theory. Just don't have any unless all the planets align and two well pumps, a spa and two heat pumps come on at the same time, which none of them did during that outage.

 

[BGbreeder]

.

That doesn't seem anywhere near right. 250VACrms is the nominal voltage, and 125VACrms the nominal split voltage. I've seen our actual VACrms closer to 254 on many sunny days for several hours, and I've even seen it around 256. Half of that would be 128VACrms. Your chart says anything above 120VAC (240VAC unsplit) is a no no for more than 3ms!! For the system to trip for a relatively normal voltage that is under the nominal voltage for the reason of being "too high" would be a really odd reaction. The original electric system design was 250VAC, but for some reason, they just kept lowering the name of it to 245VAC then to 240VAC due to typical line losses, so they settled on the standard of calling it roughly 240VAC for easier rough calculations. I heard in some cities they started even calling it 235VAC, but that's just being cheap. Your chart says 120VAC (half of 240) would be considered "prohibited", an absurdly insane remark, despite the name commonly used in most discussions and documents now saying 240VAC.

The voltage goes down at night here. Right now, I'm showing 122.7 on one leg, which would be 245.4VAC, at 23:26. I live in a suburban rural area, so plenty of lines to lower the voltage.

I wonder if because I live in a big State, that they want to keep the voltage higher than high density urban areas, so they get more value out of their wire thickness, whereas in scammy Eastern cities where they have tightly packed urban areas, they may want to prefer to spin the meter faster to bill more kWh per tariff rate. Either way, here, it's measured by kWh, since the new "smart" meters know both voltage and amps, so that scam doesn't work any more.

Perhaps I should have called out in the original post that the vertical is percent of nominal voltage, I.e. 110 means 110 x 120 = 132V. Sorry for causing any confusion.

The original post language, and details are still accurate.

BG