We’ve had a couple of brief outages the last several days of just a couple minutes each. Both times, the UPS reported outages of 5 minutes and the inverters were off for 15 minutes. Just want to confirm this is the normal behavior and neither can be set to shorter times?
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- Thread starter zƬesla
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Do you have powerwalls or not? Inverters are typically programmed to monitor the power for 5 minutes after an outage or a glitch and once the power has been stable for 5 minutes they should come back online.
It seems unusual that yours would take 15 minutes to come back up, unless the power continued to be unstable. I believe that for a solar only install the inverter only reports it’s status every 15 minutes. So if you do have a solar only install then I’m wondering if the inverters are coming online after 5 minutes, but the app isn’t updated for 15 minutes.
As far as UPS’s go, they will also typically monitor the power condition for a little while before they switch back to grid power. 5 minutes seems longer than normal, but it’s not outrageously long. Some more advanced UPS’s will allow you to adjust this time, but most consumer grade units do not.
It seems unusual that yours would take 15 minutes to come back up, unless the power continued to be unstable. I believe that for a solar only install the inverter only reports it’s status every 15 minutes. So if you do have a solar only install then I’m wondering if the inverters are coming online after 5 minutes, but the app isn’t updated for 15 minutes.
As far as UPS’s go, they will also typically monitor the power condition for a little while before they switch back to grid power. 5 minutes seems longer than normal, but it’s not outrageously long. Some more advanced UPS’s will allow you to adjust this time, but most consumer grade units do not.
Ok, if you have Powerwalls that changes things. If the powerwalls are fully charged (98% or more) then when you have an outage and go off grid the TEG will raise the powerline frequency to turn off the inverters and stop then from coming back online. The reason for this is because when the powerwalls are fully charged there will be nowhere for excess solar power to go.
The system will run on the powerwalls only until they get down to about 97%. Then the frequency will be lowered and the inverters can come back online (after a 5 minute wait).
It’s likely that your UPS doesn’t like the high frequency and is staying on battery until the frequency comes down.
The system will run on the powerwalls only until they get down to about 97%. Then the frequency will be lowered and the inverters can come back online (after a 5 minute wait).
It’s likely that your UPS doesn’t like the high frequency and is staying on battery until the frequency comes down.
I get that. Once grid comes back on though, is it normal for it to take 15 minutes for inverters to kick in? That's the part I'm wondering if it's a NE-Grid requirement.
I'll need to check the long UPS thread again. I had thought with the TEG set at 63 and the UPS tolerance being 60 +- 3, they should have been ok.
I wouldn’t expect that. If it was just a glitch and the powerwalls were full then I could see it taking 10 minutes to restart. When the power glitched the TEG would switch to the powerwalls and raise the frequency, which would shut off the inverters. It would then monitor the power and as long as it was clean for 5 minutes then it would switch back to the grid, which would lower the frequency and allow the inverters to restart after their 5 minute delay.
You could always do your own test. Turn off the AC breaker on the inverters, then turn it back on. That will cause the inverters to shut down and then they should take 5 minutes (or longer if they are programmed to wait longer) to come back online.
It sounds like you might just barely be on the edge of tolerance. If the TEG is raising the frequency slightly higher than 3 or the UPS is tripping just under 3 then you could see the UPS being unhappy. The two devices might not be calibrated exactly the same. You could get a Kill A Watt to see what your frequency is.
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