It’s clear enough that Vera herself recovers just fine from power outages, and goes about her business once power is restored. But… I got to wondering about how Z-Wave devices would fare under such conditions?
Some questions concerning the behavior of paired devices:
-
When power returns after an outage, and Vera wakes back up, does Vera make any attempt to restore devices to their state (“On”, “Dim 50%”, etc.) prior to the outage?
-
Could controls be added in Vera’s UI, say on the ‘Devices’ page, to govern whether Vera will or won’t try to restore a device’s prior state, following an outage? Or a third option, such as “Leave ‘Off’ following power outage”?
My rationale behind these questions is:
-
When power to my home is lost, I currently walk from room to room making sure that all light switches are OFF, the thermostat is turned OFF, and so forth … lest these devices experience the brown-out-like voltages and spikes associated with the sudden return of power.
-
More importantly, I’ve always believed that multiple outages in succession (not uncommon in my part of the country) are precipitated by customers leaving so many electrical appliances ON … so that when power is restored, the immense load on the lines is apt to cause a 2nd, 3rd black-out.
I believe Vera - who already is able to respond to utility companies’ “Flex Alerts” during peak usage - could be put to even better use during blackout/outage scenarios.
Any ideas, folks?