Powerwalls wouldnt turn on after toggling switch.

[Eric99]

I installed a whole home surge protector today. Turned off grid breaker, then turned the switch off on both powerwalls.
Took about 10 min to finish up the wiring.
Started by turning back on the powerwalls. Nothing happened, no green lights, no clicks. Waited about 5 min still nothing. I then turned powerwall switches off, turned the inverter/powerwall breakers off and waited a few min. Then breakers back on, and powerwalls back on. Still nothing for about 5 min so i decided to turn the grid breaker back on. Within a few seconds i heard a click and the powerwalls turned on.

I was very surprised that i could not restart the system without grid power.
Any thoughts?

 

[arnolddeleon]

I installed a whole home surge protector today. Turned off grid breaker, then turned the switch off on both powerwalls.
Took about 10 min to finish up the wiring.
Started by turning back on the powerwalls. Nothing happened, no green lights, no clicks. Waited about 5 min still nothing. I then turned powerwall switches off, turned the inverter/powerwall breakers off and waited a few min. Then breakers back on, and powerwalls back on. Still nothing for about 5 min so i decided to turn the grid breaker back on. Within a few seconds i heard a click and the powerwalls turned on.

I was very surprised that i could not restart the system without grid power.
Any thoughts?

I believe this is inline with what @Vines described in another thread on gateway behavior. Basically without grid power and Powerwall power the gateway will effectively need a black start. Since you turned off the Powerwalls with their local switch they probably needed to also be started and without the gateway they couldn't start. There is apparently procedure involving applying 12V to gateway that would have allowed you start up without the grid. Fortunately in your case you could just turn on the grid breaker. I suspect if you didn't turn of the switches on the Powerwalls but instead had just isolated them with their breakers it would have been fine.

 

[Eric99]

Thank you! Wow that was just last week. Timely topic and good info. Real life scenario would be if you have an extended outage and drain the powerwalls overnight, you are kinda screwed. Unless that built in buffer keeps it alive and there is sun the next day.

 

[miimura]

Thank you! Wow that was just last week. Timely topic and good info. Real life scenario would be if you have an extended outage and drain the powerwalls overnight, you are kinda screwed. Unless that built in buffer keeps it alive and there is sun the next day.

Yes, that is the way it's supposed to work. On a timer, the Gateway will wake up the Powerwalls when there should be sunlight and and see if the solar will start up and charge them.