Depending on the age of the equipment, the ability to log data may be limited.
My SW4024 from the 1990's can log a few values, such as the last high and low voltage on each line but not the time of the event.
OTOH, about 10 years ago I sorted through the log files from a Sunny Boy and it basically stored a megabyte every day. Almost every parameter is logged, every few seconds.
The Sunny Boy would overwrite the logged data with new readings as the memory filled. How else is it supposed to store more info?
This is very common procedure and I would not get frustrated with Outback for choosing to do this. Most datalogging equipment behaves like this. Aircraft black-boxes, for example.
The Outback equipment is about 6 years old at most and is relatively sophisticated. It already sends the data offsite to some sort of server somewhere (theirs, not mine). They send me an email and let me know I have 12 hours to download this log. Then they delete it. Unless I'm missing something, I very much do blame them. Not to be too testy about this, but I just noticed today a 2-day-old email where I could have downloaded another log. I intend to send them a new comment at some point in the next few days.
I understand about limited onsite memory, but this is not onsite. It reminds me of 5-10 years ago when I walked into my branch of Wells Fargo, conducted some business, and on the way out I told them sarcastically maybe Warren Buffett was hard up for money, and if he was, I could maybe lend him some. After all, they were claiming that they didn't have the computer power to save customer bank records going back more than some minimum amount (12 or 18 or 24 months? I don't remember) so that I could conveniently do my taxes every year without running up against some artificial time deadline. A year or two later, Wells Fargo finally started to offer these records more easily and going further back to customers. Nothing to do with my comment I'm sure, but my point is that Wells Fargo's excuse-making was utter bs. I suspect as well with Outback. Probably they just are so geeked out they don't realize they are being anti-customer.
Can you combine this notification from your power provider with the ability to download a log into a way to capture the data you need, to access it when you know you need it?
I'm not sure quite what this means, but if you mean something along the lines of writing a script to go fetch something, then it's the exact opposite of what they should be providing for me. They should be providing for me:
- clear notification of all outages, large or small, as they happen.
- a log of all outages, larger or small.
Considering the amount of money I paid for their system, and the ease with which they could probably do these things, and the dozens of features they do offer that I find worthless, both of these fall under the heading that they should not kid themselves that they are doing me any favors.