They have not installed the inverters yet. All components were chosen by the Tesla Solar Roof design team.
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Going for it - new Solar Roof install scheduled
- Thread starter TheRedPill
- Start date
woferry
Member
FYI, I have pictures in the album in my signature link from my roof. Specifically, pictures #23-33 have a bunch of shots of the rooftop wiring, #20 is the PV Modules (3 tiles each) with the pair of MC4 connectors on them. #23 and several of the roof shots that follow show the Diode Trunk Harness. This is a cable with one or more blocks on it containing the diode(s?) along with a pair of MC4 connectors. Tesla allows 1-4 PV Modules to be connected in series before it has to tie-in to a DTH block. This allows a set of PV Modules to be bypassed (via the diode) should that set be shaded, damaged, etc. #32, for example, shows the highest set of PV Modules connected into the DTH, along with the next 3 diode blocks for the rows of PV Modules still to be installed. #33 is the same DTH just looking farther up the roof, and you can see that two DTHs are chained together to make the run longer. At the ends of each DTH is another MC4 connector. So in the end, there's a pair of MC4 connectors that forms the positive and negative leads of the solar array, and these connect to the Pass Through Box, which feeds the wiring into the attic space. In the attic the arrays connect to Rapid Shutdown Devices, and ultimately connect to the inverters. Arrays can be joined before or after the RSDs as appropriate. In my system, as shown in post #73 on my thread, has 5 RSDs for 6 arrays. S1 and S2 combine before the RSD, the rest have their own RSD, though S4 and S6 combine after the RSDs to create the 4 channels that feed into the two Delta Solivia 5.2 inverters. The 3 attic RSDs are shown during install in picture #44 (Pass Through Boxes were not yet installed, so no roof connection yet), and finished in picture #220. From top-left going clockwise, it's the S1+S2 RSD, the S3 RSD, and the S4 RSD (with the combiner that merges it with the run from the S6 RSD, which comes in from the lower-right), and the black junction box that brings all of the PV wiring together on its way to the inverters (inverters with conduit coming from the attic is shown in picture #49).
woferry
Member
I don't see why it would be a secret. Mine is listed at 17,091 kWh for year 1. My PVWatts model suggested 18,015 kWh, so it seems reasonable for a guarantee, especially since I modeled nominal and they only guarantee 95% of the rated peak power in the first year, 95% of my PVWatts number would be 17,114. I've been producing 103 days so far and am at ~6500 kWh. Of course these are the clearer months, but it seems in the right ballpark to me.
I think the diode truck harness is actually a series of maximum power point tracking boost converters. A passive diode would not allow variable numbers of module strings to interconnect. So each box bumps the voltage up to the back haul level (higher voltage is lower resistive loss) and gets each group in the optimum power output. MC4 was originally rated at 600V, but can now do 1,500V.
Install looks great, your roof has a lot of penetrations for utilities/ vents (can't believe there is one in the valley).
I'd rather not go into exact costs, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the cost was on par with that of a new (high end) roof, plus solar panels. I made a comparison spreadsheet where I itemized seven different quotes.
woferry
Member
I haven't seen anything suggesting there's anything active in the harness, and it's definitely not increasing the string voltage above the sum of the panel Vpmax's themselves. Everything in my system is still 600V max, namely the RSDs and the inverter. From the UL listing:
The TSR System electrical system is based on the use of the Tesla-provided "Diode Trunk Harness," which provides one Bypass Diode for every four 1x3 modules. This maintains one bypass diode for every 24 solar cells.
Gotcha, I was thinking about the diodes the wrong way around. (paralleling outputs)
Passive would be simpler, but it seems like an active system would be more efficient. The size of the combiners makes me think there is something extra going on in there, but that could just be me over engineering. If each combiner boosted the group voltage to the panel max, all the system voltage numbers would stay in spec.
Update - they are almost finished with the Tesla Solar Roof install. Roof looks amazing. Next step will be the 2 PowerWalls.
groovidad
Living the Dream!
Congratulations! You’ll wonder why you didn’t do this years ago! Your savings in grid charges will fund another Tesla! Exciting stuff!
Here's a picture of some of the shingle/tile interconnects. The inverters have yet to be installed.
Roof's pretty much done. Next step is the underbelly stuff (RSD's [Rapid Shut Down], Inverters, Gateway).
That yellow thingy with the nose-ring is an anchor point for one of their safety harnesses.
Here are before and after pictures. The aftershot was taken the day before the finishing touches were done (ridge, cleaning etc). The two pictures were taken within 5 days from each other.
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Awesome, and looks great! I'll have to hold off until they work out the final cost for V3 as the current iteration is a bit above my price point. I don't believe they'll be offering in my area for a bit anyway. But yours looks amazing and very promising. Thanks for the updates and for sharing.
Ulmo
Active Member
That looks great! I really hope Tesla pulls their gear together and ramps up this Tesla Roof stuff. Yours looks nice.
Question: what % of the roof did you get covered in active cells vs. non-solar tiles? I know you figured out a limit of 10kW per PG&E so selected 10kW, but I wonder what the max theoretical kW your roof could produce using these tiles is. I also know that maxing out the solar tile % (100%) is very expensive, and requires bribing the Tesla engineers (and likely going off-grid if the utility doesn't allow it, basically making the idea impossibly expensive due to massive backup requirements (10x the storage minimum)).
Question: what % of the roof did you get covered in active cells vs. non-solar tiles? I know you figured out a limit of 10kW per PG&E so selected 10kW, but I wonder what the max theoretical kW your roof could produce using these tiles is. I also know that maxing out the solar tile % (100%) is very expensive, and requires bribing the Tesla engineers (and likely going off-grid if the utility doesn't allow it, basically making the idea impossibly expensive due to massive backup requirements (10x the storage minimum)).
Maximapolak
Member
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