05·RB-POWER
Runbook — Power outage
The grid goes down and this house mostly does not notice. Here is what happened, what you will see, and what you should actually do.
956 N Noble Loop · Showing Edition · Rev A · Aug 2026
If the neighborhood is dark and your lights are on, nothing is broken — that is the two Tesla Powerwalls doing the exact job they were installed to do. The house switched to battery in a fraction of a second. You have time to think, and the correct first move is not to panic-flip anything.
The track record you are inheriting
This is not a theoretical feature. The owners report that across years of grid outages the switchover was undetectable in essentially every one — no flicker, no resetting clocks; a single perceptible blink, once, early on. And unlike most Powerwall installs, the backup here covers the whole house — there is no “essential circuits only” sub-panel. The most likely way you will learn the grid is down is this app notification, or a neighbor. (Owner-reported; the Tesla app’s Backup History log is the objective record.)
The one thing that is an emergency
A downed or arcing power line, a burning smell from any electrical equipment, or sparking at the meter. Stay away from the line — assume it is live — call 911, then Clark Public Utilities at 360-992-8000. Nothing else on this page matters until that is handled.
First, check — in this order
- Are your lights actually on? If yes, skip to “Living on battery” below. If the whole house is dark, the backup did not carry — jump to the dark-house table.
- Open the Tesla app. It is the instrument panel for this house. It will show that the grid is down, that the house is running from Powerwall, and how much charge is left. Tesla’s app also alerts you once the grid has been unavailable for about five minutes, so you may already have a notification waiting.
- Look outside. Are the neighbors dark? If they are, this is a utility outage and your job is mostly to wait comfortably. If they are lit and you are not, the problem is on this property — see the dark-house table.
- Report the outage to Clark Public Utilities: 360-992-8000. This is the step people with batteries forget. Your house being lit does not tell the utility anything. If nobody on the street reports it, restoration takes longer.
- If it looks like an ordinary blip, do nothing special — a normal, short outage needs no intervention at all. But the moment it looks extended or indefinite, get conservative early rather than waiting: stop charging the car first (by far the biggest single load in this house — see “What to actually turn off” below), turn off anything non-essential, minimize how often you open the fridge and freezer, and skip heavy AC use. Tesla is explicit that starting energy-intensive loads during an outage can overload Powerwall and make it stop supplying the house. Owner field experience, across real outages here: conservatively, plan on the two Powerwalls alone carrying the house for 1–2 days with no sun at all; with decent sun, the solar array can power the whole house directly and keep doing so effectively indefinitely through summer — the Powerwalls mostly just buffer surges (a load momentarily bigger than what the array is putting out dips the battery for a few minutes, then it recharges) and carry the house through the nights. Two real limits on that: car charging is off the table for the duration of any outage, and winter sun changes the math considerably.
- Then go back to normal life. Lights, fridge, freezer, internet, WiFi, the furnace fan, the gas tankless water heater — all of it is designed to keep running.
Living on battery — what to expect
Two things about this system are worth understanding once, because they change how an outage feels here compared with a normal house:
- The solar keeps working. A plain grid-tied solar array shuts itself off in an outage. Because this array is paired with Powerwall, it does not: Tesla’s documented behavior is that in an outage a Powerwall paired with solar recharges from the array during the day. In practice, a sunny multi-day outage can be close to indefinite; a dark December storm is not.
- The batteries protect themselves. Per Tesla, when a Powerwall drops below about 10% remaining it enters standby and stops powering the house, and you get a push notification if the system still has internet. If that happens, it is not a failure — it is the reserve doing its job so the batteries survive.
- It will try to come back on its own. In standby with solar attached, Powerwall automatically attempts to recharge from solar every hour between 8 AM and 4 PM local time. So a dark evening can turn into a working morning without you doing anything.
- Backup Reserve is the dial that matters. It is the percentage the system holds back for outages. Tesla flags anything below 20% as a “Low Backup Reserve”. In the wet, windy months here, keeping it higher is cheap insurance.
- Storm Watch is worth having on. Tesla’s Storm Watch charges the Powerwalls to maximum ahead of severe weather events likely to knock out lines, then reverts. It needs Grid Charging enabled and your phone paired to the system.
What to actually turn off
In rough priority: the Tesla Wall Connector (a car charging at full tilt is by far the biggest load in this house), then any electric heat — dryer, oven, steam shower, space heaters. The gas range and the gas tankless water heater barely touch the batteries; the tankless needs only a little 120 V power to run its controls and fan.
The gas fireplace still works, too
The living room's gas fireplace uses Heatilator's IntelliFire ignition, which includes a factory battery backup — two D-cell batteries, kept in a tray in the control cavity, not installed by default — specifically so it can be lit with no household power. It won't come on by itself: load the batteries and use the same wall switch as always. It's a genuinely nice thing to have working on a dark, cold, no-power evening, independent of what the Powerwalls are doing. See the fireplace page for exactly where the battery tray is.
If the house is dark — the backup did not carry
This is the less common case and it has a small number of causes. Work down the table.
| What you see | Most likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Whole house dark, neighbors dark, Tesla app says Powerwall is in standby / very low | The outage outran the batteries. | Nothing is broken. Turn off big loads so the house does not immediately drain the batteries again, and wait for sun or for the grid. The system will retry from solar hourly between 8 AM and 4 PM. |
| Whole house dark, neighbors lit | Your service, your main breaker, or your gateway — not the utility. | Check the main breaker at the panel on the exterior equipment wall (see Start Here). If the main is on and the house is still dead, call Clark Public Utilities at 360-992-8000 — a lost service drop or a failed meter is theirs to fix. |
| Some circuits live, others dead, during an outage | Not every circuit may be on the backed-up side of the gateway. | Note which ones. Which loads are backed up is to be confirmed at the walkthrough — large loads like EV charging are commonly left off backup by design. This is a configuration fact, not a fault. |
| Tesla app shows a fault, or the Gateway is alarming | A real equipment fault. | Do not open anything. Raise it with Tesla Energy support through the Tesla app — they can see the system remotely. |
| Tesla app shows nothing at all / “no connection” | The internet is down, not the power. | The app talks to the system over the house network. See the internet down runbook — and note that in an outage your fiber provider’s street equipment may be down even though your house is powered. |
| House dark, and you smell burning or see scorching at the panel | Electrical fault. | Leave it alone. Call 911 if there is smoke or heat; otherwise call a licensed electrician. Do not reset anything. |
When the grid comes back
- The changeover back to grid is automatic and, again, you will probably not notice it. Nothing needs to be switched.
- The Powerwalls will recharge — from solar, and from the grid if grid charging is enabled.
- Check the Tesla app once. If it shows the system back on grid and charging, the incident is over.
- Reset any clocks on devices that do not keep time, and check that the fridge, freezer, and internet gear all came back. In a long outage where the batteries did reach standby, check the freezer contents before assuming they are fine.
Stop and call a pro when…
- A line is down, arcing, or a tree is on a line — 911, then Clark Public Utilities 360-992-8000. Never approach a downed conductor, and never assume it is dead.
- The neighborhood is lit and you are dark, and your main breaker is on — that is a service problem: Clark Public Utilities 360-992-8000 (24-hour customer service: 360-992-3000).
- Anything electrical smells hot, is discoloured, or buzzes — a licensed electrician. Do not keep resetting breakers into a fault.
- The Tesla Gateway or a Powerwall shows a fault, or the batteries do not carry the house — Tesla Energy support via the Tesla app. This equipment is theirs to diagnose; it is high-voltage DC and there is nothing a homeowner should open.
- You smell gas at any point — leave the house, then NW Natural 800-882-3377 or 911.
A note on why this house is unusual
Most outage advice assumes you are cold and in the dark hunting for candles. Here the failure mode is the opposite: the risk is that you do not notice the outage, burn the batteries down on a car charge and a load of laundry, and are then genuinely without power at hour six. Reduce loads early and the batteries last far longer.
Related pages
- Start Here — where the main breaker, the water shutoff, and the gas shutoff are.
- Breaker trips — if only part of the house is dead, it is almost certainly this instead.
- Solar production looks low — for the array itself.
- Internet down — the Tesla app needs the house network to reach the system.
- Smart-home account transfer — how the Tesla energy system becomes yours.
- Gas fireplace — runs on its own battery backup during an outage.
- Tesla — Best Practices During Power Outages
Source for the load-reduction guidance, the 10% standby behavior, the hourly 8 AM–4 PM solar recharge attempt, and the five-minute grid-down alert. - Tesla — Backup Reserve
What Backup Reserve is and the “Low Backup Reserve” threshold at 20%. - Tesla — Storm Watch
Automatic pre-charge ahead of severe weather; requires Grid Charging enabled. - Clark Public Utilities — Outages & Safety
Source for PowerLine outage reporting at 360-992-8000 and 24/7 customer service at 360-992-3000. - Clark Public Utilities — Report an outage online
Web form alternative to calling. - NW Natural — Contact & 24-hour gas emergency line
Source for the 800-882-3377 emergency line.