Why would supplying the nominal voltage the devices were designed for cause them to fail?
This. If you have 120v devices working above nominal voltage, why are you worried about them if the are forced to work below? As long as the voltage is in the devices rated operating voltage range they should be find, otherwise they are poorly designed and built devices and if you want to protect them put them on a double conversion inline UPS and/or power conditioning equipment.
Lower the input voltage, the higher the current. Current causes heat and devices to fail. Also motors might not start with lower voltage, causing motors to burn up.
But again, 120/240 volts is nominal. It’s what everything is designed for. So you’re not running more current through anything that wasn’t explicitly designed to handle it. The fact that your house grid connection is higher is immaterial and not without its own potential challenges. Your post implies higher voltage is always better and easier on electronics and that isn’t necessarily the case.
Lots of consumer electronics want something like 5-12 volts DC so everything goes through a transformer/rectifier in any case, and most of those can accept a wide range of input voltages.
True, but my stuff is use to the high side of the tolerance for US voltage. Running off grid at lower then my normal voltage could case something to fail. And if powerwall puts out 120V/240V at inverter, voltage at devices will be 2 volts lower if they pull much current.
You’re saying this, but I just don’t think there’s any reason at all to believe it’s true.
You can pick a few loads you are concerned about and measure the current on vs off grid to see the difference. Frankly, I doubt you will see loads drawing much more current at 240V vs 252V. For large resistive loads (e.g. electric dryer/oven) you will likely see noticeably higher current draw with higher voltage.
I agree. Not more than (252-240)/240 or 5%...
TRUE, except for resistive loads. AC motors use more current as well as switching power supplies. I haven’t checked heating elements, but they fall in the class of things I don’t care about, and long gone are incandescent light bulbs which were resistive.
Holds solid at my house, year round. My solar causes a 2-4V rise at the micro inverters.
