We had three Powerwalls installed by TESLA in late 2017 (no solar). We were lured into the purchase partly on the possibility of a (never realized) SGIP rebate, but switching our Edison plan to TOU made it worthwhile for a fairly large, multi-generational mountain house with about a 10 year payoff regardless. Install was super slow and a bit of a hassle as the whole process was still somewhat new, but outside a few glitches and repairs, the Powerwalls have been great and reduced our bill enough that we can afford to heat a mountain house in winter without burning trees! We tried for a few months to followup with Tesla about SGIP and other things and only heard "we're taking care of all the paperwork" from everyone we asked.
Roll forward to October 2021 . . . We were finally able to add some solar in the limited usable space on our roof! We got to make a huge improvement and jump into actually having some renewable instead of just offsetting peak usage! Yay!
or Nay? Sadly, nay. Huge NAY!
Why?
1) Edison will not grant Permission To Operate our new solar because they say we never had PTO for the Powerwalls. IE: Tesla never did the paperwork OR SCE is FOS.
2) Due to SCE/CPUC agreements nobody will give me details about, the Tesla app no longer lets us to charge from the grid now that we have a measly 4kWh solar (way less in Winter). Would have been nice if ANYONE we talked to when buying solar (SCE, Tesla, Semper Solaris & others) told us this before we laid out the cash for a small system .
3) Now that we can't charge from the grid, there's no way to get through peak period in Winter on battery, so (without changing plans) we will pay somewhere between $60 to $150 more a month for power than we did last year without solar and we will continue to pay a lot more until summer nears and our solar gradually becomes useful. Fortunately, mountain summers are mild and we know our tiny array can at least COOL our house through peak.
Finally: Nobody at SCE or Tesla wants to return our calls and emails about these issues. We keep getting handed off because nobody at Tesla seems to know who's department this is (since it's not "solar") and nobody at SCE even gives a damn. To be fair, I only found out about the no Powerwall PTO until late last week, but even our questions about SGIP and inability to charge from the grid have been largely ignored by Tesla and completely ignored by SCE.
This is partially a vent (mods: LMK if edits are needed), but also a warning. Don't assume an installer (in this case Tesla) did their job in any shape or form without full legal documentation. We ASSUMED we had PTO for our Powerwalls because we have used them for FOUR YEARS Tesla or SCE may have screwed up the paperwork, but I find it insane that SCE now says both "you now have to pay full peak rates because you have solar" and "you can't use your solar because we didn't know you had batteries".
I don't even know how that last part is possible. We have used virtually zero power during peak for four years in a full time family residence and SCE didn't know? The most casual glance at our usage by human or code shows this clearly. Of course, SCE seems perfectly happy we're stuck using a ton of grid power during peak now (and paying full price for it) as they refuse to return our calls and emails. That's not even going into whether or not I think SCE is just screwing with us to stretch it out until we can no longer grandfather out of California's NEM 3.0 idiocy.
Sadly, I also have to believe Tesla never even tried to submit any of the SGIP paperwork they said they would. How could they if we never had PTO?
I will followup with details if/when any of this is resolved, but for now . . . shame on SCE and Tesla for soiling what we thought would be our first partially renewable New Year .
Roll forward to October 2021 . . . We were finally able to add some solar in the limited usable space on our roof! We got to make a huge improvement and jump into actually having some renewable instead of just offsetting peak usage! Yay!
or Nay? Sadly, nay. Huge NAY!
Why?
1) Edison will not grant Permission To Operate our new solar because they say we never had PTO for the Powerwalls. IE: Tesla never did the paperwork OR SCE is FOS.
2) Due to SCE/CPUC agreements nobody will give me details about, the Tesla app no longer lets us to charge from the grid now that we have a measly 4kWh solar (way less in Winter). Would have been nice if ANYONE we talked to when buying solar (SCE, Tesla, Semper Solaris & others) told us this before we laid out the cash for a small system .
3) Now that we can't charge from the grid, there's no way to get through peak period in Winter on battery, so (without changing plans) we will pay somewhere between $60 to $150 more a month for power than we did last year without solar and we will continue to pay a lot more until summer nears and our solar gradually becomes useful. Fortunately, mountain summers are mild and we know our tiny array can at least COOL our house through peak.
Finally: Nobody at SCE or Tesla wants to return our calls and emails about these issues. We keep getting handed off because nobody at Tesla seems to know who's department this is (since it's not "solar") and nobody at SCE even gives a damn. To be fair, I only found out about the no Powerwall PTO until late last week, but even our questions about SGIP and inability to charge from the grid have been largely ignored by Tesla and completely ignored by SCE.
This is partially a vent (mods: LMK if edits are needed), but also a warning. Don't assume an installer (in this case Tesla) did their job in any shape or form without full legal documentation. We ASSUMED we had PTO for our Powerwalls because we have used them for FOUR YEARS Tesla or SCE may have screwed up the paperwork, but I find it insane that SCE now says both "you now have to pay full peak rates because you have solar" and "you can't use your solar because we didn't know you had batteries".
I don't even know how that last part is possible. We have used virtually zero power during peak for four years in a full time family residence and SCE didn't know? The most casual glance at our usage by human or code shows this clearly. Of course, SCE seems perfectly happy we're stuck using a ton of grid power during peak now (and paying full price for it) as they refuse to return our calls and emails. That's not even going into whether or not I think SCE is just screwing with us to stretch it out until we can no longer grandfather out of California's NEM 3.0 idiocy.
Sadly, I also have to believe Tesla never even tried to submit any of the SGIP paperwork they said they would. How could they if we never had PTO?
I will followup with details if/when any of this is resolved, but for now . . . shame on SCE and Tesla for soiling what we thought would be our first partially renewable New Year .
Last edited: