PW phone app backup notification

[BIC1]

After installing PW2 and doing 6 outage tests over the first 6 months, I got the phone app push notification when power went off and also back on. The notifications, both power on and off, appear to be delayed about 10 minutes before receiving push notification on phone app. Is this normal?

Since then, I've had two actual outages, one 3 minutes & one 6 minutes, according to app history. I never received notification for either of these outages. If I hadn't randomly looked at app history, would never had known. I checked settings, still correct for notifications. Any idea why I didn't get these notifications? Thanks.

 

[charlesj]

After installing PW2 and doing 6 outage tests over the first 6 months, I got the phone app push notification when power went off and also back on. The notifications, both power on and off, appear to be delayed about 10 minutes before receiving push notification on phone app. Is this normal?

Since then, I've had two actual outages, one 3 minutes & one 6 minutes, according to app history. I never received notification for either of these outages. If I hadn't randomly looked at app history, would never had known. I checked settings, still correct for notifications. Any idea why I didn't get these notifications? Thanks.

I don't have answers for you. I did some grid down testing and notification was mostly a miss even though I have all the boxes marked, sound, badge, banner. I may have gotten a single banner.
One test went 29 min. Certainly no sound or a badge. A banner is easy to miss and notification is important to perhaps power down some uses.

 

[jboy210]

Those are pretty short outages. Everything in the system seems to have 300 seconds (5 minutes) delays. I wonder if the text reporting is similar. Perhaps the Energy Gateway does not tell the Energy server to send a text if the grid come back up within that time period.

 

[BIC1]

This is a critical function--not just nice too have--I, and I'm sure many others, have to manage household use of power while on battery. Can't manage if you don't know about it.

 

[wjgjr]

Those are pretty short outages. Everything in the system seems to have 300 seconds (5 minutes) delays. I wonder if the text reporting is similar. Perhaps the Energy Gateway does not tell the Energy server to send a text if the grid come back up within that time period.

When I was running off-grid before getting authority to operate on-grid, that was my experience. Every time I manually cut the grid off I would get an alert, but it seemed to be about 5-10 minutes after, and the same when I re-enabled the grid.

That said, if the intent is only to notify for longer (>5 min) outages, it would be good to have that documented, and I'm not sure it is.

 

[jboy210]

This is a critical function--not just nice too have--I, and I'm sure many others, have to manage household use of power while on battery. Can't manage if you don't know about it.

If the grid comes back in 5 minutes or less of battery use I not sure how much load management is needed.

 

[jboy210]

I did a bit off googling and came up with this which define outages of less than 5 minutes as "momentary". It would be interesting to know if Tesla is filtering notification of "momentary" power outage.

Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI). This index is based on the number of times the average customer is interrupted by Momentary Outage events each year. Momentary Outage events are outages that last 5 minutes or less. In 2018, the PG&E MAIFI was 1.479 per customer.

This number and others are reported to the California PUC as part of Electric Reliability Reports

 

[boaterva]

Yeah, pretty sure nothing is done for under five minutes. I have no logged outages for a few minutes and no notifications or emails. And do have then for five minutes, etc.

 

[jjrandorin]

Yeah, pretty sure nothing is done for under five minutes. I have no logged outages for a few minutes and no notifications or emails. And do have then for five minutes, etc.

The app definitely catalogs outages less than 5 minutes, though. I have never gotten a notification for one shorter than 5 minutes but my app has logged some shorter than that.

I am not sure what triggers the alert either, as I only remember getting 1 such alert, even though I have a couple outages longer than 5 minutes in my log. Here is a shot of my outage log, and you can see outages as short as 5 seconds logged there. There is a mix here of "real" utility outages (a couple of them, the one for 5 seconds and the 23 seconds, and one of the 5 minute ones), and others self generated by me throwing the main breaker.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

The app definitely catalogs outages less than 5 minutes, though. I have never gotten a notification for one shorter than 5 minutes but my app has logged some shorter than that.

I am not sure what triggers the alert either, as I only remember getting 1 such alert, even though I have a couple outages longer than 5 minutes in my log. Here is a shot of my outage log, and you can see outages as short as 5 seconds logged there. There is a mix here of "real" utility outages (a couple of them, the one for 5 seconds and the 23 seconds, and one of the 5 minute ones), and others self generated by me throwing the main breaker.

View attachment 570927

That's odd. We have a lot of outages shown in our Backup History and have never seen one that wasn't at least 5 minutes.

 

[wjgjr]

The app definitely catalogs outages less than 5 minutes, though. I have never gotten a notification for one shorter than 5 minutes but my app has logged some shorter than that.

I am not sure what triggers the alert either, as I only remember getting 1 such alert, even though I have a couple outages longer than 5 minutes in my log. Here is a shot of my outage log, and you can see outages as short as 5 seconds logged there. There is a mix here of "real" utility outages (a couple of them, the one for 5 seconds and the 23 seconds, and one of the 5 minute ones), and others self generated by me throwing the main breaker.

It's interesting because my backup history log shows 63 events and none are under 5 minutes, but 12 are exactly 5 minutes (the rest are longer, and are manual disconnects for off-grid operation.) The 5-minute events are all the power flickers, some testing, or other issues that cause the gateway to tell the PWs to take over. Consistent with what others have reported, it seems to wait 5 minutes to attempt to re-connect to the grid and logs the event as lasting that amount of time.

 

[jjrandorin]

That's odd. We have a lot of outages shown in our Backup History and have never seen one that wasn't at least 5 minutes.

There must be "some state" that causes it to record these like this. My install date was Jan 6th, and the "outages" there were self induced.... the first one from the installer showing me the system, which reads 4 minutes" and the second one me seeing how fast things swap over and whether I needed to buy some UPS devices ( I did).

 

[jboy210]

That's odd. We have a lot of outages shown in our Backup History and have never seen one that wasn't at least 5 minutes.

Wow!!! That is a lot of outages. Were you just playing around with the main breaker, or does that reflect you power situation?

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Wow!!! That is a lot of outages. We you just playing around with the main breaker, or does that reflect you power situation?

Our utility is providing dirty power and we're waiting on them to replace or add a transformer.

 

[jboy210]

Our utility is providing dirty power and we're waiting on them to replace or add a transformer.

You guys are lucky you have 4 powerwalls and a ton of solar panels. How are your neighbors effected by these power glitches?

 

[BrettS]

That's odd. We have a lot of outages shown in our Backup History and have never seen one that wasn't at least 5 minutes.

All the outages will be at least 5 minutes. When the power comes back after an outage the gateway will monitor it for 5 minutes to make sure that the power is stable before it switches you back to the grid. So even if the ‘outage’ is just caused by a little power blip that you or your neighbors might not have even noticed otherwise you will still be off grid for at least 5 minutes before the gateway determines that the power is stable again and puts you back on grid.

 

[jjrandorin]

All the outages will be at least 5 minutes. When the power comes back after an outage the gateway will monitor it for 5 minutes to make sure that the power is stable before it switches you back to the grid. So even if the ‘outage’ is just caused by a little power blip that you or your neighbors might not have even noticed otherwise you will still be off grid for at least 5 minutes before the gateway determines that the power is stable again and puts you back on grid.

Thats how I understand it too... but take a look at the screenshot I posted earlier in the thread of my "backup" screen.

 

[BrettS]

Thats how I understand it too... but take a look at the screenshot I posted earlier in the thread of my "backup" screen.

Hmm, that’s really interesting. I’m not sure what to make of that. Is your gateway actually putting you back on grid after a few seconds? I imagine that 5 minute delay is configurable somewhere (by Tesla, not by the end user). So I wonder if your system is configured differently for some reason. In my case I know that each time I reconnect to the grid I get a 5 minute delay from when I make the connection until the gateway does the transfer.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

You guys are lucky you have 4 powerwalls and a ton of solar panels. How are your neighbors effected by these power glitches?

The power doesn't always go out totally but is usually 'dirty' and either low voltage or frequency. The neighbors might not notice as many issues since the grid is technically still up but providing dirty power. Our Powerwalls see the dirty power and are kicking in a lot in the morning as things heat up. Two of the neighbors are currently considering solar. I think one has already signed a contract with Sunrun.

Since we have 4 Powerwalls and a large solar system, we were able to adjust our 'peak' hours to start a lot earlier. That's helped reduce the outages from 36+ per day down to less than a dozen. Fortunately we don't get phone notifications for the 5 minute outages.

 

[jjrandorin]

Hmm, that’s really interesting. I’m not sure what to make of that. Is your gateway actually putting you back on grid after a few seconds? I imagine that 5 minute delay is configurable somewhere (by Tesla, not by the end user). So I wonder if your system is configured differently for some reason. In my case I know that each time I reconnect to the grid I get a 5 minute delay from when I make the connection until the gateway does the transfer.

I will try to test it sometime this weekend. What I dont know is, is there a difference between "throwing the breaker myself" and an actual outage? I can confirm 100% that the "5 second" outage you see in my backup history was not me or anyone in my home doing anything. My wife and I were watching TV / cooking ( respectively) at the time.

Im trying to remember but for that one specifically (the 5 second one) I believe it was mid morning, so the powerwalls were NOT full. The state of my home was " Solar providing 100% of power used by the home, AND left over solar charging powerwalls".

I suspect that, in that specific state (solar providing 100% of power that the home needs, along with additional power to charge the powerwalls, powerwalls NOT full), that if you have any sort of power outage, there is no sync time, because the grid is not "on" at all at that point.... you are running basically off grid, but grid connected in the above state.

(speculation inc)

If there is a power outage in that state, since solar is still powering the home (it was fully powering the home prior to the outage) and there is no issue with "excess solar needing a place to go" (powerwalls not full), maybe the app just logs the "outage" and your home continues on being charged by solar, etc? It makes sense if you think about it. Home is already powered by solar, so no need to "switch to powerwall power". Solar doesnt need to be "shut down" by powerwalls because powerwalls are not full (excess solar has a place to go). No issue with "grid sync" because the home is already being powered by solar, thus synced to it. No grid powering home prior to "outage" so no need to sync back...

Makes sense, right?