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Tesla Solar in Houston & Surrounding Area’s
- Thread starter Jones1
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wiltoking
Member
Yes, mostly just so we can use solar during a power outage. The home is also very energy efficient so we can do a whole home backup with 1 and get 8h to a day depending on AC use. I’m also on nights-free plan and will get it topped off during night and just need the power to last from evening until 9pm during non emergency use. Might regret it dunno! It makes sense at the moment.
Everyone who has powerwalls wishes they got more. It's cheaper to get it from the beginning than to add more later. That's what I have read but what do I know. I only have 6 PW recently installed so I will tell when my system is fully PTO.
wiltoking
Member
For sure, I can see how adding now would be more economical. We’re not trying to be completely off-grid and our roof size limits how many solar panels we could install to fully charge up powerwalls. Once we move to a bigger home with kids etc, probably going to look for a much larger system. Still, exciting to have all daytime power come from the sun haha
My decision to go with one PW was from reading post on TMC. Starting this thread and asking questions. Getting 3-4 quotes that wasn’t from Tesla Solar. Learning that you never get your money back from buying batteries. It is more of a convenience and a piece of mind for grid outages. That was my thinking at the time. Not currently if you are with Tesla Electric. The more PW’s could actually be a better financial decision over 10-20 years. By selling it back to the grid at $2-$3 for events. Then it came down to how much can I produce with my Roof. What times are my family members at home. My wife works in the Medical industry. She works 12 hour shifts. So mostly she is home during the work week. Where she could take advantage of our new policy. Sun Out. Fun Out. Then I thought if I could do it at a large scale. I would want 3 PW’s. So I decided to go with one PW now. Cut back on the financial burden now. To get a lower monthly payment. But. I’ll tell you what. Lol. I will be adding 2 PW’s. In 4-5 years. If Elon can’t give me V2G with my CyberTruck. Lol
It’s also like choosing a Standard range Tesla vs a longer range Tesla. Yes daily driving it doesn’t matter. But on a long road trip. You may second guess your decision if you chose standard range. Buy what you can afford. There is always “The Next Big Thing”. If you have 6 PW’s currently and in 5 years. You want to upgrade to a newer PW. The resale value will still be there.
It’s also like choosing a Standard range Tesla vs a longer range Tesla. Yes daily driving it doesn’t matter. But on a long road trip. You may second guess your decision if you chose standard range. Buy what you can afford. There is always “The Next Big Thing”. If you have 6 PW’s currently and in 5 years. You want to upgrade to a newer PW. The resale value will still be there.
Power outage at 6am. I didn’t notice. I was sleeping. My wife was woke. Getting ready for work. She passed by our iPad PW monitor. That’s how she knew we had a grid outage. The house was running on PW already. So I believe that’s why the lights didn’t flicker. It was only a 10 minute outage.
wiltoking
Member
Tesla Solar here, small job so should go quick. Roof guys got here first and set up access, the Powerwall tech/electrician will be here later to actually do all the tie ins. We went over the design changes we needed and they agreed it would be better/easier To go to a full home backup and relocate the Powerwall. Small pause to get it approved with Tesla and now they’re back putting panels up. Got to wait for the Powerwall tech to show up to hear what exactly they’ll be doing.
wiltoking
Member
So when they came to install. Panels and PW. I live in Harris County. They asked if I wanted to change my array layout a bit. I was supposed to have my layout in 3 different areas. They asked me if I would like to do only two areas. They said it would be a better look and run for the conduit. I agreed to make the change. Nothing slowed down the install for me. It must be only when it’s a PW change. Or the city vs county. I also never seen an County inspector come by my house.
wiltoking
Member
Yeah they said if we were outside the city it would be a non-issue. Still, didn’t want to hold them up and since the cost was going to be incurred anyway I went with my Option B and relocated everything to the garage. Honestly, the work looks much more straightforward and I feel I need a credit for simplifying it for them lol. Only extra was a 2x2 drywall cutout they’ll have to repair (made it sound like it was the end of the world). Nothing changed roof/panel layout wise, all Qcell 400w.
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wiltoking
Member
Wish I had your drone to see how it’s going, cant see much from the ground since it’s a two story home heheCongratulations.
wiltoking
Member
And we’re done! Already tested going off-grid and it was seamless! Not Happy that the idiocy of the surveyor/design team meant I had to pay a change fee of 2k, which was all it was (Nothing to do with permits) but at least I got exactly what I wanted. Very happy, really clean setup imo, they will be back on Thursday to finish drywall repair and after that just got to wait on PTO. Crossing fingers they’re still going by quick.
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wiltoking
Member
Just got my install done today but the Tesla app didn’t let me set my nights free plan as 0c with 3c buyback, got the following error. How did you set yours up?
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Looks Great. You can buy a cheaper drone. DJI. You can go for the 1080 p drone. I think it’s $200. You don’t need 4k. I went with 4k. But really it’s so I don’t have to climb on my roof when it’s a bad storm. I’ve only used the drone 3 times.
DrewHou
Tesla S|3|Solar+PW
Well apparently at some point Tesla stopped allowing people to set 0 as a price in the app for whatever reason. So I figured out a workaround but only works if you either have an Android phone or a spare Android device laying around.
I went to apkmirror and downloaded an old version of the Tesla Android app. Installed it via side loading and changed the pricing to zero. Then it synced the 0 price and magically my iPhone Tesla app showed it as 0 but if I ever need to change anything to do with my electric plan like change the timing I can’t do it on the iPhone since it won’t accept the zeros.
Hopefully that helps. Now if I only I could get my charging stats on my car to understand that if I charge with solar or PW to not report it as peak charging and showing it costs me money haha.
wiltoking
Member
Ah yes I remember reading that post of yours but didn’t find it oops. Won’t apply for me then, just set it to equal my buy back rate if 3c until Tesla magically updates the app. At least now it’s set to grid charging the PW from the get go, no need to go thru customer service, so when the rates drop it should top off. I’m just wondering if it will use the PW instead of grid to charge the Tesla… hmmmm
I believe it pulls from your PW only. If your total load is under the 5.8kw. If your home is using more. Say 9.8kwh total. Then it will take from grid and PW. You can set your charging rate lower.
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