Solar glass system production

[Tk18]

By now there should be at least 100 active solar glass roof. We are lucky enough to have one of them is on our house!
But... it hasn’t been a smooth ride, and is still not. One of the issues we are facing is a surprisingly low production and the total lack of support so far

I hope the community that have the solar glass roof can share their production data and experience so far.

we have a slightly over 8.5kw system advertised to produce 29kwh per day in average over the year... two 5kw inverters and 2 PW. At peak, we produced about 2kw... and right now on a perfect sunny day with no cloud or pollution we get only 17kwh...

we also have problem with the app reporting numbers incorrectly as if the sensor were not around the right wires.

I hope I am an outlier and Tesla will finally provide the necessary support (our city and utility company have been faster responding and more helpful than Tesla so far...).

So: what’s your experience so far?

 

[wjgjr]

I have not gotten PTO, so I have limited data at this point, but it seems like I am definitely getting much better numbers than that with an 8.2kW system (just over 40kWh in a day.) It is unfortunate that Tesla apparently doesn't provide data for each string of panels. It would be useful to determine if one is having an issue and just to see performance on different roof segments (we have north- and south-facing panels, so we expect a big difference in performance.)

In terms of contacting Tesla, you might look at this page - Solar Panels Monitoring | Tesla Support - and try citing it when contacting them. Since we are very near the summer solstice, one would expect your system to be well into their 5x-7x DC system size estimate for this time of year, which means Tesla expects your system should output 42.5-59.5 kWh daily. 17 kWh on a sunny day appears to be more like a November number.

You did mention the app providing bad numbers, and there are other topics discussing users with this issue. So the only other thought would be to run the numbers on your typical daily usage and what your utility is reporting to confirm whether 17 kWh makes sense, or whether your production is actually higher but just being reported incorrectly. 17kWh could also indicate only 1 of 2 inverters is either working or reporting properly

Edited to note that the link is officially for solar panels and the roof numbers could be slightly lower, but nowhere near that much.

 

[jboy210]

Our install went great given that the virus shutdown occurred in the middle. Took a total of 1 month including around 2 weeks for weather and virus delays.

Great crew of Tesla employees and local roofing contractor. All worked supervised by Tesla personnel. All electrical work done by Tesla personnel.

System still does not have PTO so not online. But when tested will product over 10 kW. System was designed to be around 12 KW. But, some tiles installed on the North side and were warned they would only produce much during the middle of summer, so this does not surprise us. System will take the 2 Powerwalls from 20% to 100% by noon. 2 Powerwalls last us about a 1.5 days of usage.

What are you seeing for time to fill your PWs? Your production numbers could be off because of Current Transducer (CT) placement or other sensor issues, but your PWs have their own controls to cut off when they are full. If the PWs are filling up quickly than you likely are producing much more than 17 kW since each PW has a 14 kWh capacity. In that case the problem would be with the current reporting.

 

[Tk18]

Our install went great given that the virus shutdown occurred in the middle. Took a total of 1 month including around 2 weeks for weather and virus delays.

Great crew of Tesla employees and local roofing contractor. All worked supervised by Tesla personnel. All electrical work done by Tesla personnel.

System still does not have PTO so not online. But when tested will product over 10 kW. System was designed to be around 12 KW. But, some tiles installed on the North side and were warned they would only produce much during the middle of summer, so this does not surprise us. System will take the 2 Powerwalls from 20% to 100% by noon. 2 Powerwalls last us about a 1.5 days of usage.

What are you seeing for time to fill your PWs? Your production numbers could be off because of Current Transducer (CT) placement or other sensor issues, but your PWs have their own controls to cut off when they are full. If the PWs are filling up quickly than you likely are producing much more than 17 kW since each PW has a 14 kWh capacity. In that case the problem would be with the current reporting.

Yup, it took about the same time you described to install (our roof is not so simple, with a lot of metal work...) interrupted by Covid after all tiles and batteries were installed... since there was a missing sensor and no gateway interface, the power wall that were delivered at 20% charge got to zero without possibility to monitor them and charge them (they were monitored by Tesla, who contacted me several time as they were getting low state warnings, but no matter what they made me try remotely, nothing could fix the issue).

the roofing company who demolished the old roof also damaged the gutters and exploded many pieces of wood by hammering down all the nails: so now there are nails sticking out everywhere in the attic (dangerous for the Tesla crew working in the attic) and under porch...

The Tesla crew was all very nice.
But overall, for us, the process was very disorganized: we were never in the loop no matter how many time we tryed to get back into it... the PW and panel installation did not take into account what we wanted, our future installation of faster charger (still using the 1kwh charger for now), nor did it account for the solar that was installed by the solar crew... so we ended up mis a mess of pipes between the new panel, the gateway, the two PWs, the two inverters, and the solar connections...
There were also other démange to house here and there... gutters have finally been “fixed” (it will never be as good as when you install them as part of the roof replacement)

I know other have had better service, and I know Tesla is constantly learning and improving. So hopefully we were just the guinea pigs...


2PW is 27kwh... it took over 2 days to charge them. Our system was turned on (just solar charge batteries) on May 27, the hottest and clearest day we have had this year; it was turned on around noon after getting city permit, and peaked at 1.9kw at that time.
The app numbers are messed up: it reports the right power, but not the right energy; some of the solar is reported as grid. I can use the report by the 2 inverters screens for comparison. I sent all the info to Tesla support more that a week ago (and to the different emails provide by their websites and phone support person...). But no answer... not sure what is going on.

 

[wjgjr]

2PW is 27kwh... it took over 2 days to charge them. Our system was turned on (just solar charge batteries) on May 27, the hottest and clearest day we have had this year; it was turned on around noon after getting city permit, and peaked at 1.9kw at that time.
The app numbers are messed up: it reports the right power, but not the right energy; some of the solar is reported as grid. I can use the report by the 2 inverters screens for comparison. I sent all the info to Tesla support more that a week ago (and to the different emails provide by their websites and phone support person...). But no answer... not sure what is going on.

I would definitely get on the phone to them and try to get to tier 2 support to make sure they are actively working on the issue. Unless you forgot to mention the high rise that was just built directly south of you, those numbers are way too low, and this is the worst time of year (from a pure generation standpoint) to have the system not working.

We fortunately had a very good overall experience with the install - the removal of the old roof went rather smoothly, and we were having the gutters replaced anyway (since we had "incompatible" gutter covers.) I think the only thing they didn't follow up on is fixing one piece of molding that fell off our attic access, and I attribute that mostly to the COVID situation (and they planned to do it despite me insisting I would take care of it.) Post-install/PTO has been a bit of a mess, but it seems like everything with the install itself is working well.

 

[jboy210]

Yup, it took about the same time you described to install (our roof is not so simple, with a lot of metal work...) interrupted by Covid after all tiles and batteries were installed... since there was a missing sensor and no gateway interface, the power wall that were delivered at 20% charge got to zero without possibility to monitor them and charge them (they were monitored by Tesla, who contacted me several time as they were getting low state warnings, but no matter what they made me try remotely, nothing could fix the issue).

the roofing company who demolished the old roof also damaged the gutters and exploded many pieces of wood by hammering down all the nails: so now there are nails sticking out everywhere in the attic (dangerous for the Tesla crew working in the attic) and under porch...

The Tesla crew was all very nice.
But overall, for us, the process was very disorganized: we were never in the loop no matter how many time we tryed to get back into it... the PW and panel installation did not take into account what we wanted, our future installation of faster charger (still using the 1kwh charger for now), nor did it account for the solar that was installed by the solar crew... so we ended up mis a mess of pipes between the new panel, the gateway, the two PWs, the two inverters, and the solar connections...
There were also other démange to house here and there... gutters have finally been “fixed” (it will never be as good as when you install them as part of the roof replacement)

I know other have had better service, and I know Tesla is constantly learning and improving. So hopefully we were just the guinea pigs...


2PW is 27kwh... it took over 2 days to charge them. Our system was turned on (just solar charge batteries) on May 27, the hottest and clearest day we have had this year; it was turned on around noon after getting city permit, and peaked at 1.9kw at that time.
The app numbers are messed up: it reports the right power, but not the right energy; some of the solar is reported as grid. I can use the report by the 2 inverters screens for comparison. I sent all the info to Tesla support more that a week ago (and to the different emails provide by their websites and phone support person...). But no answer... not sure what is going on.

Something is messed up. I would work with the support people. Most are pretty good. You should call back and insist they send someone out to see what is wrong.

Did they not run it for 1/2 day or more as part of the commissioning process at the end of your install? They did that for us and ensured the app numbers looked right before they left.

We were part of the 1st 100 installs so I am a bit shocked and dismayed that your experience varies so much from ours. Tesla personnel were onsite every day and supervised both Tesla and roofing contractor personnel.

Also, have you been able to get the final construction inspection from city/county, and Permission to Operate (PTO) from PG&E (or whoever is your electrical utility)?

 

[Tk18]

Something is messed up. I would work with the support people. Most are pretty good. You should call back and insist they send someone out to see what is wrong.

Did they not run it for 1/2 day or more as part of the commissioning process at the end of your install? They did that for us and ensured the app numbers looked right before they left.

We were part of the 1st 100 installs so I am a bit shocked and dismayed that your experience varies so much from ours. Tesla personnel were onsite every day and supervised both Tesla and roofing contractor personnel.

Also, have you been able to get the final construction inspection from city/county, and Permission to Operate (PTO) from PG&E (or whoever is your electrical utility)?

Nope, they did not run them ... since they were done with everything but the connection before Covid shut them off, they only can back for that and left ... so no try period...

Santa Clara and SiliconValley power were super supportive and it took 2 days for permit and meter change and PTO! They really rock!

Our Tesla crew was great, but the project was not well managed from corporate side... our crew members were often called to help on other sites that had problems. The roofing contractor removed the old roof was late because they had another job to finish... everything pretty much cumulated... the crew was stuck between us and corporate and corporate was dropping the ball constantly on us.

 

[gigawatt1010]

Interesting experience @Tk18 - sorry to hear. It's a shame that for a company that makes amazing products, they haven't recognized that support is their weakest link. I hope they put more resources on those soon. And I hope by the time they install my solar glass system in July, they would've ironed out all, or at least most of, the kinks

I commented on another thread that we should have some kind of a Google doc solar glass tracker similar to the Model S order tracker. I've not done this in the past, but willing to take a shot if it doesn't already exist. Hmmm... let me start a new thread.

 

[TMThree]

Your system is half the size of mine, and my best so far is about 115 kwh in a day. So you should be around 55 kwh a day peak based on that system size.

My average over the entire year should be around 72 kwh per day (due to rain storms and such), so you'd be looking at 36kwh per day average. Assuming of course you were in my area and subject to the same amount of sunlight and weather patterns.

 

[Tk18]

Interesting experience @Tk18 - sorry to hear. It's a shame that for a company that makes amazing products, they haven't recognized that support is their weakest link. I hope they put more resources on those soon. And I hope by the time they install my solar glass system in July, they would've ironed out all, or at least most of, the kinks

I commented on another thread that we should have some kind of a Google doc solar glass tracker similar to the Model S order tracker. I've not done this in the past, but willing to take a shot if it doesn't already exist. Hmmm... let me start a new thread.

That would be great: let me know how to participate if you set it up! thanks!

 

[gigawatt1010]

That would be great: let me know how to participate if you set it up! thanks!

Please see the thread I created and add your info. Thanks!

Tesla Solar Glass Install Tracker

 

[woferry]

Taking this here from the other thread to be more on-topic:

Tesla never sent that information to us... I have been asking for it, but did not get it yet...

Hmm. I know some people (on this forum) who received the details directly from Tesla, I only got mine on CC: from PG&E during the permit/approval process. The city permit records probably have it also, though for SJ the website says you have to visit them in person to get those details.

we have the same solivia 5.2k you have.
I had to fix the clock on them so by the end of the day I have the right reading. Don’t think there is anything wrong with them.

I'm not sure what that second part means, I never had to touch the clock on mine. You just did that yesterday, or have to do that every day, or...? If you've had to do it more than once then I would say there probably IS something wrong with your inverters.

So to attempt to summarize, you're saying that during the day the combined live readings of the two inverters match the ~2.5kW peak? If that total matches the app's live reading then I suspect your CTs (solar, at least) are probably fine, the total production mismatch seems to be a Tesla-side configuration thing others have straightened out by calling Tesla (seems like those have resulted in the app reporting roughly half the total production of the inverters, so it's like Tesla has an extra divide-by-2 somewhere they need to turn off). Each 5.2TL has two channels in it, you can see the per-channel readings by going to Production info -> Current data -> Current data PV, and hitting down will show you the live voltage and current of each PV channel. But without having the circuit drawing (an example was recently posted here, second image in that post) you wouldn't really know what to expect per-channel. I just looked at 8:30am and both of my inverters are already doing almost 2kW each.

 

[Tk18]

Taking this here from the other thread to be more on-topic:



Hmm. I know some people (on this forum) who received the details directly from Tesla, I only got mine on CC: from PG&E during the permit/approval process. The city permit records probably have it also, though for SJ the website says you have to visit them in person to get those details.



I'm not sure what that second part means, I never had to touch the clock on mine. You just did that yesterday, or have to do that every day, or...? If you've had to do it more than once then I would say there probably IS something wrong with your inverters.

So to attempt to summarize, you're saying that during the day the combined live readings of the two inverters match the ~2.5kW peak? If that total matches the app's live reading then I suspect your CTs (solar, at least) are probably fine, the total production mismatch seems to be a Tesla-side configuration thing others have straightened out by calling Tesla (seems like those have resulted in the app reporting roughly half the total production of the inverters, so it's like Tesla has an extra divide-by-2 somewhere they need to turn off). Each 5.2TL has two channels in it, you can see the per-channel readings by going to Production info -> Current data -> Current data PV, and hitting down will show you the live voltage and current of each PV channel. But without having the circuit drawing (an example was recently posted here, second image in that post) you wouldn't really know what to expect per-channel. I just looked at 8:30am and both of my inverters are already doing almost 2kW each.

Did not get that level of detail, and city/utility did not share those either.

about the inverters clock: they were off at the beginning, so numbers reported on their screen for end of day did not reflect the actual day production. I only fixed them once.

Thx for the info about the 2 channels: each inverter has one non producing channel (9V/0A) so that explains the super low production. We’ll have to wait for Tesla to come fix that I guess (I hope nobody will have to go in the attic which is a real inferno this period of the year).

 

[woferry]

Do you know how many roof planes have PV Modules on them? For example my roof, pictured in my avatar, has 5 planes, the front/back on the main house, left/right on the garage, and a small 5th plane at the very front of the garage. 4 of those 5 planes have PV Modules. If you only have 1 or 2 planes then I guess it might be possible that they only wired-up one channel on each inverter, that seems rather unlikely to me, though. Another rough guide, you know how many RSDs you have? I have 5, 3 in the main attic and 2 in the garage.

When they initially wired-up my system they got the polarity backwards from the roof into one of the RSDs, most everything is pre-wired with the right connector genders already, but the Pass-Through Boxes from the roof to the interior spaces are bare wires to keep the hole size down, so they have to put the connectors on, and they got the gender wrong on 1 of my 6 pairs. I caught that checking their wiring with a multimeter before they'd actually wired-up the inverters, but had that gone undetected it would have left one of the strings only running at half-capacity at best (that RSD was in parallel with another RSD). Though I'd have hoped they wouldn't finish at the site without verifying that each string was at least vaguely in the expected production range, unless it was like super-cloudy/raining or dark when they were done.

It's interesting, since the Solar Roof was installed my attic doesn't get more than maybe 5-10 degrees above the outside temperature, it used to be oppressive up there on any sunny day.

 

[jboy210]

It's interesting, since the Solar Roof was installed my attic doesn't get more than maybe 5-10 degrees above the outside temperature, it used to be oppressive up there on any sunny day.

I wonder if that is due to the Firestone underlayment and the airgap between the tiles and the underlayment.

 

[Tk18]

Did not get that level of detail, and city/utility did not share those either.

about the inverters clock: they were off at the beginning, so numbers reported on their screen for end of day did not reflect the actual day production. I only fixed them once.

Thx for the info about the 2 channels: each inverter has one non producing channel (9V/0A) so that explains the super low production. We’ll have to wait for Tesla to come fix that I guess (I hope nobody will have to go in the attic which is a real inferno this period of the year).

Do you know how many roof planes have PV Modules on them? For example my roof, pictured in my avatar, has 5 planes, the front/back on the main house, left/right on the garage, and a small 5th plane at the very front of the garage. 4 of those 5 planes have PV Modules. If you only have 1 or 2 planes then I guess it might be possible that they only wired-up one channel on each inverter, that seems rather unlikely to me, though. Another rough guide, you know how many RSDs you have? I have 5, 3 in the main attic and 2 in the garage.

When they initially wired-up my system they got the polarity backwards from the roof into one of the RSDs, most everything is pre-wired with the right connector genders already, but the Pass-Through Boxes from the roof to the interior spaces are bare wires to keep the hole size down, so they have to put the connectors on, and they got the gender wrong on 1 of my 6 pairs. I caught that checking their wiring with a multimeter before they'd actually wired-up the inverters, but had that gone undetected it would have left one of the strings only running at half-capacity at best (that RSD was in parallel with another RSD). Though I'd have hoped they wouldn't finish at the site without verifying that each string was at least vaguely in the expected production range, unless it was like super-cloudy/raining or dark when they were done.

It's interesting, since the Solar Roof was installed my attic doesn't get more than maybe 5-10 degrees above the outside temperature, it used to be oppressive up there on any sunny day.

We have 7 panes... (yes our roof is a bit complex for such a simple house...) not sure how many boxes were installed in the attic... the is one only in the garage, one pane is not accessible from the attic. And unfortunately I haven’t checked the connections they made... our attic temperature has been really hot: never took the temperature there before or after the I install, but the poor team installing the boxes in the attic mid May was suffering quite a bit.
I think they were supposed to create a 2” opening all along the top of the roof to vent the attic, but they only did it on a small part of the roof (I may have stressed them because one of the main reason to redo our roof was to make sure it was full close to rats intrusion...). No matter what, attics are never friendly with heat, fiber glass, dust from demolition, nails sticking out everywhere, small space... and past traces or rat passage

when they first turned on the inverters both were showing 0... they went back fixed something and when they checked again the inverters were showing 1kw and 0.8kw and they were saying how amazing it was to produce so much... which threw me off, but they had to know better than I could... I was stupid to not question it right away and take time to validate my thoughts: by the time I had, they were gone and getting support proved way harder than I thought.