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New solar and Powerwall installation
- Thread starter Shygar
- Start date
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- Tags
- Powerwall Tesla Energy
@Shygar, What's with this "the battery will dump..."? There is no reason for a fully charged battery to do anything. If the battery is full and your load is minimal any Solar will go to the grid and the battery will be in standby/idle mode. One of the settings via the Wizard is to "participate" in being able to provide battery to the grid but as far as I know this feature is not yet available. For our installation we are not allowed to do this anyway (at this time) but regardless, our configuration would not allow this anyway because we use most or all the power we store overnight.
Cheers,
Harry E.
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Cheers,
Harry E.
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Yep I agree. I just need PG&E, my power company, to understand that so they can give the permission to operate for my solar.
GenSao
Member
So Tesla was supposed to come with PG&E yesterday, but PG&E is still holding up the process. They requested a "partial PTO" due to them being concerned the battery will dump electricity with the solar at full power (and my house not using anything). As of now I'm waiting on the discussions between Tesla and PG&E to convince PG&E it's safe to use with the grid, otherwise I have to wait the remaining 5 months for a transformer upgrade.
D'oh. I hope Tesla can convince them. I may be is a similar situation.
You may be ok since I am still trying to get the permission to operate for my solar. You don't need PG&E to do a utility inspection just for powerwalls right? Just the regular city inspection? My city inspection went fine and very quickly.
@Shygar Can the powerwall charge from the grid too? The reason I am asking this is for 30% federal tax credit for battery backups. I am sure you would be opting for this federal tax credit. When I was researching about this- I learnt that to be eligible for full tax credit(30%) for battery backups, they should completely charge from solar panels and none from the grid. Any information about this from anybody would be appreciated.
Yes my powerwall only charges from solar. But with the TOU software update coming later this year, that's supposed to let you charge late at night from the grid when power is cheaper, then use that during the day while all of your solar goes back to the grid.
You should probably ask a tax professional to be certain. I don't know if you are installing solar as well but mine was solar plus 1 powerwall installed at the same time, so I just have one form from Tesla to submit for the costs of my system.
I am installing solar this month. But Tesla is not yet installing powerwall in my area. So planning on adding powerwall once its available. Not sure whether I can get tax credit for this later battery backup add on. As per the attached document I can.
That document, if accurate, seems to say it shouldn't be a problem. The question will be what do you have to provide to show that your system is indeed charging 75% or more of the time from PV array.
You probably don't need to show anything until you are audited. At that point you could probably ask Tesla for a report from the cloud data.
To my thinking, the more unknown question is for how many years must you only charge from renewable? You only take the tax credit in the first year, so that is the only auditable period. After that - what then?
Yes, by default the Self Consumption mode only charges from solar.
GenSao
Member
I do not believe PG&E needs to inspect, but Tesla did have me fill out Form No. 79-1095: "Authorization to Receive Customer Information or Act Upon a Customer's Behalf"
For our upcoming Powerwall installation, Tesla just had us sign the interconnection agreement for SCE. Among other things, the agreement states that an SCE representative has the right to be present at the government inspection (done by the county in our case). I don't expect that SCE will bother to send anyone, though. No one from SCE came when we installed solar panels.
The ITC credit will be vested out over a period of 5 years. So you get to claim 1/5th of the 30% ITC each year you qualify for the charge from renewable requirement. After 5 years, you can charge however you like, i.e. 100% from grid.
Please provide a reference for this information. IIRC, claiming the credit on your personal income taxes is different than corporate taxes and what you're saying makes more sense in a corporate tax situation. I believe the credit can be claimed 100% in the first year on personal tax filing.
If you have enough taxes due. If you don't, I believe you can roll out the rest at least one more year.
