Our Solar City solar panels have produced zero electricity for the past 10 days (roof is clear and weather mostly sunny). I submitted a service request last week, but there's been no response in about 5 business days so far. This happened last winter and we were without electricity production for a month, with no response from Tesla. Friends of ours had the same thing happen. Does anyone know how to get Tesla Energy's attention? I rebooted the inverter, which shows a "Fault" light. Is there any other self-service I can do?
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No solar power (Solar City panels)
- Thread starter Voyageur
- Start date
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Thanks very much for this number. I was able get through just as they opened (6:00 am PST) and arranged to be called by a technician to visit my home. no one ever responded to my service request using the Tesla app.
I was able to arrange for a Tesla technician to come to my home on March 25 and inspect the system. He determined that the inverter needs to be replaced (we were originally told by Solar City that these last about 10 years, but ours is 6 years old). I called Tesla Service two days ago to inquire about the status of the repair. Now I have received an email saying that they are waiting for a warranty replacement inverter from the manufacturer, which usually takes about 30 days. Tesla expects they will call me around the end of April to schedule installation of the new inverter. The result is that I will have lost about 10 weeks' worth of solar electricity production. At least there is service of sorts this time, but it's too bad Tesla doesn't stock replacement parts.
Mine are ABB (branded solar city, installed in January of 2016). ABB sold their inverter business I think, so if the same happens to me, I wonder what the resolution would be, since its clear from multiple posts here that tesla does not stock break / fix stock.
I would assume the company they sold it to also took on the warranty liability. If your inverter fails, it seems all Tesla will do is file the warranty claim for you and wait for resolution (presumably a new/reconditioned unit since it seems rare to try and repair existing units,) just as with SolarEdge or Delta. While it would be great if Tesla would consider replacing the inverter with theirs after a failure (assuming a compatible system,) presumably that costs them more, and they do not seem too concerned with customers losing money waiting weeks or months for the new parts.
This is certainly one area where I would prefer the Tesla inverter. While there are no guarantees, it should make a warranty replacement easier since they should have inventory on hand to deal with failures.
I'm also interested in the answer to this.
Here's a recent post that mentions reimbursement:
Under performance
I looked more at it from a maintenance angle. Will stick with my panels. Gives me so much more flexibility. What maintenance? Other than a washing which had minimal impact, we have done no maintenance.
teslamotorsclub.com
Why would you expect them to? Not part of warranty coverage I’m sure, just replacement of your inverter. Labor maybe on you, depends on warranty. Sure it sucks especially if it happens during Summer when you’d get a lot if production.
Yeah, I would not expect it for issues that are not related to the initial install (as in the linked thread.) Both for warranty and underproduction/underperformance, it seems their only obligation is to repair per the terms of the agreement.
Being on the customer side, the one thing I find unfortunate is there is no service-level agreement or other commitment as to when they will fix your issue, and it seems like they are in absolutely no rush to fix these things. And their only incentive seems to be customer goodwill/reputation.
I have one inverter dead, and not sure when it will get installed. His wife just went into labor. My new one has a possible glitch with connecting. Could I jump up and down and go nuts about my lost production, etc? Of course, But life is just too short! Just installing all this stuff means we have done well in life with money. And the more we put in, yep, the more stuff breaks. So, I am just taking life one day at a time and being thankful I am still here to have these world class issues.
I imagine SolarEdge or Delta etc all want testing and reports submitted by Tesla before shipping out a replacement unit and they might not be in a huge rush to ship immediately. Pretty heavy units so not sure by what method they would ship or if they batch replacement orders that go to a Tesla warehouse and then distributed to the homeowners regional team. Suspect Tesla maintenance teams could use beefing up to meet the overall general increased demand for their solar products as well. They really are expanding into more areas all the time. Should be a good job creator.
I remember reading on here one guy saying he purchased a spare inverter figuring costs across the board and deciding the immediate access to a replacement unit was worth it to him. Kind of overboard but understand his thinking. So many companies had to cut back on manufacturing due to Covid so actual uncommitted inventory for replacements may be low.
I remember reading on here one guy saying he purchased a spare inverter figuring costs across the board and deciding the immediate access to a replacement unit was worth it to him. Kind of overboard but understand his thinking. So many companies had to cut back on manufacturing due to Covid so actual uncommitted inventory for replacements may be low.
I thought about buying a spare inverter but since they are both under warranty, why would I? I got the replacement one in 4 days
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