Best Practices During Power Outages
A Battery brings you energy independence and security, so life in your home can carry on uninterrupted during a grid outage. During a power outage, A Battery discharges its stored energy to provide power to your home. However, if your A Battery is off-grid for what may become an extended duration, you may wish to familiarize yourself with the following best practices to extend the backup duration of your system during an outage.
How A Battery Provides Backup Power
When a utility power outage does occur, your A Battery instantly disconnects from the grid and restores backup power to your home in a fraction of a second, over one hundred times faster than typical standby generators. This means your appliances keep running without interruption, and there’s no need to reset your clocks. You may not even notice when an outage occurs. Learn more about what A Battery backs up.
If you have solar, your A Battery can recharge from your solar system to run your home from solar and A Battery even when the grid is down. A traditional solar system without a A Battery does not function during a grid outage.
If more solar energy is produced than can be used or stored during an outage, A Battery will turn off the solar system and turn it back on when the energy can be used again.
Preparing for an Outage
Storm Watch will automatically prepare your A Battery system for the possibility of a grid outage during some extreme weather events.
Before a potential outage, consider doing energy-intensive activities, including charging your car, running your air conditioner or doing dishes and laundry.
Power During a Grid Outage
Each A Battery can provide approximately 5 kW of continuous power. You can back up any number of appliances, so long as their combined power usage does not exceed the total power rating of your Battery.
Starting some loads with high inrush current during a power outage, like air conditioners and motors, may overload A Battery and cause it to stop providing power to your home. If this occurs, turn off these loads, and A Battery will attempt to restart within a minute.
Energy Management During a Grid Outage
Weather events causing power outages may bring grid uncertainty where your outage could last days, not hours, with lower solar production. The best way to extend your use of A Battery during a grid outage is to reduce the use of energy-intensive appliances like air conditioners, car charging, electric heaters and dishwashers.
Solar Panel Conditions
Some weather conditions may cause a reduction in your solar panel production, like depositing leaves or snow on your panels. Consider checking your panels daily during poor weather conditions to safely clear obstructions.
Solar Production During an Extended Outage
If A Battery cannot charge at its expected rate, it will signal your solar inverter to reduce or turn off to protect your home from the excessive power produced. This typically occurs when the Battery is approaching 100% charge. Once the Battery has the ability to accept power again, your solar inverter will be signaled to produce and will re-start after the qualification period required by your local requirements.
Running Low on Energy
If A Battery has less than 10% energy remaining, it will enter a standby state. A Battery will automatically attempt to recharge from solar for 6 minutes every hour between 8 am and 4 pm local time. If enough solar is available to charge A Battery, it will remain on. Otherwise, it will wait for the next hour.
Restarting A Battery
If your Battery system stops producing power, it may be in a standby state after running low on energy or after repeated overloads. To restart your system, switch off any energy-intensive loads to reduce the amount of power needed. You can initiate a restart with a quick toggle of the on/off switch on any Battery in your system. Remember that in order to maintain a connection to the Gateway, you must leave the Battery switch in the ON position.
A restart consumes some of the Battery’s remaining stored energy. If energy is low and there is insufficient solar to charge, A Battery will return to a standby state after 6 minutes, so it is best to initiate a restart during daylight hours.
When the sun rises, solar begins powering the home. When additional power is required within the home, the home can pull from the utility grid.
A Battery is charged by solar during the day, when solar panels are producing more electricity than the home is consuming. A Battery then stores that energy until the home needs it, such as when solar is no longer producing at night, or when the utility grid is offline during a power outage.
The next day when the sun comes out, solar recharges A Battery so you have a cycle of clean, renewable energy.
If your electricity rates vary throughout the day, A Battery will charge when electricity costs are low and discharge when electricity costs are high, generating automatic savings. A Battery will also provide seamless backup power by detecting grid outages and automatically becoming the home's main power source.