u/TheBroWhoLifts

I am the same dude who had the Gateway & IQ 40 connection issue earlier this week. I have another issue that arose due to the storms that rolled through last night here in Michigan and am wondering if anyone else is experiencing this.

We lost grid power last night and are running on batteries right now. I noticed that when the sun came up, there should have been plenty of power for the panels to take over, power the house, and recharge the batteries as they have done before in the same situation, but they were producing between 0 and a measly 0.1 kw. They should have been pushing 3kw by that point around 10:00am based on my close observations over the years. (I should note, the grid came back on last night briefly around 9pm and the batteries were at seventy-something percent. Then this morning the grid went down again when a transformer blew down the street in a rather dramatic and audible fashion.) This continued for long enough that I was concerned, so I called Enphase.

Note that I did my own diagnostics in the meantime. No breakers were tripped. Gateway lights all green. All equipment green status in the app. No breakers open on the main panel. Also, when I created high demand by powering on a small window AC, the micros' output jumped to 0.4w for a brief moment before dropping back off to fluctuating between 0 and 0.1w. The woman at the call center tried her best, said there were no relays that needed resetting or anything else wrong, and after an hour on with her, mostly on hold while she talked to a Tier 2 tech presumably, she told me the following: there was a recent firmware update that requires the battery to drop by some percentage (she said 10%) before the panels will kick in during an off-grid outage. This seems... odd. She said it is a new feature designed to prolong battery life?? I wasn't totally following Either way, here I am at 50% SOC trying to drive it down to 47% when she says the panels should kick in. She is actively monitoring my system and will call me if they don't. Supposedly. None of this really makes sense to me.

So a couple of things - is this new firmware feature accurate?? If so, WHY would they do this? In a grid outage, especially let's say it's prolonged and not very sunny, we need every watt we can produce and store. Even if I have 98% SOC on the battery, the panels should kick in if there is enough to produce.

Confused and frustrated over here. Anyone have any similar experiences?

This is an update to my previous post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/enphase/s/EMkQpVHsIT

So, a couple of things I'm assuming resulting from a hotfix that was pushed out today:

1. My IQ 40 is officially connected to the Gateway, yay! I didn't have to do anything. It's connected.

2. The "Battery Assist" option for the EVSE Green Charging mode is gone. I'm happy about that. It seems silly having a battery charge a battery and there is a lot of loss between the DC/AC rectification cycles. (I have yet to test if the battery is drained overnight if the overall system profile is Self Consumption, though... If so, I get it, but I hope there is a way to prevent the battery from being depleted charging the car overnight.)

3. Green Charging mode is... Totally broken in my instance. We had abundant sunshine today, and I left my car plugged in all day. It didn't send and power at all. Never kicked in even though we had hours of excess production to the tune of 6,000+ watts. I tried plugging it in multiple times. I powered off and repowered the EVSE. I tried both of our cars, one of which has a native J1772 plug. Didn't work. (My vehicle has a NACS, so it's adapted.)

4. My system reports that Dynamic Load Balancing on the EVSE is disabled. Enabling it requires installer access. The new AI assistant in the Enphase app assured me that having it disabled shouldn't matter. However, the dynamic load balancing seems like it would be useful regardless (maybe quicker scaling at those 8 amp intervals??). Also, seems like there are overlapping duties between the standard IQ 40 load balancing operations built into the hardware (ie those 8 amp intervals), so seems possible that's where the bug is.

One step forward, one step back... At least the green charging mode used to work before the patch, albeit woefully unreliably due to the gateway not connecting to the EVSE.

Calling u/Enphase_Suport_Team again! Getting closer, guys.

I believe this may ultimately be a firmware problem, but anyone else unable to connect their EV chargers to the Gateway? Here's what I've tried so far and am still stuck, and I went to some pretty crazy measures...

My home network has a few subnets, so I started by forcing both of them to be on 192.168.5.x. That didn't work. Then I saw the IQ 40 was connected via 2.4 GHz and the Gateway on a 5 GHz channel. Tried to pause 5 GHz to set the Gateway's wifi back up and hit another problem: my wifi password has special characters (# in this case) which the Enphase App disallows. Which is hilarious because the gateway is already connected to my wifi using allegedly disallowed password characters. Tried putting it into AP mode and connect directly to the Gateway's local IP (172.30.1.1) and that no longer works either.

Then I went nuclear.

I decided to hell with all the wifi problems. I ran an ethernet cable from the Gateway, down through a new hole I drilled, through some flex conduit, through my basement soffit, up through the floor and directly to the main managed switch (I have two, it's a large home lab setup).

Still couldn't access the Gateway via IP. Then I plugged the gateway directly into a PC. Nope. Still no Gateway access. But now that it's hard wired into my system, it shouldn't matter, right? Nope. Still won't connect to the IQ 40.

Super frustrated at this point. My expensive charger works basically only in manual mode and not green mode because it's so slow connecting to the back end Enphase cloud, the excess solar isn't registering in a responsive manner at all. I did get green mode to work. Once. One day. That's it.

Enphase, you need to get your software issues worked out.

Anyone have any advice??

Calling u/Enphase_Support_Team

Just saw the "Energy Transfer" option on my 2027 Bolt's Charging menu which I had never noticed before. It may be a new feature enabled by the latest updates like the USB recording (which works great - needs the cameras/tech package).

Does anyone have any experience using it to power their home? We have an existing solar array and home batteries, and Enphase (our ecosystem) is coming out with a Bi-Directional charger later this year. \*\*Chief question: will GM support 3rd party bi-directional chargers or will they be proprietary??\*\*

Just saw the "Energy Transfer" option on my 2027 Bolt's Charging menu which I had never noticed before. It may be a new feature enabled by the latest updates like the USB recording (which works great - needs the cameras/tech package).

Does anyone have any experience using it to power their home? We have an existing solar array and home batteries, and Enphase (our ecosystem) is coming out with a Bi-Directional charger later this year. **Chief question: will GM support 3rd party bi-directional chargers or will they be proprietary??**

Somebody rationalize with me because it seems like a rash decision, but we can find used ones very easily and for very reasonable prices... 2021-2022 models for around $15k out the door? These vehicles are awesome, and my wife charges free at work. We also have rooftop solar and can charge "for free" at home... Curious if we're being ridiculous or if we should sell our muscle car (2006 Dodge Charger 5.7L) and get a second EV.

Edit: We do have a third ICE vehicle, an Acadia, for towing and long trips.