The grid went out and the car kept charging

I happened to see AusNet's email this morning — a possible outage in our street. Then I noticed an alert from our Tesla Powerwall, to say it was running off grid.

Nothing in the house had missed a beat. Every appliance had kept running without a hiccup.

I tapped into the app to see how it was going. The solar was still funnelling through our system, charging the car up from its 60% low after yesterday's run into the city. Once the car was full, the leftover topped up our Powerwall batteries.

When you install a battery and solar, get it in writing that in a grid outage the battery will still charge from solar. It is one of the things on my list of what to ask for in a battery installation.

I suspect the outage was caused by a tree on a power line, given how windy it is today, up in the hills. This one only lasted a bit over an hour, unlike others that have gone on for up to nine days, taking out streets of homes, shops and the local petrol station.

And then, just as I posted this, a second outage for the day. Not really any sunshine left today, but the battery is fully charged, so it will power us (and potentially some neighbours) through to when the sun shines again tomorrow.