Indigo Domotics

Several years back I installed a Generac whole house generator and my entire house is Insteon which works extremely well. Problem is I have an older Generac 16KW unit and when it starts up in a power failure it causes the lights to mostly go to full bright and I have no control at any switch or through Indigo or through any other means. I literally have to unplug the circuit from the module to turn off the light! Power failures are few and far between so this has not been that big of an issue but now that I have the time, I figure I need to work this out. I assume it is because the generator power is dirty or modified sine wave and this is causing the issue. The Generac units built after 2009 seem to have changed the way they produce power and now have something the call "True Power" which claims the following.

Delivers best-in-class power quality with less than 5% total harmonic distortion for clean, smooth operation of sensitive electronics and appliances.

Everything else in the house works as if I were on the grid (TV's, computer, appliances) with only 1 other exception. A couple of UPS units are clicking all the time which I did try unplugging think they may be to cause of the insteon no communications but to no avail.

Can anyone confirm Insteon works with the newer type Generac generators with clean power? Right now I can get a smoking deal on a new unit and sell my older unit to someone with little cash outlay however this would be a total waste of time/effort/money if the new units do not address the Insteon issue.

I'd check with Smarthome - they're much more likely to have experience with specific generator types.

Have or know someone with an O'scope? I'd like to see how 'smooth and clean' that sine wave is.

Could also be the inverter itself 'cleaning' the Insteon signal (seen as noise)

Contacted everyone I could. Smarthome has no clue, Insteon does not know either and after talking with Generac they have no idea and basically they said we only test our Generators with Generac products.

Nice...

I feel for ya.

Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure will be to try it out (or find someone that has). We've noticed the same thing with solar power systems -- some cause X10/INSTEON issues whereas others generate clean enough AC that it works fine.

Wonder if an isolation transformer would work/help?
(want to put one on my TIG welder, causes the house to go nutz, especially if I do aluminum.)

I finally had the opportunity to upgrade my generator to the newer style with "True Power" . Great news, Insteon works flawlessly now. Bottom line is the older units power was not clean enough and could not communicate properly.

This is quite valuable information because the geniuses at Generac, Smarthome and Insteon could not answer the question when I asked them a few years ago. Now we know.

just curious... any idea if Insteon can run/control/monitor the Generac Generator?

I'm going to have one installed myself very shortly.

Even just notifications about when its testing/running would be good to know.

My Cummins/Onan has a http server interface. With some screen scraping I could probably figure out how to control it. For now, I monitor it using it's email notification system.

Thanks

Still shopping around...

So here in Louisiana, in Post-Ida world, the Generac generator is somewhat playing havoc with the Insteon dimmers, which for me, is a lot of lighting. The is the epitome of a 1st World Problem.. mainly when the AC kicks back on, the dimmers go out/flash/act up for a second or two, then resume normal operation. No change in brightness. Add in the LED's the dimmers control, and... you get the picture. .... Not sure I have a "True Power" Generac... its a 22KW, only 4 years old... but am wondering if ANY smart dimmers would be immune to the fluctuations caused by the generator.

While on generator power, everything else seems to be working perfectly, but all the computer stuff is on UPS's... they they click a lot... which I guess means they are working properly....

We have a very old Generac 17Kw unit that gets the job done, but it's still a pain. When the power goes out, it takes about 15 seconds for the generator to spool up and cut over. In that time, we have critical things covered with UPSes which scream loud alarms throughout the house (which can't be turned off--it's super when the power goes out at 02:00). I would love to have something like a Generac PWRCell which could cover the 15 seconds to have continuous power in the house.

At least two problems with this:
1. I'm not sure the PWRCell can even do that, and
2. It's a ton of money to spend for 15 seconds of power.

While on generator power, everything else seems to be working perfectly, but all the computer stuff is on UPS's... they they click a lot... which I guess means they are working properly....

I suspect you don't have a pure sine wave... my UPS's were all doing the same thing - you can tell they are trying to level out the noise (at least the AVR ones). My Insteon relays were not too bad but the dimmers were not extremely happy with me. About your experience except when first turned on they would sometimes flicker (actual brightness) for a short time. We were running on a 5000w generator. It would do it some when there was a surge of something starting up too, similar to your A/C issue.

Luckily Entergy got us back on the other day as mine would not run the A/C short of a small window unit.

I've got a really cheap volt meter, and it constantly flickers around the 122 range... there is an Hz reading as well, and it flickers constantly... never above 60hz, but between 60 and 59.xx

Hopefully we'll be back on shore power in a day or two.... or three or eight.....