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System Not Producing, Anything I Can Do?

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I got an email on Wednesday afternoon that my system wasn't producing. I don't have any Powerwalls and my inverter is the Solar Edge HD Wave (without the LCD screen). I went through the power cycle, waiting 24 hours, and my system still wasn't producing. The LEDs on the unit are a bit confusing but most of the time I get a solid green LED and then the blue LED will come on solid. That should mean that the system is producing and communicating yet the app and my utility company's portal don't show me feeding any energy.

I called Tesla and they aren't coming out for a week and I was surprised that they didn't even try any debug steps over the phone with me. I would think that they'd be able to try and run some commands on the inverter to gather some additional information. I've seen where others on the forum have called SE directly and they've sent replacement units. Of course this has to happen in the middle of Summer when the temp is 100 degrees. My fear is that some yahoo will come in a week and just say oh your inverter is bad, we need to order one, and then I'll have to wait who knows how long until my system is back up and running.

I don't have ethernet connected to the inverter and now question if I could connect to the unit maybe I could get some actual information as to what is going wrong.

Any helpful advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
You say did the power cycle, but also seem to have already concluded that the inverter is the problem. It seems to me that the problem could be in the Gateway 2, especially since the inverter LEDs report that it is OK. My question: did you power cycle only the inverter? I think you need to turn off the circuit breaker at the interface between the Gateway and the grid.
 
Yes, I did the following
  1. Move the toggle switch to OFF on the inverter
  2. Turned the big knob off on the inverter
  3. Through the big panel off (whatever that's called between the inverter and main breaker panel)
  4. Turned the breakers off inside the main panel.
I thought about this only being an issue with the gateway and getting information sent back to Tesla but that's why I logged into SMUD (my utility company) and checked my energy usage. The data on SMUD matched what the Tesla app shows. Around 1pm on Monday I stopped feeding power back onto the grid and haven't generated any power since then (according to the app and SMUD).

Normally I would see the red message on the from of the black gateway box if this was just a communication issue but I haven't seen anything wrong with the gateway.
 
Tesla rather confusingly has two very different items called a "Gateway". One of these is the Backup Gateway 2, and is the item you mentioned in your step 3. In my opinion, the Backup Gateway 3 could be the problem rather than the inverter. It "provides energy management and monitoring for solar self-consumption, time-based control, and backup". It is not just a collection of circuit breakers.
 
No, I'm sorry, I don't have a gateway like you referenced. What I was talking about is the little black box that connects to your router and communicates with the inverter via ZigBee. What I referred to in step 3 is the disconnect box, see in the my picture attached, the upper right box.

I read through the inverter manual and it says that if my LED is solid green then I'm producing. You move the toggle switch into the P position for 2 seconds and the LEDs will then display an error or the current production percentage. When I do that I saw both the GREEN and BLUE LED go solid and since that's not one of the possible error codes I must assume that this is displaying "Percentage of AC Production" and those both solid means 66 - 100%.

I watched the LEDs and after about 10 seconds it switched back to the solid GREEN, then after a while (maybe 1-2 minutes) the BLUE LED went solid for about 30 seconds.

So now it certainly seems as though everything is OK and if it wasn't for SMUD not showing any energy going back to them (they are 1 day delayed) I'd say that this is just a communication issue. I've never looked but I guess the only other thing I can try and do is to make sure the AC is running and then go watch the power meter and see if it runs backwards (is that what it does when I'm sending energy back onto the grid?).

How else can I confirm that I'm really generating energy and everything is OK?
 

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No, the solar app updates when I open it and it keeps showing this message for the past few days. I can scroll back and look at Monday to see when it last had data.
I basically did the same "reset" procedure yesterday and checked SMUD again today but it doesn't look like they are getting any energy from me.

This is a really odd one if I'm really not producing energy since by all accounts the inverter is saying that I am.
 

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No, I'm sorry, I don't have a gateway like you referenced. What I was talking about is the little black box that connects to your router and communicates with the inverter via ZigBee. What I referred to in step 3 is the disconnect box, see in the my picture attached, the upper right box.

I read through the inverter manual and it says that if my LED is solid green then I'm producing. You move the toggle switch into the P position for 2 seconds and the LEDs will then display an error or the current production percentage. When I do that I saw both the GREEN and BLUE LED go solid and since that's not one of the possible error codes I must assume that this is displaying "Percentage of AC Production" and those both solid means 66 - 100%.

I watched the LEDs and after about 10 seconds it switched back to the solid GREEN, then after a while (maybe 1-2 minutes) the BLUE LED went solid for about 30 seconds.

So now it certainly seems as though everything is OK and if it wasn't for SMUD not showing any energy going back to them (they are 1 day delayed) I'd say that this is just a communication issue. I've never looked but I guess the only other thing I can try and do is to make sure the AC is running and then go watch the power meter and see if it runs backwards (is that what it does when I'm sending energy back onto the grid?).

How else can I confirm that I'm really generating energy and everything is OK?
You could look at the generation meter (below the disconnect) and see if it is counting and the little black dots are moving . . . Also note the number and check it again in an hour. Should go up.

You can look at your main meter, but if your solar production is less than house load, it may still show consumption instead of generation. The direction of the moving black dots indicates consumption (right) or generation (left).
 
Tesla rather confusingly has two very different items called a "Gateway". One of these is the Backup Gateway 2, and is the item you mentioned in your step 3. In my opinion, the Backup Gateway 3 could be the problem rather than the inverter. It "provides energy management and monitoring for solar self-consumption, time-based control, and backup". It is not just a collection of circuit breakers.

As you mention, there are two devices called a gateway. You only get the backup gateway if you have powerwalls. OP said:

I don't have any Powerwalls and my inverter is the Solar Edge HD Wave (without the LCD screen).

So wouldnt have the backup gateway 2 you mention. They would have the "Solar" gateway, which is a little black box connected to your router that for the most part just forwards data to tesla on production, and possibly allows them to access the inverters (depending on inverter).
 
my inverter is the Solar Edge HD Wave (without the LCD screen).
There is a Code on the side of it that you can scan to check the status of the inverter.

Unfortunately, it is sounding to me like your inverter may have failed. I have 2 solar edge inverters on my 3 year old system. The first one failed last October and it took Tesla 3 weeks to replace. The second one failed end of May and I am still waiting for it to be replaced. Finally have an appointment for Aug 5, which will make a 72 day outage for me during peak summer solar production. Hope your situation is better.
 
Good tips, thanks. Looking at that meter it doesn't look like I am producing. I don't see the dots moving but on my main panel meter the dots are moving from left to right. I'll check again later and see if the panel meter has any different numbers. What I've attached are the 3 screens that cycle through on the display.
 

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There is a Code on the side of it that you can scan to check the status of the inverter.
I know one of the QR codes is access to the internal WiFi AP when enabled, I'll look for another code but would that work even if my system isn't directly connected to SE via ethernet?

It seems to me that people with solar edge inverters might be able to contact solar edge directly
That was my next step, hoping that if nothing else I could talk with someone intelligent (as opposed to our other customer service contacts) who could at least help me check if there really is a problem with my inverter.

This system was installed last October so well under a year of service. Rather disappointing..
 
My working solar edge inverter has a solid green light. The non-working one sometimes has a flashing green and sometimes solid blue. The QR code on the side is what I can use to get the status, but realized I am scanning it from the Solar Edge app.
F64AA3AE-C359-4AB4-B312-C3B5C91F04CD.jpeg
Although you have a Tesla system, you can get a Solar Edge account to separately see the info through their portal. Let’s you see per panel data.
 
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Are you connected to the inverter with ethernet or are you still using the Tesla black box gateway? I thought you needed to connected with thernet to be able to communicate with SE?
I am not sure of the details of my system connections, which are complicated by it originally was set up solar only while I waited a year for Powerwalls, which were installed 2 years ago. I believe the inverters are WiFi, communicating with the black gateway that is connected to the internet with Ethernet. For the first year the black gateway used to stop communicating on a regular basis and have to be rebooted, but that has not been a problem since I got the Powerwalls.

A few pictures, if they help at all. Inverter on the right is currently working; one on the left is dead. (Even worse, it was a replacement installed on July 1 but was evidently DOA, so they ordered yet another. So I’ve had 3 inverters fail in 3 years.)

70F51795-2E08-41D8-8231-79A117415D01.jpeg

7AC2590F-A442-4587-95FC-8A0D2C85B145.jpeg
 
I thought once you got Powerwalls the small black box gateway wasn't used. Maybe someone else can chime in about that. I don't see an ethernet cable going into your inverters so I'm confused how your inverter would talk to SE since the black boax gateway only talks to Tesla AFAIK