Back up power in this crazy freezing temp

[iproduce]

The power went out at our house and my cybertruck is plugged to the gateway 3v charged at 100% to serve as our back up power. But apparently from my research the blue snowflake on the cybertruck screen means the battery is too cold to power the house? I’ve discussed this with roadside tech support and tried anything and everything to warm up the battery to charge the house. Tech support said it will not work unless the battery is at 20 degrees and for some reason they can see the temp of my battery but I cannot. Super frustrating. They kept telling me to defrost the car to warm up the battery but within 10-20 min the defrosting used 15% of the battery defeating why I was charging it at 100%. I wish I knew that the battery needed to be warmed up in order to work in case of a power outage. Very frustrating. I literally drove in circles on my horse field trying to warm up the battery for at least 20 min and according to tech support they could see the battery temp went from 2 to 6 %. Does anyone have any good tips? I could not park it in the garage due to where my charger is. Our garage is a separate garage with a secondary power utility so if I installed the wall power there it wouldn’t back up the main house. But for tonight I parked it there hoping the battery will warm up by morning since it is insulated there.

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[JCERRN]

The power went out at our house and my cybertruck is plugged to the gateway 3v charged at 100% to serve as our back up power. But apparently from my research the blue snowflake on the cybertruck screen means the battery is too cold to power the house? I’ve discussed this with roadside tech support and tried anything and everything to warm up the battery to charge the house. Tech support said it will not work unless the battery is at 20 degrees and for some reason they can see the temp of my battery but I cannot. Super frustrating. They kept telling me to defrost the car to warm up the battery but within 10-20 min the defrosting used 15% of the battery defeating why I was charging it at 100%. I wish I knew that the battery needed to be warmed up in order to work in case of a power outage. Very frustrating. I literally drove in circles on my horse field trying to warm up the battery for at least 20 min and according to tech support they could see the battery temp went from 2 to 6 %. Does anyone have any good tips? I could not park it in the garage due to where my charger is. Our garage is a separate garage with a secondary power utility so if I installed the wall power there it wouldn’t back up the main house. But for tonight I parked it there hoping the battery will warm up by morning since it is insulated there.

[/QUOTEgo

Defrosting warms the cabin, it wont eliminate the snowflake. set a supercharger as your destination but turn off cabin hvac. It will precondition the battery for supercharging, therefore warming the battery. This will use a whole lot of battery capacity though. You can cancel as soon as the snowflake goes away and it will stop preconditioning immediately

 

[Tallgeese179]

Sorry to hear about the trouble, but I'm also grateful to be aware of possible pitfalls of relying on the truck for backup power in the winter.

In my case, I could settle for just running my furnace from a 5-15 exterion cord plugged into the bed outlets. Guess I'll have to do a dry run to check and make sure everything works. Definitely won't be getting rid of my trifuel backup generator anytime soon. At least not until I'd have a solid set of LFP home backup batteries in the basement.

 

[Pulaski]

Defrosting warms the cabin, it wont eliminate the snowflake. set a supercharger as your destination but turn off cabin hvac. It will precondition the battery for supercharging, therefore warming the battery. This will use a whole lot of battery capacity though. You can cancel as soon as the snowflake goes away and it will stop preconditioning immediately

Yep spot on.

 

[J.Graham]

Try going into "set schedules" and set a departure time for a half an hour ahead, that should get the battery preconditioning and warm it up

 

[Jager]

Turning on Climate will heat the battery, if it is cold enough.

Navigating to a Supercharger will, as well, but that of course requires you to be in the vehicle.

There are some other challenges with using the Cybertruck as a backup power source in extreme conditions. I'll post something once I have that sorted.

 

[SlegMD]

Time to put the CT in the main garage and run the charger there.

 

[That Beast Mode]

Go to an actual supercharger if possible, navigating to it will condition the battery and you can top off in your time of need..

 

[mongo]

The power went out at our house and my cybertruck is plugged to the gateway 3v charged at 100% to serve as our back up power. But apparently from my research the blue snowflake on the cybertruck screen means the battery is too cold to power the house? I’ve discussed this with roadside tech support and tried anything and everything to warm up the battery to charge the house. Tech support said it will not work unless the battery is at 20 degrees and for some reason they can see the temp of my battery but I cannot. Super frustrating. They kept telling me to defrost the car to warm up the battery but within 10-20 min the defrosting used 15% of the battery defeating why I was charging it at 100%. I wish I knew that the battery needed to be warmed up in order to work in case of a power outage. Very frustrating. I literally drove in circles on my horse field trying to warm up the battery for at least 20 min and according to tech support they could see the battery temp went from 2 to 6 %. Does anyone have any good tips? I could not park it in the garage due to where my charger is. Our garage is a separate garage with a secondary power utility so if I installed the wall power there it wouldn’t back up the main house. But for tonight I parked it there hoping the battery will warm up by morning since it is insulated there.

Do you have solar also?

 

[mongo]

Turning on Climate will heat the battery, if it is cold enough.

Navigating to a Supercharger will, as well, but that of course requires you to be in the vehicle.

There are some other challenges with using the Cybertruck as a backup power source in extreme conditions. I'll post something once I have that sorted.

Sure does. Note that max defrost will prioritize cabin heat over pack charging.
I think a take away is to only charge to 98ish so that, if needed, one can start a charge cycle which only heats the pack, not the cabin.

 

[JCERRN]

Try going into "set schedules" and set a departure time for a half an hour ahead, that should get the battery preconditioning and warm it up

Careful- only stays active for 15 minutes by default. I think this can be changed in settings

 

[iproduce]

Some screen grabs from support. Sort of defeats the purpose of this being my back up generator. If I knew this I would’ve been driving around the block and keeping it prepped.

Do you have solar also?

No, we do not have solar yet...

 

[mongo]

Some screen grabs from support. Sort of defeats the purpose of this being my back up generator. If I knew this I would’ve been driving around the block and keeping it prepped.

No, we do not have solar yet...

I wonder if it assumes there might be solar anyway and won't engage if it can't absorb excess. So the same sort of limits as regen.

An energy efficient way to warm the battery if it is already at 100% is to sit in the truck with the climate off. Or run climate from app with a low temperature.

You can check the pack temperature by entering service mode. Lots of fun screens there.
Menu->Software-> long press Cybertruck, password is service.

 

[iproduce]

I wonder if it assumes there might be solar anyway and won't engage if it can't absorb excess. So the same sort of limits as regen.

An energy efficient way to warm the battery if it is already at 100% is to sit in the truck with the climate off. Or run climate from app with a low temperature.

You can check the pack temperature by entering service mode. Lots of fun screens there.
Menu->Software-> long press Cybertruck, password is service.

No way! Ok, this is good to know. Thanks!

 

[mongo]

No way! Ok, this is good to know. Thanks!

Another fun trick is if you put the app or UI into miles of range mode (tap the SOC %), the mi/hour number is actual pack charging versus kWh which is gross power into the truck . However, it won't read negative, even if the truck is pulling from the pack to heat things.

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