Tesla came out and did a home inspection. After the inspection I received a revised layout with 4 more panels. Thank you for your help and suggestions.
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Post Your Tesla Solar Layout
- Thread starter pdx_m3s
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My energy usage for the last 3 years ranged from 6500 kWh to 6900 kWh so I asked them to size a 7000 kWh system, they came back with this. I went to check the estimation tool on Tesla website, a 6 kW system would generate 9196 kWh but the actual design output is just a little over 7000 kWh, guessing it is due to the East facing cells (easier for Tesla as it is a clear roof section with no shades) and lower efficiency of the solar roof tiles. I am fine with that but asked if it would delay my project if I want to bump it up a little to 6.4 kW to give me a little more buffer, no response from the advisor.
ChicagoSox
Member
why a million in insurance coverage? my home is only insured for 300K as that's the replacement costs so am i going to have to bump it to 1,000,000?
How did they get to that number?
ChicagoSox
Member
willow_hiller
Well-Known Member
It's a Florida State requirement. Not required in most jurisdictions outside of FL. I believe it's to cover the homeowner for liability if their equipment were to damage the grid.
ChicagoSox
Member
Have they assigned you a dedicated adviser? I think you are correct that the output is probably mostly due to having East-facing panels. If they can add a few more to the same roof segment, which looks possible, I would think they would be happy to do so. Not sure if they would want to start adding PV to another segment just for 0.4 kW. The only benefit to potentially moving some to a west-facing segment of the roof is it would smooth out your production over the course of a day, which could be useful with only one PW in the case of an outage.
They did assign a dedicated advisor to my project, I actually had to call the Solar Panels folks to get his contact info (I originally ordered panels but changed my mind). It would be nice to have a row or two of solar tiles on the west side but there are some tall pine trees that may not work out so well, the air vents on the roof create more work for Tesla as well. With NEM and 1 PW I should be pretty much self-powered most days. We had one public safety planned outage last year and one rolling black out this year so I am not too concerned on full house backup. I don’t mind getting a few extra active tiles on the roof if it does not delay my project, but I hope to get this done before the rain gets here in November.
Wow. That would be an insta-reject from me. Assuming there's no significant shading, there's so much more high-producing roof space available. I can't figure out why Tesla opts to put any panels north-facing when there's other space available. It should be the last resort.
Here's a proposed layout, without removing any of your vents, to move all 14 northeast-facing panels to be southwest/east facing.
Given your location and your roof, solar panels don't really make sense for you in my opinion. Being in Washington, north-facing panels are a complete waste.
EDIT: just noticed the image wasn't oriented north-up. Having said that, I still don't think solar makes much sense. Looks like a large-ish house with a fair amount of usage.
If you freed up some space on the larger south/east/west facing planes, you may be able to fit 12 panels that aren't north-facing, but it would be a lot of work for little benefit.
ChicagoSox
Member
That's really frustrating. Have they done a site inspection yet? You may be able to get them to add some more panels on the southeast-facing plane after a site visit. Also ask them about going over the top of the vent that appears to be right in the middle of that plane... sometimes it's doable depending on what it is.
That tree on the left is likely what is keeping them from putting panels on that far left southwest facing plane.
I got a call and they said they’ll come do a site inspection in a few weeks. Is the attached ridiculous/unreasonable/dumb? I mocked my own images up to get to 36-ish panels.
Need a gut check.
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willow_hiller
Well-Known Member
I think a lot of those 1-2 panel sections would be really difficult for Tesla to install (difficult to place mounting brackets, and difficult to wire together without a lot of conduit criss-crossing your roof). You can work with them to squeeze in as many panels as possible, but I think your design may not be too feasible, unfortunately.
I don’t think that what you have mocked up there is feasible at all. Tesla won’t like those single and double panels all over because they will be very time consuming to install. Additionally, it looks like a lot of the other panels you have placed together have shrunken. I don’t think the panels will fit if you actually keep the dimensions intact. And finally, a lot of jurisdictions have setback requirement that limit how close the panels can come to the edge of a roof plane. A lot of your panels are *very* close to the edges and probably don’t meet the setback requirements.
One other note, I scrolled up a few posts to look at Tesla’s original design for your roof and I noticed that you left your name and address on the document. It’s too late to edit your post now, but you can click the ‘report’ button on your post and explain that you want the document with your address removed and a moderator can remove it for you.
Here's the solar glass design we're looking at for our house in CT. There's currently a tree on the west side of the house that goes over the roof, so they initially didn't assign that 4.6 KW section over there until I asked them to. I'm planning on taking the tree down if this all goes through. But that tree's currently factored in to that 10141 kWh/yr number
Though one oddity, in some paperwork I've seen they're planning on 2 M4-TL-US inverters and 1 M8-TL-US inverter. The M8 I would figure for the 6.7 and .9 KW section (since they're facing the same direction), but the M4 seems undersized for at least the 5.6KW south-southeast section there. I've asked the project advisor if that's actually correct.
After reading up on string inverters, I'm also wondering if I actually want that .9 KW section there or not. It is lower than the 6.7 KW it'd likely be strung together with, though I suppose at any angle of the sun that might hit the upper section and not the lower, it's already at a steep enough angle to not generate much with those panels anyway.
Though one oddity, in some paperwork I've seen they're planning on 2 M4-TL-US inverters and 1 M8-TL-US inverter. The M8 I would figure for the 6.7 and .9 KW section (since they're facing the same direction), but the M4 seems undersized for at least the 5.6KW south-southeast section there. I've asked the project advisor if that's actually correct.
After reading up on string inverters, I'm also wondering if I actually want that .9 KW section there or not. It is lower than the 6.7 KW it'd likely be strung together with, though I suppose at any angle of the sun that might hit the upper section and not the lower, it's already at a steep enough angle to not generate much with those panels anyway.
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That roof is definitely not ideal for solar. A lot of angles and small sections and then tons of vents on the few larger sections.
But depending on your goals solar may not be out entirely. You might be stuck with a smaller system than you were hoping for, but even a smaller system could help with load shifting if you have TOU rates and/or offset some of your power bill.
One other thing to consider would be trying to get someone to move some of the vents going through your roof to at least make more of those few large sections available for solar panels.
I have no idea what that would cost or if it would be something you would consider, but it could provide some help.
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