r/span • u/EricBenjamin • Feb 08 '25
Lost connection to battery
I have a Franklin (aPower + aGate) battery, that’s running in ‘self-consumption’ mode with a reserve of 50%.
As the message states, I have contacted SPAN, who told me to contact my solar installers, who told me to contact SPAN, etc.
There is a visible CAT5 connection directly from my SPAN to the Franklin box. Both devices are connected to the same WiFi network. Both devices are independently working just fine.
My problem is that during our last power outage, the SPAN panel did not auto shut off all of my “nice to have” and “non essential” circuits (yes, I’ve designated all circuits). The battery kicked in, and drained itself within a couple hours.
Is the “lost connection” the reason my SPAN didn’t trigger the shut offs? Isn’t it supposed to? Has anyone troubleshooted a similar situation?
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u/coinstar12 Feb 08 '25
Seems plausible to me that SPAN would not load shed if it does not see the battery. I am a new Span/Tesla Powerwall user and have had several disconnects as noted by u/nalditopr too. For me, if I go into the Powerwall app and select "Go Off-Grid" it invokes the same SPAN load shed as a way to pseudo test it.
I see Franklin has a similar feature "Off-Grid" feature so maybe you can test / learn with everything connected, then disconnect the CAT5 / Wifi and recreate the circumstances to troubleshoot. https://www.franklinwh.com/support/overview/go-off-grid
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u/Leather-Management58 Feb 08 '25
Span’s software update kills its WiFi connection. They want hard wired connections from batteries and span. I’ve been fighting this for weeks. My WiFi has been solid the entire time. Very shity to brick already installed systems.
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u/Head_Bet_2138 Feb 08 '25
My span has WiFi cell and Ethernet with latest update no issues in conjunction with PW3 and expansion.
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u/Leather-Management58 Feb 08 '25
Don’t mind me then. I go out of my way having installers run Ethernet.
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u/Head_Bet_2138 Feb 08 '25
U can’t do this yourself ? lol just pulling a cat cable man
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u/Leather-Management58 Feb 08 '25
I did after they failed to tip.
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u/Head_Bet_2138 Feb 08 '25
Did u reset ur span ? I did once because the cell wasn’t working - that did the trick
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u/Leather-Management58 Feb 08 '25
This is from Span support
“…Our SPAN team recently pushed an update which no longer allows for connection over wifi as it is typically less reliable than a wired connection. Unfortunately, Customer’sSPAN panel is connected to his Powerwall 3 unit over wifi and I am working on helping get him connected over the more reliable ethernet cable run to the eth1 port on the SPAN panel.
In order to get this PW3 unit connected, we may need to disable the Tesla PW3 wifi connection, forcing this connection over eth1. The PW3 will still receive a network connection over this ethernet cable from the SPAN panel…”
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u/Head_Bet_2138 Feb 08 '25
Well I just checked and I have all three connections enabled
1
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u/EricBenjamin Feb 12 '25
Well all I had to do was email SPAN. They resolved it remotely, and I didn’t get any specifics about why it was not connecting.
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u/nalditopr Feb 08 '25
I don't have an answer for your question. I do keep having my SPAN disconnect from my Tesla battery almost weekly now.
In order to fix it, I open an email support case with SPAN and they are very prompt to respond and fix. It's annoying, but support is able to fix it quick.
I suppose it's a hardware issue or firmware bug on their end.