We have a home with a flat roof located on the eastern-end of Long Island in NY. We also have a power wall 2 on order and would like to add solar panels. Solar City/Tesla does not install panels on flat-roofed homes located within northeastern states. Presumably because of the potential weight of snow. Other solar installers do offer this, but I would prefer to keep all of this technology "in the family" so that it all works seamlessly and is serviced together. Does anyone have any insights on this, or know when Solar City might be able to accommodate us folks on the east coast? The Tesla and Solar City people I spoke with were kind of fuzzy with the details.
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Solar Panels for Flat Roof on East Coast
- Thread starter 5thgear
- Start date
Derek Kessler
Active Member
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
We put Solar (Thermal) on a flat roof, using A-Frames to angle them. In fact they were at optimum angle (for Latitude) and pointing due-South which might have been the case on the sloping part of the roof 
I have the same question. Flat roof on a townhouse, and it sounds like Tesla won't do an install on a flat roof.
I'm not sure if I should get Tesla to do a small install on my garage, and then add to it with a different installer, or how to approach the situation so I can use powerwalls and the monitor via the Tesla app.
I'm not sure if I should get Tesla to do a small install on my garage, and then add to it with a different installer, or how to approach the situation so I can use powerwalls and the monitor via the Tesla app.
Monitoring with the Tesla app is fully functional even if you get your solar from a different installer. I have a solar system from a third party with Powerwalls installed two years later and have the full monitoring and no limitations to the Powerwall functionality.
So all the monitoring happens at the gateway? I'm just not clear where the control points are in the system. Based on the wiring diagrams, it appears the solar array connects to the breaker box, inside the gateway. I'm not sure where solar production is measured. It would seem that it would need to be measured at the inverter, as it could be consumed directly without the PowerWall or Gateway seeing the production.
Correct. The gateway has monitors to monitor two sets of current flows. I think generally it's measuring solar production and flow to/from the grid. Using these numbers and the flow to/from the Powerwalls, it can then compute the total house load. The gateway can also be configured to measure the load and calculate the site flow, but I haven't heard that that's ever used.
The way these flows are measured are by putting Current Transformers (CT's) around the power lines from the solar inverter and the lines from the electric meter. In fact Gateway 1 just has Neurio device in the box that does the actual measuring. This is a whole-house energy monitor that you can buy separately as well. I believe Gateway 2 may have a more custom-built solution, though.
The way these flows are measured are by putting Current Transformers (CT's) around the power lines from the solar inverter and the lines from the electric meter. In fact Gateway 1 just has Neurio device in the box that does the actual measuring. This is a whole-house energy monitor that you can buy separately as well. I believe Gateway 2 may have a more custom-built solution, though.
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