Don‘t leave Powerwall placement up to Tesla. It’s your house, you’re paying for the Powerwalls and you’ll live with the equipment for many years. A few more weeks delay shouldn’t be a factor.
They‘re recommending a south-facing placement either due to sheer incompetence or because it‘s the cheapest option for them, or both. I’d tell them asap that their recommended placement is unacceptable and that you will not allow the installation to proceed until a suitable location is found. Again, it’s your house not Tesla’s. They have a hard time understanding this concept so you really need to hammer home the fact that you will make, approve or reject all final decisions — not Tesla.
If you delay, they will file a permit with the location they want and revising the plans will take even longer. If that’s already happened, I still recommend patience on your part over compromise. The process, no matter how painful, only happens once. The outcome will last for at least a decade so get it right the first time. It’s not worth the time or money to relocate them later.
My Tesla solar + PW ordeal took over a year from the time I placed the order until receiving PTO (which just happened a week ago). The majority of the delay revolved around Powerwall placement. In my case, Tesla installed them in my garage, which was fine with me but it violated local fire codes. I discovered the code violation when I started digging around to figure out why nothing had happened with my project for months.
It turns out the original plans Tesla filed, and which were approved by the city prior to installation, placed the Powerwalls in my backyard. However, the install team decided that moving the Powerwalls behind my house was too much work (I’m in a hillside home so moving heavy equipment into my backyard is indeed nontrivial). The installers asked if they could install in the garage without mentioning that it was not the permitted location, that it would require filing a new permit application with revised plans, that it would require me to install bollards in front of the Powerwalls, that it would add another 3 month delay for permit approval and that the location was potentially in violation of (at that time) new fire codes. They were probably genuinely ignorant of the fire code issue, but they damn well understood all of the other pain that a non-permitted installation would cause me and yet chose to withhold that information so they could wrap up the installation in one day instead of two.
I finally got everything sorted out and forced them to relocate the Powerwalls to my (North-facing, mostly shaded) backyard location. They tried everything to avoid this, including asking me to wait ANOTHER FEW MONTHS so they could perform some demonstration to the Fire Marshall and get the fire codes changed! I wish them the best of luck with that but obviously I don’t want any part of it.
It was the most painful and outrageous experience I’ve ever had with any company, especially the part where they willfully withheld critical information and only started cooperating after I contacted the city and obtained all of the permit records myself. My point is that if I could do it all over again the only thing I would change is to take more control over the process sooner with the understanding that Tesla places their own interests far above the customer’s — at least during installation. I’m happy now that all the pain is over because the outcome is relatively ideal. The system works great, I got a fantastic price in retrospect and I’m much happier with more space in my garage and no bollards! Honestly, it’s kind of cool to see Powerwalls hanging on the garage wall but that got old after about two weeks and I just wanted the space back. Since the new (but originally planned) location gets very little sun it shouldn’t impact longevity very much, if at all. So I feel like I got the best of both worlds: out of sight but protected.
Anyway, best of luck to you. Stay strong, stay patient and don’t let Tesla decide where to install your equipment on your own property.
