Tesla PwrWall/Gateway shutdowns

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caribconsult said:
It's most def by Enphase, and what it exactly does that the existing gateway didn't already do, I'm not 100% sure of, but I think the Envoy, besides monitoring each microinverter and the whole panel array, is controlling the panel output once the battery is charged during the day.
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I'm pretty sure the Envoy doesn't do that. I think that it's just a data output device.
 
Tesla Powerwall

Tesla Powerwall

Yes, it is an interesting tidbit of news that Tesla cooperated with anyone, but it appears the moving force here was Sr. Maximo, the owner of the installer company, after I notified him that if he thought he had a prayer of getting the 10G's I still owed him he was going to put my case on top priority and quickly, or I would get it resolved myself with his money. Money still talks, apparently. Results are what counts, and he def took the baton and ran with it, or he's totally full of baloney and none of this was his doing...I have no way to prove either case and I wouldn't spend the time...I'm just glad it's working, and I'll choose to believe him.

I agree, the Envoy should be an integral part of the complete system. It does appear to control the PV array with the phase shift, and I notice that the charge rate has gone down a tad, from peaking at 5.2Kw, to the mid 4's, which I suppose is a good thing. Getting closer to trickle charging is preferable to ramming it into the battery, or so I've been told. It still charges up to 98% (theoretical max with PV) by 2-2:30 at the latest, and this is winter when the sun is lower. Overall, we're quite pleased with the system, even though it took quite a bit of effort and laying down the law with certain parties, but the good part is I got to know one of Tesla's better engineers here, I have his phone and email, and he's helped me a lot, especially with the State Of Energy (SOE) situation, a fancy-schmancy way of stating the battery charge percentage, and letting me know what could happen if we let the SOE sink to certain critical levels. Nice. If you'd like that info, just say so and I'll PM it to you. I'd still have a hard time recommending this installer company, essentially because their front office was totally disorganized. Their installers and techs are excellent and did fine work here, but dealing with their office can be a nightmare...you wonder if anyone is listening.

Jeff
 
jaggedben said:
If Enphase and Tesla actually cooperated to make this happen then that's an interesting tidbit of news. For what it's worth, Enphase will at some point this year be introducing their own backup storage solutions that will basically do all this with one manufacturer. We'll see how price competitive it is.

The Envoy should have been included in your install from the get go for its solar monitoring features, in any case. That comment is not intended to detract from your praise for your installer, who, given the time, eventually got a cutting edge micro-grid system to work for you.
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I didn't see this post when you first put it up but I think you've summarized the situation pretty well. Between the installer techs, the Enphase guys and the Tesla folks who all put their shoulders to the wheel on this one, they did indeed get a cutting-edge system to work and work well.

A little update: there were some sort of signaling problems between the gateway and the PV array to where, when the battery reached full charge, the Hz was driven up to ~66Hz before the PV array would lower its output. Enphase diagnosed this as noise on the line and sent me two graphs, showing a clean line and my line. They suggested putting some ferrite cores on the two main lines in the Envoy and sent me a link to where I could buy them for about $20 + shipping. I got them, put them in, which took all of 20 minutes, and that was the end of that. Now the system shifts up to 61-2Hz and the array lowers its output to match the house load. I am a happy camper. And thanks again for your on-going help with this very vexing problem of last year.
 
jaggedben said:
The Envoy can't control the micro-inverters output directly, but it is what you would use to program them to react with more flexibility to the micro-grid conditions you're imposing by using the Powerwall as the primary source most of the time. I can only speculate how they could have used the Envoy to improve your system performance. But one option would be to program the micro-inverters in groups that the Powerwall can effectively turn on and off by shifting frequency a very small amount. If Enphase and Tesla actually cooperated to make this happen then that's an interesting tidbit of news. For what it's worth, Enphase will at some point this year be introducing their own backup storage solutions that will basically do all this with one manufacturer. We'll see how price competitive it is.

The Envoy should have been included in your install from the get go for its solar monitoring features, in any case. That comment is not intended to detract from your praise for your installer, who, given the time, eventually got a cutting edge micro-grid system to work for you.
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Absolutely right about the Envoy, and I believe my installer (Maximo Solar) intended to make it a standard component. And hat's off to the Tesla Engineer, Sr. Eduardo Mejia, who figured out the off/on business.
 
I continue to have problems keeping the Tesla system connected to Tesla central. The gate provides 3 methods: cellular using some VPN over AT&T, WiFi using my house wifi (via HughesNet) or Ethernet directly from my HughesNet Router. When this system was installed 2+ years ago, the installers said they could not establish a reliable connection to my house WiFi, even though my house WiFi works perfectly, and even though the gateway interface showed 3 bars of service, it would not connect reliably. Does it not use WPA2 coding? So the installers set it for cellular. That worked perfect until about the end of 2019, when cell service became very erratic, sometimes there was no service, other time there was service and the gateway was configured but there was no active connection. Tesla was absolutely minimal help here. So I put a EOP adaptor in one of the switch boxes and ran the Enet cable into the gateway, where it lit up the connection light and immediately got an IP address from the router's DHCP. I reserved that address so I always know where the gateway lives. I already had a three station EOP net running, one node to a wireless access point in the kitchen, and another to Enphase Envoy, which also had problems connecting to the WiFi. The EOP ran fine, the Tesla would stay connected, except sometimes I'd go into the gateway interface (not the app) using either the TEG limited WiFi, or my local LAN, since the Gateway was getting a local LAN address, and the cell connection would be alive, sometimes dead, sometimes no service, and when these little digital bumps occurred it seemed to throw 'digital rocks' in internet connection machinery. The gateway would continue to show up in the router, a net scan showed the gate living right were it should be, but there was no data flowing to Tesla, so no info available on the app. The system was working fine, except it wasn't reporting. Plugging and unplugging the ENet cable didn't trigger a resumption. A reboot would fix this and data reporting resumed. But why is this connection getting frozen like that ? It seems like the coming and going of the cell connection is what screws up the ENet connection. This shouldn't happen. Is there any way to disable the cellconnection? Does Tesla absolutely have to have that, when they already have access via my internet and LAN? Any info you have on this is appreciated.
 
Your cellular modem may be old, I think I heard somewhere, that cell service providers no longer support 3G service. That may explain why your cellular quit working.
 
My understanding is that the Tesla Gateway dynamically looks for the best connection of the three. If it is not really doing that then perhaps a software update in is order. I seem to recall that you had issues with software updates because you were operating off-grid and the updates interrupted your power. Perhaps it is time to schedule a time that you'll go on grid and have someone push a software update.
 
FYI, to those who've followed this thread, the outcome was as follows: I had a visit from two of Tesla's top people in the Caribbean, one of them an engineer who understood the system perfectly. When he realized we were basically running disconnected from the grid, he said Tesla was probably in the system at some point, making adjustments or upgrading and then set it to reboot, so it shut down, but because the grid is off, it can't 'jump start' itself. It can't use the battery to jump start the system. So it remains off until I let the grid in and then it reboots. That was the explanation and it fit all scenarios perfectly. They have not upgraded our firmware in a while and we have not had shutdown problems for over a year now.

About the cellphone connect/disconnect issue, the installers techs were here recently, they could find no problems with the setup and it is using the best firmware version for our equipment. And no, they could not disable the cell connect but they really didn't know what it was for and how exactly it worked. Not their paygrade. However, I can not get a straight answer out of Tesla about whether they need this cell connect or not, and can it be disabled. No answer yet. I'm going to try again. There's definitely a loose screw or two in their circuitry but they don't seem to want to hear about it.
 
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caribconsult said:
FYI, to those who've followed this thread, the outcome was as follows: I had a visit from two of Tesla's top people in the Caribbean, one of them an engineer who understood the system perfectly. When he realized we were basically running disconnected from the grid, he said Tesla was probably in the system at some point, making adjustments or upgrading and then set it to reboot, so it shut down, but because the grid is off, it can't 'jump start' itself. It can't use the battery to jump start the system. So it remains off until I let the grid in and then it reboots. That was the explanation and it fit all scenarios perfectly. They have not upgraded our firmware in a while and we have not had shutdown problems for over a year now.

About the cellphone connect/disconnect issue, the installers techs were here recently, they could find no problems with the setup and it is using the best firmware version for our equipment. And no, they could not disable the cell connect but they really didn't know what it was for and how exactly it worked. Not their paygrade. However, I can not get a straight answer out of Tesla about whether they need this cell connect or not, and can it be disabled. No answer yet. I'm going to try again. There's definitely a loose screw or two in their circuitry but they don't seem to want to hear about it.
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Thanks for keeping us updated. I would encourage you to continue nipping at their heels. The persistence of customers such as yourself eventually leads to a full technical resolution of the issue. The ones who will benefit most, ironically, are Tesla; one less ghost in the machine.
 
My pleasure. We are a community. The most frustrating part is trying to get a straight answer from Tesla. I've heard conflicting reports from their PW department of the necessity for the cell connection, so what are we supposed to believe? I think the GUI connection issue is partly due to the fact that the system has two different IP addresses; one from my router via the EOP connect, and another from the cell connect. It def does not need two different IP addresses. And I can not access the gateway GUI via either route most of the time. When it does work, generally the cell link is inactive. This is just poor and lazy programming in my opinion. I've pointed this out to the Tesla support reps and it appears they don't give it a second thought, so I'm at the point where I don't give a darn anymore...the system functions perfectly, it appears to be reporting steadily via the EOP link and it doesn't chew much data, plus the cell app gives you way more information than the GUI, and I don't feel a tinker's need to get it there and play with it.
 
jaggedben said:
My understanding is that the Tesla Gateway dynamically looks for the best connection of the three. If it is not really doing that then perhaps a software update in is order. I seem to recall that you had issues with software updates because you were operating off-grid and the updates interrupted your power. Perhaps it is time to schedule a time that you'll go on grid and have someone push a software update.
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I had the techs from the installer here a month ago and they could find nothing wrong, they didn't know diddly about whether the cell link was absolutely necessary, and they didn't know anything (I could stop right there) about disabling it. They also said I already had the best firmware (1.41.2) for my equipment, so I'd say that visit accomplished nothing. As I mentioned in the previous reply, I'm at the "I don't care" point because it seems all efforts are for nought. The system works well, and as Murphy might have said, "if it ain't broke, don't break it." I will def post should things change.
 
caribconsult said:
I had the techs from the installer here a month ago and they could find nothing wrong, they didn't know diddly about whether the cell link was absolutely necessary, and they didn't know anything (I could stop right there) about disabling it. They also said I already had the best firmware (1.41.2) for my equipment, so I'd say that visit accomplished nothing. As I mentioned in the previous reply, I'm at the "I don't care" point because it seems all efforts are for nought. The system works well, and as Murphy might have said, "if it ain't broke, don't break it." I will def post should things change.
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Recent emails from Tesla's advanced PW support stated that they absolutely needed the cell vpn connection but didn't say why, and since the gateway is also on my local LAN via the EOP link, it is 'double homed' which is not a good thing. Nevertheless, it is reporting correctly to Tesla, the phone app is therefore working as well, and I have given up on any need to access the GUI of the gateway. If it comes to that, I can yank the EOP connect, reboot the Tesla and now it will only have 1 (maybe) IP address if the cell is working, but I can get in using the TEG-wifi. Rube Goldberg lives!
 
UPDATE: for reasons unknown to man or beast, the GUI now responds whether I use the TEG wifi, or my local LAN, from my computer or cellphone, and the Gateway is reporting to Tesla using my LAN and its DHCP address. Amazing. I have no explanation for this. Nothing has been changed. But the GUI gives minimal information; the app gives you much more data.

Tesla continues to insist they need that cell link even though I have not seen it alive in almost a month.
 
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