Solve Frequent Re-transfers with flickering utility power with Genmon?

[TopBanana123]

Is there a possibility to add some kind of add-on or function in Genmon to resolve the issue where there is a branch on a power line causing frequent utility outages which causes the generator to switch back and forth between utility and generator? An example can be seen here from my generator during Hurricane Beryl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSK86_HazJg

At 02:31:12 tree limbs fall onto an energized power line during the initial waves of wind from Hurricane Beryl moving into Houston TX, causing a power outage. The large sparks are actually visible lighting up the sky near the time.

At 02:31:20 mine and my neighbors generators start automatically

At 02:31:27, the ATS flips from Utility, to Generator power

At 02:31:43, even more sparks are visible. At this point the utility power is flickering on and off, probably because of contact with a tree. My power is stable, as I am running on Generator power

At 02:32:18 the Generac ATS flips back to Utility power, as utility power has been stable enough for just long enough. However, we all know its not going to last.

At 02:32:23, the utility power goes out again

At 02:32:28 the ATS flips back to generator power

At 02:33:27 the ATS flips back to Utility, and 1 second later, utility goes out

At 02:33:35 the ATS flips back to Generator, where it remains for over 6 days

The constant flipping back and forth was horrible, and I would have loved if Genmon could tell that utility had dropped out for a second time, and then put the ATS in the generator position for a timeout of say 15 mins. This would have avoided all the flipping back and forth

[jgyates]

Genmon can not help with this as either the controller or genmon would have to be in charge of everything. When the controller is in auto it takes over and ignores remote commands during an outage. The controller only allows the stop remote command to stop a running generator that was previously started by a remote start command.

You can modify some parameters in your controller that may mitigate the issue, like:

pick up voltage (voltage that the controller thinks the utility is restored),
threshold votage (the voltage below which the generator considers the utility lost)
start up delay (how many seconds after an outage should the generator start)

[medic29]

@jgyates How can one modify the parameters you discussed above? I had done some checking previously and found the controllers on a couple other brands one might be able to do this, but couldn't find any documentation about modifying the controller with Generac generators. As stated by @TopBanana123 it would be awesome if we could adjust the delay for the ATS switching back to utility power until the utility power has been restored for say 15 minutes. I too have experienced where utility power has been restored for say 2 minutes, the transfer switch goes back to utility power, then the utility power cuts out again and back and forth for several minutes.

If there is some parameters I can modify which might adjust the delay, that would be great!!!

[gm58]

@medic29
As stated above, the delay is for startup delay, not for delaying transfer back to utility.

[jgyates]

No delay, but the pickup voltage setting on the controller may help. It sets the voltage for the utility to initiate a switch back to utility power.

[TopBanana123]

My thoughts were that Genmon has the ability to start generator and transfer, and that same button also works to just transfer the load to gen if the generator is running, and it can of course tell when there is a utility outage

In my testing, I recall that in that state, it does not care what happens to utility, the generator stays running and the ATS is in generator position

With those 2 things, I assumed there could be a possibility to monitor the "Outage" status and then just over-ride the ATS pretty much, putting it in "Start Generator and Transfer" mode. Then, use the Utility voltage to validate when to go out of that mode and flip back

[skipfire]

After someone had to leave home with their generator running both from a transfer start and an outage and then found it was still running hours after the outage finished when they returned home, jgyates changed that behavior. I also had utilized that "undocumented feature" (programmer joke about bugs) but I agree with the logic to suspend any tests once an outage starts.

[jgyates]

The controller will only allow the remote stop command to work on a running generator that was started with a remote start or start and transfer command. The controller will not automatically stop a remote start. Also, remote commands are just requests to the controller. The controller will ignore the commands if the conditions dictate the controller should be doing something else. In short, auto mode and remote commands do not work together in an outage. The controller assumes command in auto mode in an outage and ignores remote commands.

[jgyates]

also, there have been a lot of discussion on remote commands in the past, some of which cover using remote commands to deal with using remote commands in an outage:

From issues forum:

https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/issues?q=+label%3A%22Remote+Commands%22+

Threads with outage in the topic:

https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/issues?q=label%3A%22Remote%20Commands%22%20%20outage

from discussion forum:

https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/discussions?discussions_q=label%3A%22Remote+Commands%22

https://github.com/jgyates/genmon/discussions?discussions_q=label%3A%22Remote+Commands%22+outage