SOLVED: I'm Stumped: aftermarket subwoofer only works if key isn't in the car.

[Ride_the_lightning]

What do you mean by pilot wire? This is a different wire than the main 12V supply?

You are just supposed to tap a 12V source that is switched on and off with the car, so the amp doesn’t stay on all the time.

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[JohnFoxeSheets]

That’s interesting John that his PowerWall’s don’t switch fast enough to not cause issues with his computers. I have mine set to power the house daily from 3pm to midnight (when there is no solar production) because that’s when my PG&E rate is at the highest. There’s never a glitch or even a flicker of lighting when this happens.

I dunno - his might be an earlier installation...

 

[astrorob]

. Turns out that in certain circumstances, the PowerWalls signal the Tesla inverter by changing the frequency of the output sine wave from 60 Hz to 63 Hz; meanwhile his UPSs consider 63 Hz to be bad power, so they switch to battery! (And yeah, of course it's not documented anywhere.)

this is pretty well known at least in the teslamotorsclub forums. the circumstances are when the powerwalls are full and the grid is down, so there's nowhere for the solar-generated power to go. most solar inverters are *very* picky about the line frequency and voltage so changing the frequency is actually a very common way to tell an inverter to stop generating.

you can call tesla support and ask them to lower the 63Hz to something like 61Hz which will still trigger most inverters to stop producing and keep your UPSs happy.

surprised that this happens with a tesla inverter though because i thought they had some out-of-band method for signaling. there's actually a new standard for this and newer inverters are supposed to support being told to stop producing. it's part of a grid resilience standard IIRC.

 

[HuntingPudel]

A friend has a Tesla PowerWall setup. He also has several UPSs for his computers and such since the switch over from grid to battery isn't sufficiently instantaneous to prevent computers from reseting. So imagine his surprise when his the batteries on his UPSs started to die even though the house was being supplied by the grid . Turns out that in certain circumstances, the PowerWalls signal the Tesla inverter by changing the frequency of the output sine wave from 60 Hz to 63 Hz; meanwhile his UPSs consider 63 Hz to be bad power, so they switch to battery! (And yeah, of course it's not documented anywhere.)

Damn. 63 cycle power is so far out of spec that I wouldn’t doubt that some equipment would have issue with it. Mains power is supposed to be 60 cycle power, rock solid. ??

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

this is pretty well known at least in the teslamotorsclub forums. the circumstances are when the powerwalls are full and the grid is down, so there's nowhere for the solar-generated power to go. most solar inverters are *very* picky about the line frequency and voltage so changing the frequency is actually a very common way to tell an inverter to stop generating.

you can call tesla support and ask them to lower the 63Hz to something like 61Hz which will still trigger most inverters to stop producing and keep your UPSs happy.

surprised that this happens with a tesla inverter though because i thought they had some out-of-band method for signaling. there's actually a new standard for this and newer inverters are supposed to support being told to stop producing. it's part of a grid resilience standard IIRC.

Damn. 63 cycle power is so far out of spec that I wouldn’t doubt that some equipment would have issue with it. Mains power is supposed to be 60 cycle power, rock solid. ??

Thanks Rob. I couldn't recall the exact situation when this happens, but yeah, that's it for sure. His solar was installed by Solar City and he had the Tesla batteries added later.

Steve, yeah and just goes to show that in-band signaling sucks.

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