I survived IAN with 2 Powerwalls. Best thing ever. As storm approached, Tesla automatically filled batteries, and kept them full until the power went off. The only way I knew the power went off was because my phone alerted me. No flickering of lights at all. Unfortunately during the storm, our overwhelmed cell towers were unable to tell me how much battery we had left. However, my wife in Iowa at the time could tell me, when we could talk, which was very rare. I unplugged anything to reduce load, but left on fridge, AC, (turned up to 76), and coffee maker when needed. We were off grid for almost 5 days. Sun came out every day, and never ran low on batteries. We were cell phone charging central for the neighborhood, plus someone brought over a portable ice maker for the the neighborhood to use. Neighbors were running generators, until they ran out of gas, and lines at gas stations were 2-3 hours long. It was an absolutely fantastic investment for our house.

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Powerwalls helping to bring the neighborhood together! :)

Great demonstration on an outage with issues and what you did to fix it! Nice to see you can still communicate with the gateway, and it literally tells you somewhat what to do when having trouble with the system! The off grid charging system looks amazing! Smart way to keep the batteries from overloading! Thanks for sharing!

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Jaycee!

Cool video, I had the same problem happen to my Powerwalls when the grid was out. One good thing to keep handy is the log on to Telsa’s back door website, and keep your password handy so you can do a reset on the website as well instead of having to do the manual reset!

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Thank you for the tip Natasha! That's definitely a good idea. I'm hoping I won't have to do it again!

Good presentation, thanks. "Bad sound makes good video look bad."

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Thanks - picked up a mic based on similar feedback. May 2023 update utilized it. June coming soon.

so many interesting details. thanks for insight. subbed

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Hi Steve!! Thanks for the compliment!

This is such a helpful video as we plan our solar purchase. It’s great to hear about your experience with the Tesla Powerwalls

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

Thanks Ian!

Thanks for relating your experience with the extended outage. I haven’t had an outage yet so helpful to know what happens ahead of time and how to handle it if and when we get an outage. LED lights flickering is puzzling. Did you happen to undimmed them to see if that eliminated the flickering?

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

The lights did go back to normal once they had full power. A slight delay when turning on still, though. LEDs are DC so I wonder if the driver before the LED bulb is just cheap or more sensitive to the frequency change in the AC power?

One guess for the LED lights flickering is that perhaps the AC output from the system is not a pure sine-wave. That could certainly cause problems for some electronic equipment. But I would be surprised if that is the case. I would assume that the Tesla inverter can produce a pure sine wave...

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

I would agree that the inverter should be more than capable! I'm guessing it's cheaper electronics in the LED supplies that can't handle the higher frequencies as well. Definitely quirky!

Im in N Cal as well (hayward hills), i had my Tesla 7.2kw with 2 power walls installed last December. I also had a muti hour outage several months ago that my powerwall back up didn't work, still a mystery to this date. Definitely not overload related, very disappointed that my systems didn't backup the 1st real outage. I have a BMW i4 so the tesla EV smart feature wont work with non Tesla EVs.

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

My system had to be rewired after it was installed because it was installed not functioning. Sometimes I wonder if there still isn't something backwards with the off grid hiccup I had. Did you submit a support ticket for your outage? We have a Y and 3, so we're luckily in the ecosystem for some of these awesome features. Seems like there are some third party options though you can utilize to automate charging based on solar input.

Very cool, and helpful troubleshooting! re the car charging on-grid, the new coming app feature "drive on sunshine" should do this? Send extra solar power to the car charging automatically? Seems like that is the on-grid complement to your setting you used. Thanks!

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

It sounds like Drive On Sunshine will accomplish exactly what I was hoping! Kind of funny that app update came out hours after I put my video out! Can't wait for the feature to be activated!

Love all this was thinking of a battery backup when they release there new product. I want something like sense. But for Tesla app to monitor 3rd party batteries. Since there software is great.

@TheMahkus

Жыл бұрын

I used an Emporia Vue for a little bit while I was in the Ohmconnect program so I could monitor my usage down to the watt-hour. It was around $30 I believe...but just did total house draw and not individual circuits like Sense.

Great video. Did you say charge point home automatically adjust amperage based on the solar? If so, I have not seen that in my home flex.

@TheMahkus

10 ай бұрын

Thanks Russell! For the off-grid mode, your car and powerwalls/gateway will communicate to determine charging rates. The Chargepoint is essentially a glorified extension cord that allows whatever is requested to pass through it. There's also now Charge on Solar to utilize that similar charging behavior while on grid. I have more details on that on another video if you wanna check that out!

@RussellHogan

10 ай бұрын

@@TheMahkus Thanks. Great video. I got two Powerwalls also. I think the key component is the Tesla car which I do not have. I have the Chevy bolt and I3. 😎

After almost 4 years with our solar system including powerwall, we had a couple of battery outages (changing from 100% to 0%). In those situations, I reset the gateway and had power back, like the one you described. Did Tesla tell you why this happened?

@TheMahkus

3 ай бұрын

I spoke with someone on their team when it happened but never got an answer back. I did end up finding out that the tripped breaker was due to a leaky faucet hose which had sprayed into the outlet. So that may have caused some sort of disruption too. Haven't had the issue since then thankfully

@9:55 why wasn’t your system sending excess back to grid ?

@TheMahkus

10 ай бұрын

We were off-grid at that time. Sending back to the grid when it's down could electrocute someone working on the line, etc.

How big is your solar system . I'm looking to do a 10 kW solar system with two power walls and a new span panel

@TheMahkus

10 ай бұрын

We have 12.24 kW in panels producing about 17,000 kWh a year in Northern California. 3 Powerwalls