Problems with Home Energy Gateway App

[dds28]

Since earlier this month, my app has been sporadically working. I noticed that it only works during around 2-8 pm or so. Anytime outside of those ours shows the data is unavailable. I have reached out to Tesla and they cannot figure it out either. I tried resetting the Gateway but it still has no Cellular data. I am also unable to log into the wifi network of the gateway outside of these hours. I am on 1.43.3. Has anyone run into these problems?

I have had no problems for a whole year until now. I have been on back up mode for about 7500 hours. I turned off the breakers since I cannot export to the grid. For some reason, my inverter still exports to the grid when my powerwalls are fully charged. With back up mode, the solar panels shut down as designed when in back up mode. Another issue to take up with Tesla.

 

[boaterva]

No problem here logging in locally on either 43.3 or newer 44.2 at any time of day. That makes no sense at all that the wifi would not be available certain times of day. Since you’ve powered it down, that takes of my only suggestion which was the reset button on the TEG (gateway).

I’d suggest they roll someone to look at it locally as it may be a bad board but the time schedule for WiFi makes no sense at all.

 

[gpez]

I've had just a terrible experience with the TEG wifi and even the cell signal. First my installer placed the TEG and one of the string breaker panels physically touching each other meaning the TEG antenna (the black cylinder nub looking thing) is literally blocked by a metal housing. My wifi router is on the other side of the garage wall opposite the Powerwall so while there are two walls in between the TEG is no more than 25 feet from the router. While the TEG saw my wifi signal it showed only 1 bar and tried to but was unable to connect. My Enlighten Envoy solar gateway is further away from my router than the TEG on the same garage wall and it has no problem connecting and staying connected. I'm in tech by profession so I'm well versed in debugging these sort of things - nothing I did helped. I measured the wifi signal at the point of the TEG and found it to be more than adequate, my laptop had no issues connecting when taken to the same spot, and a wifi extender inside the garage only helped to get it initially connected and like the OP it would drop out at regular intervals. My installer even came out and replaced the TEG antenna, moving it to the bottom of the housing so as not to be touching another enclosure. That helped but not enough and I still had connectivity issues.

Eventually I decided it wasn't worth messing with more and ran a 100 foot ethernet cable out from the crawlspace, around the garage tucked under the flashing, and plugged it in. Haven't had any connectivity issues since.

@dds28 on thing that I did find helped was to open the TEG panel and leave it open as a test to see if you're still getting drops. I think there is a design flaw with the TEG and wireless signals and I found opening the panel substantially increased the success rate. Obviously leaving the panel open full time is not a long term solution which is why I opted for the hardwired connection but if it works leaving the panel open then at least you know its a signal issue and not something broken with your hardware.

 

[JayClark]

Since earlier this month, my app has been sporadically working. I noticed that it only works during around 2-8 pm or so. Anytime outside of those ours shows the data is unavailable. I have reached out to Tesla and they cannot figure it out either. I tried resetting the Gateway but it still has no Cellular data. I am also unable to log into the wifi network of the gateway outside of these hours. I am on 1.43.3. Has anyone run into these problems?

I have had no problems for a whole year until now. I have been on back up mode for about 7500 hours. I turned off the breakers since I cannot export to the grid. For some reason, my inverter still exports to the grid when my powerwalls are fully charged. With back up mode, the solar panels shut down as designed when in back up mode. Another issue to take up with Tesla.

Not sure if this will apply in your situation, but I had some wonky gateway connectivity and eventually traced it down to another device on my network that was trying to use the same IP address as the gateway, the other device was set to statically use that IP address. When that device was "asleep" no problem, when it was active I had flakey gateway connections. So possibly a new device has been introduced into your network since the year it was working, and maybe the timing has something to do with when that device is active?

If so, you might try insuring in your router the IP address used by the gateway is reserved specifically for the gateway, and see if that helps. If another device is actually hard-wired (statically configured) for the same IP, reserving that IP for the gateway won't necessarily help until you find that device and update how it connects to the network, if that happens to be the cause.

That's all I can think of based on your description.

 

[gpez]

Not sure if this will apply in your situation, but I had some wonky gateway connectivity and eventually traced it down to another device on my network that was trying to use the same IP address as the gateway, the other device was set to statically use that IP address. When that device was "asleep" no problem, when it was active I had flakey gateway connections. So possibly a new device has been introduced into your network since the year it was working, and maybe the timing has something to do with when that device is active?

If so, you might try insuring in your router the IP address used by the gateway is reserved specifically for that device, and see if that helps. If another device is actually hard-wired (statically configured) for the same IP, reserving that IP for the gateway won't necessarily help until you find that device and update how it connects to the network, if that happens to be the cause.

That's all I can think of based on your description.

Wouldn't quite explain the lack of cell signal unless perhaps the gateway thinks its on the wifi but isn't due to the IP conflict? Guess that's possible.

One thing I should have added is that my connectivity issues were with a brand new install. If the OP is having issues that popped up after a while of smooth sailing I'd be more inclined to believe a hardware failure.

 

[dds28]

Thank you everyone for all the helpful replies. I can't think of any other devices that I've added recently. I did hit the reset button several times on the gateway but didn't seem to resolve the issue. So the sudden loss of cellular data seems strange to me as the past year I have never had a wifi connection set up on the TEG. I've been relying solely on the cellular connection to get data from the gateway. It was only after contacting Tesla did I learn that I can connect to the gate way through the TEG wifi.

@gpez I agree that I think there is a hardware failure. I need to contact Tesla again to see if they can escalate this issue to send a technician out to check.

 

[JayClark]

Wouldn't quite explain the lack of cell signal unless perhaps the gateway thinks its on the wifi but isn't due to the IP conflict? Guess that's possible.

One thing I should have added is that my connectivity issues were with a brand new install. If the OP is having issues that popped up after a while of smooth sailing I'd be more inclined to believe a hardware failure.

Agreed.

One thing I felt like I observed on my system, when I was having flakey wifi connection (before switching the gateway back to ethernet , and disabling wifi) is that the flakey wifi seemed to be the priority connection, or at least when it would "reconnect" it would take over the gateway connection, but then pretty soon lose connection, and then the gateway would switch back to ethernet, or cellular. The result was a lot of cycling between the connection types, with most of the time having no data while it was cycling. It's been a couple months since I had wifi on, so not sure if my issues were related to a firmware version or not, but I've seen a number of complaints about the reliability or "solidness" of the gateway wifi connection from the garage, even with a AP near by.

 

[Ulmo]

Since earlier this month, my app has been sporadically working. I noticed that it only works during around 2-8 pm or so. Anytime outside of those ours shows the data is unavailable. I have reached out to Tesla and they cannot figure it out either. I tried resetting the Gateway but it still has no Cellular data. I am also unable to log into the wifi network of the gateway outside of these hours. I am on 1.43.3. Has anyone run into these problems?

I have had no problems for a whole year until now. I have been on back up mode for about 7500 hours. I turned off the breakers since I cannot export to the grid. For some reason, my inverter still exports to the grid when my powerwalls are fully charged. With back up mode, the solar panels shut down as designed when in back up mode. Another issue to take up with Tesla.

Radio propagation can change. More users, different antenna patterns, different obstacles, different facilities, etc. Consider adding a wired Internet connection if that is trivial in your situation. If not, an alternative might be a compromise: a wifi connection. My PowerWall is only capable of either wired Internet or wifi. Has Tesla disabled those kinds of local connections now that they have "cellular" radio data services, or do they still allow local Internet hookups via your LAN?

 

[Ulmo]

Agreed.

One thing I felt like I observed on my system, when I was having flakey wifi connection (before switching the gateway back to ethernet , and disabling wifi) is that the flakey wifi seemed to be the priority connection, or at least when it would "reconnect" it would take over the gateway connection, but then pretty soon lose connection, and then the gateway would switch back to ethernet, or cellular. The result was a lot of cycling between the connection types, with most of the time having no data while it was cycling. It's been a couple months since I had wifi on, so not sure if my issues were related to a firmware version or not, but I've seen a number of complaints about the reliability or "solidness" of the gateway wifi connection from the garage, even with a AP near by.

If true, then disabling the inferior choices becomes necessary.

I am truly baffled why they think "wifi" is a preferred connection type compared to ethernet.

 

[jjrandorin]

Agreed.

One thing I felt like I observed on my system, when I was having flakey wifi connection (before switching the gateway back to ethernet , and disabling wifi) is that the flakey wifi seemed to be the priority connection, or at least when it would "reconnect" it would take over the gateway connection, but then pretty soon lose connection, and then the gateway would switch back to ethernet, or cellular. The result was a lot of cycling between the connection types, with most of the time having no data while it was cycling. It's been a couple months since I had wifi on, so not sure if my issues were related to a firmware version or not, but I've seen a number of complaints about the reliability or "solidness" of the gateway wifi connection from the garage, even with a AP near by.

I have all three connections (ethernet, wifi and cellular) on, on my powerwall, and it has 100% preferred ethernet so far.

 

[bob_p]

Same here - when our house was built in 2014, they ran an ethernet cable from the main connection panel inside the house to the area by the outside electrical equipment. So it was easy for our installers to connect us to wired, wireless and cellular - and our TEG has been on the wired connection every time I've checked.

 

[jjrandorin]

Radio propagation can change. More users, different antenna patterns, different obstacles, different facilities, etc. Consider adding a wired Internet connection if that is trivial in your situation. If not, an alternative might be a compromise: a wifi connection. My PowerWall is only capable of either wired Internet or wifi. Has Tesla disabled those kinds of local connections now that they have "cellular" radio data services, or do they still allow local Internet hookups via your LAN?

They allow all three to be active at once (ethernet, wifi, and cellular), at least they did on mine which was installed Jan 6th of this year (2020).

 

[getakey]

A while back, I had a problem connecting a thermostat to my wifi. Just would not connect. Finally went into my Router setup and found that there was a default limit of 25 devices. Changed it to 100. Between TVs, smartphones, PCs, etc, I can have over 40 devices connected at any one time.

 

[JayClark]

They allow all three to be active at once (ethernet, wifi, and cellular), at least they did on mine which was installed Jan 6th of this year (2020).

Yes, they do, and that was part of the problem in my case. Because the wifi would seem to take over momentary when ever it would reconnect - it caused a lot of cycling between ethernet and wifi. When wifi was strong, it would tend to settle on ethernet - but once the wifi became flakey coming & going, then it seems to cause the switching and down time. Now I just have wifi off, and ethernet is fine.

 

[cr0ntab]

Now I just have wifi off, and ethernet is fine.

You can explicitly turn off wifi on the gateway?

How does one go about this, that would be great!

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

As others have said, it almost sounds like it's somehow joining WiFi that's configured to shut off during periods of time - what kind of WiFi/router are you using? Can you ping the TEG when it becomes unreachable? (I'm assuming when you wrote "unreachable," you meant the webserver, but you may also have meant total inaccessibility.)

 

[JayClark]

You can explicitly turn off wifi on the gateway?

How does one go about this, that would be great!

Login locally to the gateway, choose network, and delete or "forget" any configured wifi connections. I guess it's not really turning it off, but it prevents it from connecting to weak connections, losing the connection, retrying, etc.

 

[dds28]

I finally was able to set up a wifi connection to my home internet network. Since my gateway celllular connection is still coming on only from 2pm -8pm give or take an hour, I was only able to access the TEG wifi during those times only. It was during that time that I was able to log in and connect the wifi. Otherwise, outside of those times the TEG wifi was not able to be logged on. Now I can check my app and it works all the time now as before the cellular went out. Still haven't solved the intermittent cellular connection though.

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

I finally was able to set up a wifi connection to my home internet network. Since my gateway celllular connection is still coming on only from 2pm -8pm give or take an hour, I was only able to access the TEG wifi during those times only. It was during that time that I was able to log in and connect the wifi. Otherwise, outside of those times the TEG wifi was not able to be logged on. Now I can check my app and it works all the time now as before the cellular went out. Still haven't solved the intermittent cellular connection though.

To me this almost seems like a local cell tower issue? I don’t know what carrier Tesla uses for the Powerwall, but I believe it’s AT&T for the cars?

Is it also possible they shut off the cell signal during that period to save money? The data is all queued anyway.

 

[charlesj]

...

Is it also possible they shut off the cell signal during that period to save money? The data is all queued anyway.

If that was the case I'd think a whole lot of people with only cell connection would be calling in to complain?