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New Tesla 15.12kW Solar / 4 Powerwall order in Orlando

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Just a quick update. As I mentioned before, I wound up needing to cancel my original order and place a second order in order to potentially get a big discount. (By the way, if anyone is interested in a solar panel system in Florida send me a PM. I don’t know if I can post details here.)

In any case, I did that last Tuesday and then I had to go through the home assessment and approve the designs and such again, but as of this morning it’s showing that my order is in the “permitting” phase again, so at worst it looks like I lost about a week. But saving money definitely makes it worth the wait. It’s also possible that I didn’t even lose that much time. Someone had contacted me with a question about the permit before I canceled and I let them know that I would be cancelling and reordering and she said that would probably continue to work on getting the permit since I would need it anyway.

So at this point I’m just waiting until the permit is ready.
 
I’m up here in Deland also with Duke. No solar system. Yet.

It’s my understanding that once you go over a 10 kw system Duke considers that a “Tier 2” system that requires additional liability insurance and additional hook-up fees.

Have you found that to be the case?
 
I’m up here in Deland also with Duke. No solar system. Yet.

It’s my understanding that once you go over a 10 kw system Duke considers that a “Tier 2” system that requires additional liability insurance and additional hook-up fees.

Have you found that to be the case?

That is the case and it scared me a little at first, but it’s not really as big of a deal as it sounds. The application fee for a tier 2 system is $240 (instead of $0 for a tier 1 system), but in the grand scheme of things $240 is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the solar system.

Additionally they require that you carry an insurance policy with $1,000,000 of liability coverage. I spoke with a couple of insurance agents and it looks like there are a few options here. There are some companies that offer homeowner’s insurance that allow you to increase the liability coverage to $1,000,000, but a lot of them top out at $500,000. However, you can also keep your existing homeowners policy and get an umbrella policy with the $1,000,000 liability coverage. Different options have different prices, but the quotes I’ve been getting are all in the range of about $150-$300/year for the additional coverage (on top of what I’m currently paying for my homeowners insurance), so again, it’s not a huge expense. I haven’t made a final decision on insurance yet, but I’ll probably have to do so soon. When I did the Tesla order it asked for a copy of my insurance coverage, so I just uploaded what I have. I know it won’t qualify for a tier 2 system and Tesla will probably come back at some point and ask for a policy with more coverage, but for now it’s been enough to keep things moving.

I did have one solar installer tell me that duke only checks for insurance coverage at the time of the PTO and a lot of people will cancel the policy once the PTO has been granted, but personally I’m a bit nervous doing that as if something bad were to happen I wouldn’t want to be on the hook for $1,000,000 with no insurance to back me up. It seems like a couple hundred dollars a year is a small price to pay to make sure I’m covered, and frankly, an umbrella policy can be a good thing to have and usually they will also cover your cars as well.
 
Just a quick update. As I mentioned before, I wound up needing to cancel my original order and place a second order in order to potentially get a big discount. (By the way, if anyone is interested in a solar panel system in Florida send me a PM. I don’t know if I can post details here.)

Does this by chance include Solar Roof ?
I am going to do that soon but was planning on next year, but if the discount is big enough I might speed this up?
If it on panels only, what kind of discount are they talking? might persuade we to go that rout ...
Any info would be helpful
 
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Does this by chance include Solar Roof ?
I am going to do that soon but was planning on next year, but if the discount is big enough I might speed this up?
If it on panels only, what kind of discount are they talking? might persuade we to go that rout ...
Any info would be helpful

There are details available in the post here:

Tesla provides Virtual Presentation re: Energy Products & offers Discount to Florida Club Members

They did extend the deadline to the 22nd, so there is still time to get in if you’re interested. Unfortunately it doesn’t apply to the solar roof, just to solar panels. Feel free to let me know if you have other questions:)
 
And I can see the permit application on my city’s website now. I spoke with someone in the building department and they said that it normally only takes 24-48 hours for the permit to be approved once everything has been submitted. Hopefully that means the permit is approved early next week and then we can get an install date scheduled:)
 
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As of this morning my city’s web site shows that the permit has been approved and issued:). I sent an email to my energy advisor a little while ago in the hopes that Tesla can get it marked as approved on their side and then we can get the install scheduled. From what I’ve seen in other posts here, it seems like keeping on top of Tesla is the way to keep things moving, so I’m hoping to find that balance of keeping them on their toes without being incredibly annoying.
 
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I also have duke.

My umbrella coverage on homeowners was $300. I also had to max out my car insurance for $40/6mo term. So its almost $400 a year.


I paid 31k after tax incentives for 16.8kw system, Panasonic N330 panels with enphase iq7x microinverters.

I tried to do tesla roof but the cost was over 10k above PV system + new roof. And when I tried tesla PV, their cost was higher than non-tesla, so thats the route I took in Feb. Since then Tesla has dropped the price on their PV setup lower than non-tesla route, but they also stopped selling Panasonic, and now use a lower grade chinese panel. Their inverter system also has a 10 year warranty compared to enphase 25 year.

Here's my setup (more panels around back). It took Duke over 2 months to sign off on net metering, and that only occurred because I complained to the state about how long it was taking. Fortunately the enphase microinverters can do a no-export mode, where it powers your house up to how much you can consume, anything beyond that is not exported to the grid. So for the 2 months prior to net metering being enabled, the panels were able to generate ~2/3rds of my power consumption. With net metering it should cover 100%, including car.

E7ZvRYa.jpg


tM2iRVY.png
 
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I also have duke.

My umbrella coverage on homeowners was $300. I also had to max out my car insurance for $40/6mo term. So its almost $400 a year.


I paid 31k after tax incentives for 16.8kw system, Panasonic N330 panels with enphase iq7x microinverters.

I tried to do tesla roof but the cost was over 10k above PV system + new roof. And when I tried tesla PV, their cost was higher than non-tesla, so thats the route I took in Feb. Since then Tesla has dropped the price on their PV setup lower than non-tesla route, but they also stopped selling Panasonic, and now use a lower grade chinese panel. Their inverter system also has a 10 year warranty compared to enphase 25 year.

Here's my setup (more panels around back). It took Duke over 2 months to sign off on net metering, and that only occurred because I complained to the state about how long it was taking. Fortunately the enphase microinverters can do a no-export mode, where it powers your house up to how much you can consume, anything beyond that is not exported to the grid. So for the 2 months prior to net metering being enabled, the panels were able to generate ~2/3rds of my power consumption. With net metering it should cover 100%, including car.

E7ZvRYa.jpg


tM2iRVY.png
Very nice, which company did this? Do you have battery backup?
 
And I just got the call from scheduling:). My install is now scheduled for June 22nd and they said that if they get a cancelation and have sooner availability they will let me know.

The one thing that I thought was a little odd was that the scheduler said they would be installing a soft start unit on my heat pump. The LRA on the heat pump is 72.5 and it was my understanding that the four powerwalls would be able to handle that without a problem.

I guess it doesn’t really matter much either way, but I wasn’t expecting it. It’s also possible that it’s just part of the script for the scheduler to read to make sure that I’ll know that they might need access to the heat pump and I won’t actually get one.
 
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And I just got the call from scheduling:). My install is now scheduled for June 22nd and they said that if they get a cancelation and have sooner availability they will let me know.

The one thing that I thought was a little odd was that the scheduler said they would be installing a soft start unit on my heat pump. The LRA on the heat pump is 72.5 and it was my understanding that the four powerwalls would be able to handle that without a problem.

I guess it doesn’t really matter much either way, but I wasn’t expecting it. It’s also possible that it’s just part of the script for the scheduler to read to make sure that I’ll know that they might need access to the heat pump and I won’t actually get one.
Great news on install!

Regarding the soft start, transient response would likely not be as good as gradually applied steady load. It's a >50% load step. Also, you need to factor in all the loads that exist before the heat pump kicks on (rest of house) along with the air handler and external fan (or ground loop pumps).
 
Very nice, which company did this? Do you have battery backup?

Battery doesn't make sense for me. I'd need 2 for AC, and it would be significantly cheaper to get a natural gas generator, which could also run a lot longer than the battery would.

If we had time of use rates, maybe battery could offset when power was consumed to decrease cost, but given that my panels already produce 100% of my consumption, even that wouldn't do anything for me.

Going all electric is great, but it needs to work on paper, and while I dislike an ICE generator, it's only going to run once or twice a year max. So it's not a big deal.
 
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Going all electric is great, but it needs to work on paper, and while I dislike an ICE generator, it's only going to run once or twice a year max. So it's not a big deal.

Depending on your grid you will essentially be firing up an ICE generator every time the sun goes down. But at least you are helping to reduce/eliminate peaker plant usage during the day.
 
Depending on your grid you will essentially be firing up an ICE generator every time the sun goes down. But at least you are helping to reduce/eliminate peaker plant usage during the day.

What? It would only be used if the grid goes down. Like a hurricane destroyed the power lines to my house.

I have net metering, so no battery is needed to store the PV generated power.
 
But where does your grid power come from? Is it all wind or geo-thermal? Or is it Natural Gas, or coal, powered?

This is essentially like the long-tail pipe emissions argument about EVs.

How is that relevant? I can't change how they produce power, I don't have the ability to switch power companies, and I am at a net zero for my usage.
 
I asked Tesla for a copy of my electrical drawings and plans and found a couple things of note. This is the current layout:

45170605-E0F9-4C5F-9102-6C8CE6C3CF6F.jpeg


It’s changed slightly from the layout that I posted on the first page of this thread because on the original layout they had drawn the vents on the top of MP2 in the wrong place and they couldn’t fit an additional panel on the top on that MP.

It also shows that I’m getting two Solar Edge SE7600H inverters. Although the way they split up the strings seems a little odd to me.

Inverter 1 will have a total of 25 panels. All of MP1 is going to be a single string of 15, plus a second string of 10 panels from MP2.

Inverter 2 will have a total of 23 panels. One string of 12 consisting of the other 4 panels from MP2 plus 8 panels from MP4. There will be a second string of 11 consisting of the other 7 panels from MP4 plus the 4 panels on MP5.

EE1BDA88-BABB-4451-A8BD-F31AA5A69046.jpeg


The other thing that stood out that made me pretty happy was that they included the blurb for Gateway 2, so it would appear that I’m going to be one of the first few installs that get a Gateway 2:

E4C0022B-CEFB-481F-9675-33B19DC4232B.jpeg
 
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