Slightly OT: Charger interference with data over powerline from solar inverters?

[ezevphl]

This may nor may not be related to my Tesla, but my solar installer seems to think its a possibility.

I have solar panels with microinverters that communicate over the powerlines to a central enphase envoy monitoring device. Recently they seem to have issues with the signal and although the panels are producing, they are not reporting the data. Its happened a couple times in the last month.

The most recent electrical changes seem to be the addition of the 50amp, 14-50 outlet and occasional car charging.
The communication issues do not correlate with car charging times.

My solar folks are not knowledgeable enough about the car charging, and the regular electrician isn't as familiar with power-line networking or data communication.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with a Tesla and microinverters that communicate to a central monitoring device.

 

[MikeATL]

I played around with X10 lights years ago and they used power-line communication (probably a lot less sophisticated.). They worked for a long time then suddenly stopped working consistently...turned out to be a Paper Shredder that was presumably putting a lot of noise over the power lines.

Try turning off all the breakers in the house and see if that fixes it. If so, then start turning breakers back on one by one until the problem resumes (once you have the problem breaker, then start unplugging things on that breaker.)


BTW, if anyone wants some X10 modules and switches, they’re sitting in my electronics recycle bin!

 

[ezevphl]

I played around with X10 lights years ago and they used power-line communication (probably a lot less sophisticated.). They worked for a long time then suddenly stopped working consistently...turned out to be a Paper Shredder that was presumably putting a lot of noise over the power lines.

Try turning off all the breakers in the house and see if that fixes it. If so, then start turning breakers back on one by one until the problem resumes (once you have the problem breaker, then start unplugging things on that breaker.)


BTW, if anyone wants some X10 modules and switches, they’re sitting in my electronics recycle bin!

So when you ran the paper shredder it just suddenly kicked off enough noise to mess up the data and the feed wouldn't come back on its own?

Counting hte solar and EV I have about 30 breakers... so this may not be my preferred method especially considering that there is a regular communication delay which means each would need to be off for a bit.

 

[patrick40363]

This may nor may not be related to my Tesla, but my solar installer seems to think its a possibility.

I have solar panels with microinverters that communicate over the powerlines to a central enphase envoy monitoring device. Recently they seem to have issues with the signal and although the panels are producing, they are not reporting the data. Its happened a couple times in the last month.

The most recent electrical changes seem to be the addition of the 50amp, 14-50 outlet and occasional car charging.
The communication issues do not correlate with car charging times.

My solar folks are not knowledgeable enough about the car charging, and the regular electrician isn't as familiar with power-line networking or data communication.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with a Tesla and microinverters that communicate to a central monitoring device.

I have a set of panels using the same system. There has never been a problem. I have been using the same set-up for my car charging since 2012. The only time the envoy goes down is you lose power at home or the envoy website is down. Unplug the envoy unit and let it search again.

 

[MikeATL]

So when you ran the paper shredder it just suddenly kicked off enough noise to mess up the data and the feed wouldn't come back on its own?

So, an X10 signal is "turn off that light" or "turn on that light" when you press a button... in my set-up they worked with 95% reliability at first then dropped to 10%. The Paper Shredder that ended up being the problem didn't even have to be running (it was powered on in "standby mode") and it was interfering. I ended up putting a filter on that appliance.

I have about 30 breakers... so this may not be my preferred method

I worked in IT for a few decades and this approach was often our only choice for solving some complex problems ... If you have a suspicion as to where the problem might be (Tesla Charger?) then you can maybe get lucky and guess without shutting down the whole house.

 

[todd_sd]

Do you have a dedicated circuit for your Enphase Envoy Communications Gateway?

We have a similar solar installation, and when it was being configured, we found that having anything else plugged in to the circuit that the Envoy was connected to caused problems. The solution was to have a new outlet installed on its own circuit for the Envoy to use.

Good luck!

 

[ezevphl]

Do you have a dedicated circuit for your Enphase Envoy Communications Gateway?

We have a similar solar installation, and when it was being configured, we found that having anything else plugged in to the circuit that the Envoy was connected to caused problems. The solution was to have a new outlet installed on its own circuit for the Envoy to use.

Good luck!

It shares a circuit, but that one currently only has lights on it. Its been plugged in to the same outlet for 3 years.
I will definitely try others, but other dedicated circuits are quite far from the panel, so this was the compromise between being close to the panel and near enough to wifi.

 

[mspohr]

I have 16 M250 and 9 S280 Enphase inverters. My gateway is at the service entrance on a circuit with the garage outlets. My HPWC is right next to the gateway on it's own circuit about 3 feet from the breaker panel.
Haven't had any problems with the Enphase gateway other than that every few months it does seem to get confused and stops reporting completely and needs a reboot but I can't correlate this with HPWC use. HPWC is used several times a week.
It is good practice to have the gateway plugged into a circuit close to where the microinverters feed into the service entrance.