I leased a Tesla Model S in 2016, and that lease closed last year. While owning it, I fell in love with the product. I decided I would buy a Model 3, which I picked up in September. While I was picking up the car, I talked with an energy consultant in the showroom about solar. I consider myself a pretty smart guy, and tend to read a little bit into a lot of things, but I never spent a lot of time reading into a lot of the details when it came to actual solar installation. Still, I had time to kill while waiting for my delivery, so I sat and talked with the guy, and it got me interested. So I sent my utility bill his way and got the process started.
I already knew my property received excellent sunlight. We had installed a pool a few years ago, and one thing we noticed immediately is that the pool temperature was so much warmer than our neighbor's pool that we had been swimming in for the previous few years. (Theirs has a lot of shade) Ours gets non-stop sun in the summer. Our house also had a roof with no shade that had a lot of sections that were good for solar. So I started to do a lot of research.
My initial meeting with a Tesla energy advisor was in October. Tesla came and did a site survey, which provided me with extensive details about my roof, and the sunlight different sections of it would get on different months of the year. They also gave me initial pricing and suggestions on the size of a solar system and showed how it should offset my current power bill, which was extremely high. I used the details provided by Tesla to get additional quotes from other companies in the area using EnergySage. One company which I spent a lot of time talking with in my area was P.E.G. Solar. They were very professional and had good pricing. Not only that, I believe the guy I was talking with was the owner of the company, as he was also the guy on all of their youtube videos. That was also a great source of information for me.
Ultimately, I took the pricing from P.E.G. and gave it to my EA from Tesla, and Tesla beat those prices, which was great since Tesla also included a longer warranty with a self-referral. I also liked using a larger company for a solar installation. I signed a contract with Tesla right around November 1st for a system size of around 11.7kW and 1 PowerWall. After the order took place, I was still in constant contact with my EA and we modified some panel locations in order to put them on the most efficient sections of my roof. I re-located a plumbing exhaust vent to do this.
On December 5th, Tesla notified me they were ready to schedule my installation. I confirmed a date for January 4th.
On December 11th, I decided to upgrade my system from 1 Powerwall to 2 Powerwalls, which would allow me to keep certain items such as my well pump on my backup panel (due to AMP spikes) without tripping the powerwalls, and also give me some additional backup power. I technically ended up paying nothing for this second powerwall (after taxes) since Elon Musk decided to refund all of the initial Model 3 Performance owners $5,000. That, plus the tax credit, essentially got me a second powerwall free of charge. What a great Christmas present! I was concerned that this upgrade would mess up my installation date, or my turn on date, and my EA told me that it should not affect my installation, but that it usually historically resulted in inspection or turn-on date push-backs.
My installation occured as-scheduled on January 4th. A nice surprise was when I found out they brought 330W panels instead of 325W panels. Free upgrade! They could not complete it on the first day, so they had to come back and complete the work on the following Monday. I took the day off and spent most of the time talking with the electricians doing the powerwall, gateway, and power panel work in my house. I wanted to know how everything was wired together. Almost all of them previously had worked for solar city. They were great guys and I really enjoyed talking with them. They also sent me text messages after hours giving me updates on outstanding issues.
There were some problems at the end of the install, but they were minor. There was a small crack in the drywall in one of my rooms upstairs above the tray ceiling where the beams flexed a bit. Tesla scheduled someone to fix this and they came the same week. Also, some of the breakers were mis-labeled after they were re-arranged. This was also corrected. After they completed their work, they determined that one of the Powerwalls was defective and would need to be replaced.
The county inspection needed to happen next. When I spoke with Tesla on January 7th after the installation, I found out that Tesla had not yet submitted the new design changes to the county. I was terrified this was going to delay things for months. The county approved the changes in 1 day, and scheduled the inspection for January 16th. The inspections passed, though the inspector considered failing it because the "unfused wire" between the meter and the new panel was too long since they put it below the old panel in the basement. He decided it was OK though since it was protected behind the existing panel and probably wouldn't be damaged there.
I was having trouble getting responses from anyone at Tesla regarding my Powerwall issue for a week or so, and I was again getting worried that since I had already paid, and that I was no longer a new order, that I would be put on the back-burner so to speak.
Dominion Energy sent me my PTO on January 29th, but my Powerwall was still not fixed. I went over the steps to turn on my system with Tesla, but because of my Powerwall issue, the system was not reporting properly. My application would not show the battery, and I was not seeing energy monitoring. It took several calls to Tesla to finally get a response saying that it likely would not work properly until the Powerwall was fixed and that the Powerwall couldn't register properly due to the fault in the other Powerwall. (They were installed stacked) Fortunately, this did not last long.
Tesla came out on Jan 31st and replaced the defective Powerwall. Afterwords, the entire system is functioning and reporting normally and I am a working solar customer. From Contract to operation in 3 months! Not bad at all!
FYI - I also financed part of my system through Mosaic, which also had no issues at all.
After just a couple days of energy monitoring, I had a discussion with my wife about the upstairs furnace. All this time she thought we had a dual-fuel unit in the attic when it turns out it was only a heat-pump in that zone. A pre-2006 heat pump, which uses over 10kW of power when it is cold... Yep... that explains a lot of those high power bills! I already swapped out our pool pump for a variable speed pump for this summer... I think I found another thing to replace!
I already knew my property received excellent sunlight. We had installed a pool a few years ago, and one thing we noticed immediately is that the pool temperature was so much warmer than our neighbor's pool that we had been swimming in for the previous few years. (Theirs has a lot of shade) Ours gets non-stop sun in the summer. Our house also had a roof with no shade that had a lot of sections that were good for solar. So I started to do a lot of research.
My initial meeting with a Tesla energy advisor was in October. Tesla came and did a site survey, which provided me with extensive details about my roof, and the sunlight different sections of it would get on different months of the year. They also gave me initial pricing and suggestions on the size of a solar system and showed how it should offset my current power bill, which was extremely high. I used the details provided by Tesla to get additional quotes from other companies in the area using EnergySage. One company which I spent a lot of time talking with in my area was P.E.G. Solar. They were very professional and had good pricing. Not only that, I believe the guy I was talking with was the owner of the company, as he was also the guy on all of their youtube videos. That was also a great source of information for me.
Ultimately, I took the pricing from P.E.G. and gave it to my EA from Tesla, and Tesla beat those prices, which was great since Tesla also included a longer warranty with a self-referral. I also liked using a larger company for a solar installation. I signed a contract with Tesla right around November 1st for a system size of around 11.7kW and 1 PowerWall. After the order took place, I was still in constant contact with my EA and we modified some panel locations in order to put them on the most efficient sections of my roof. I re-located a plumbing exhaust vent to do this.
On December 5th, Tesla notified me they were ready to schedule my installation. I confirmed a date for January 4th.
On December 11th, I decided to upgrade my system from 1 Powerwall to 2 Powerwalls, which would allow me to keep certain items such as my well pump on my backup panel (due to AMP spikes) without tripping the powerwalls, and also give me some additional backup power. I technically ended up paying nothing for this second powerwall (after taxes) since Elon Musk decided to refund all of the initial Model 3 Performance owners $5,000. That, plus the tax credit, essentially got me a second powerwall free of charge. What a great Christmas present! I was concerned that this upgrade would mess up my installation date, or my turn on date, and my EA told me that it should not affect my installation, but that it usually historically resulted in inspection or turn-on date push-backs.
My installation occured as-scheduled on January 4th. A nice surprise was when I found out they brought 330W panels instead of 325W panels. Free upgrade! They could not complete it on the first day, so they had to come back and complete the work on the following Monday. I took the day off and spent most of the time talking with the electricians doing the powerwall, gateway, and power panel work in my house. I wanted to know how everything was wired together. Almost all of them previously had worked for solar city. They were great guys and I really enjoyed talking with them. They also sent me text messages after hours giving me updates on outstanding issues.
There were some problems at the end of the install, but they were minor. There was a small crack in the drywall in one of my rooms upstairs above the tray ceiling where the beams flexed a bit. Tesla scheduled someone to fix this and they came the same week. Also, some of the breakers were mis-labeled after they were re-arranged. This was also corrected. After they completed their work, they determined that one of the Powerwalls was defective and would need to be replaced.
The county inspection needed to happen next. When I spoke with Tesla on January 7th after the installation, I found out that Tesla had not yet submitted the new design changes to the county. I was terrified this was going to delay things for months. The county approved the changes in 1 day, and scheduled the inspection for January 16th. The inspections passed, though the inspector considered failing it because the "unfused wire" between the meter and the new panel was too long since they put it below the old panel in the basement. He decided it was OK though since it was protected behind the existing panel and probably wouldn't be damaged there.
I was having trouble getting responses from anyone at Tesla regarding my Powerwall issue for a week or so, and I was again getting worried that since I had already paid, and that I was no longer a new order, that I would be put on the back-burner so to speak.
Dominion Energy sent me my PTO on January 29th, but my Powerwall was still not fixed. I went over the steps to turn on my system with Tesla, but because of my Powerwall issue, the system was not reporting properly. My application would not show the battery, and I was not seeing energy monitoring. It took several calls to Tesla to finally get a response saying that it likely would not work properly until the Powerwall was fixed and that the Powerwall couldn't register properly due to the fault in the other Powerwall. (They were installed stacked) Fortunately, this did not last long.
Tesla came out on Jan 31st and replaced the defective Powerwall. Afterwords, the entire system is functioning and reporting normally and I am a working solar customer. From Contract to operation in 3 months! Not bad at all!
FYI - I also financed part of my system through Mosaic, which also had no issues at all.
After just a couple days of energy monitoring, I had a discussion with my wife about the upstairs furnace. All this time she thought we had a dual-fuel unit in the attic when it turns out it was only a heat-pump in that zone. A pre-2006 heat pump, which uses over 10kW of power when it is cold... Yep... that explains a lot of those high power bills! I already swapped out our pool pump for a variable speed pump for this summer... I think I found another thing to replace!
