Tesla Solar Panel Experience in Los Angeles

[M3SRdude]

Not in your area but south in OC. I had the same dilemma - roof still good if dry underlayment in some areas. After reading the cost of removing the panels which run up to thousands of dollars In these threads, I decided to just replace the underlayment. The concrete tiles last longer than the underlayment so you should replace it. Most roofing companies refuse to warranty a partial roof replacement longer than a year so do ask about that. Ours did for 10 years since we reroofed 2 major sections.

It gets tricky on what Tesla will warranty...you will have an inspection by them on the condition of the roof so they might make it a condition of their install to reroof. They had me submit photos and the permit with inspections by the city. I just posted some info on my original thread asking about the underlayment. They’ll most likely warranty if they punctured something that caused a leak but they most likely wouldn’t warranty a problematic underlayment. I personally didn’t want to take the chance.

As for working with you on the placement of the panels and sizing, they were awesome. I had them consolidate 3 panels to the main two sections so I didn’t have to replace the entire roof. Yes, we’ll lose a little bit of energy production but it was low.

This process can take an extra few weeks so if want this year’s tax credit, you should start it ASAP.

I’m starting to get anxious that I don’t have an install date so will start calling my advisor daily until scheduling calls me back.

Yeah, I'm rolling the dice a bit. Tesla sent site surveyor who said my underlayment looks good. I think he said it'll be good for another 5-10 years. So I decided I'll take the chance that it'll last another 10 years. I didn't want to replace the underlayment yet if it still has that much life remaining, but I want to get the panels installed now, partly for the 26% credit, but more importantly so that I'll be in the NEM 2.0 rather than 3.0, had I waited until I needed to replace the underlayment. The Tesla local office is guessing that removing and reinstalling the panel will be $2000. By going with Tesla, I'm saving $5000-$6000 compared to the local installer, so I'll still coming out ahead even if I have to remove the panels later on.

The other thing was one roofer said that even if they reroofed the whole thing, if solar panels were installed after they reroof they don't warranty the roof against leaks. So I thought, why bother then. I'll put the panels on and then deal with it if there's a leak. I guess I could have asked for different bids and see if anyone would warranty the roof, even if the panels were installed after they reroof.

My install is tomorrow. Let's see what kind of horror show it'll be or if it'll go smoothly.

 

[Momvivant]

Yeah, I'm rolling the dice a bit. Tesla sent site surveyor who said my underlayment looks good. I think he said it'll be good for another 5-10 years. So I decided I'll take the chance that it'll last another 10 years. I didn't want to replace the underlayment yet if it still has that much life remaining, but I want to get the panels installed now, partly for the 26% credit, but more importantly so that I'll be in the NEM 2.0 rather than 3.0, had I waited until I needed to replace the underlayment. The Tesla local office is guessing that removing and reinstalling the panel will be $2000. By going with Tesla, I'm saving $5000-$6000 compared to the local installer, so I'll still coming out ahead even if I have to remove the panels later on.

The other thing was one roofer said that even if they reroofed the whole thing, if solar panels were installed after they reroof they don't warranty the roof against leaks. So I thought, why bother then. I'll put the panels on and then deal with it if there's a leak. I guess I could have asked for different bids and see if anyone would warranty the roof, even if the panels were installed after they reroof.

My install is tomorrow. Let's see what kind of horror show it'll be or if it'll go smoothly.

That seems like a logical approach given the $2000 removal fee. It cost me nearly $8000 to replace the underlayment.

Very excited for you on the install. Mine is next week. Let us know how it goes.

 

[mnsweeps]

Finally I could schedule my installation of 8.16 kwh panels and 2 Powerwalls next week on 10/19 (Monday). Excited.

 

[M3SRdude]

Tesla team came by today and installed the panels (I didn't purchas

Finally I could schedule my installation of 8.16 kwh panels and 2 Powerwalls next week on 10/19 (Monday). Excited.

Here's my update. Tesla team came by today and installed the panels (I didn't purchase any powerwall).

There were a few hiccups. One is the site surveyor's solar layout plan didn't make it onto the install team's plan. When I showed the team the picture of the panel layout from the site surveyor, the install lead was like, "I've never seen that before." However, the install team's plan still had more panels facing west than the plan that I signed on the Tesla portal. That was a big relief. I wanted 8 panels facing west, but they could only fit 7. However, that's still way better than the original plan on the portal which is only 3 facing west. For the install, they are still able to fit 6 panels facing south, and 7 facing west.

The second hiccup was that they didn't bring a disconnect switch (the one for firefighters to use in emergency). Why they didn't check my city's requirement before they showed up is beyond me. And my city requires it. Luckily my home is within 40-50 min driving distance of their warehouse, and they got someone to bring the part in time.

Then, I asked the inverter to be mounted inside the garage. The electrician obliged. I told him to setup the inverter so that in the future if I want to add two powerwalls, the inverter wouldn't need to be relocated. The electrician measured out where the future power walls could go so there should be plenty of space for 2 power walls. I was very happy about that.

The electrician also hooked up a ethernet cable to the inverter so I could setup with Solar Edge account in the future for panel level monitoring. (Thanks BrettS for sharing your experience in this forum). When I asked the install lead about this, he was clueless, but the electrician installed it for me anyway. Unfortunately, the ethernet cable I furnished was too short, so I'll have to replace that ethernet cable myself another day. I'll make sure I turn the inverter, the solar breaker at the electrical panel, and the emergency shut off, before I replace that ethernet cable. I'll also make sure I do that at night when the sun isn't shining.


I asked for the serial numbers of the panels, and a drawing of which serial numbers map out to which panel on my roof. I'm not sure how accurate the map is, but I'm pretty confident that at least they got the planes right, i.e. panels 1-6 is in the south facing plane, but I'm not sure if panel 1-6 are mapped correctly to each of the 6 panels.

Also, the electrician had to rearrange some breakers in the main panel to make space for the new breaker for the solar system. During that process, he realized that one of the breakers connected to my AC unit is undersized. It's supposed to be a 50amp breaker, but the existing breaker is only 20 amps. They are planning to fix that for me at the inspection time, even though it's not Tesla's fault. So that was nice.

It's interesting that the install lead told me that they typically don't provide the serial number and physical layout mapping to customers, and he was kind of reluctant to give me, but he ended up letting me take a photo of it anyway. I'm not sure why the reservation, but I'm glad I tipped each of the crew there a $20 for lunch, before they started the installation. I wanted to make sure they sealed the penetration real good.

They painted the conduits with the paint I provided. The conduit was run externally, not inside the attic.

The install lead told me at one section of the roof the underlayment was a bit fragile. But everything else looked good. I'll be on the lookout for leaks there in the future, ohh well.

It took the crew from 8am to 3pm to finish the job. It was pretty fast. My power was shut off for less than 30 min while they did a few things with the inverter.

I ordered my panels on 9/15, and it's installed 10/12. Let's see how long it'll take to get permitted and PTO.

Overall, I'd rate my experience with Tesla as... okay not great, but worth it for the savings. The communication from the advisor via web portal and advisor was not great. The layout I signed never got updated to what the install team's actual layout. The suspense of how they are actually layout the panels made me very anxious, but at the end I'm glad they moved more panels from East to West. Within the company, there seems to be a lot of right hand not talking to the left hand. None of this was surprising since I've been reading about the experience on this forum, but at the end they got the job done. I do feel I have to watch over them and come up with a check list of things to make sure nothing gets missed. It's definitely not a white glove service where they'll plan out every possible details for you (although I have to admit I'm also a perfectionist).

Let's see what happens from now to PTO, and what happens after the first heavy rain in the winter.

 

[mnsweeps]

@MS3Rdude , is "serial numbers of the panels, and a drawing of which serial numbers map out to which panel on my roof." the same as optimizer layout which has panel serial no stickers?

 

[M3SRdude]

@MS3Rdude , is "serial numbers of the panels, and a drawing of which serial numbers map out to which panel on my roof." the same as optimizer layout which has panel serial no stickers?

This is what I got. Since the 4 planes have 3, 4, 6, and 7 panels, I have confidence I know which panels are on which plane for sure. But, if you ask me if the serial number for 20 really maps to panel 20 on the map, I would tell you I've not sure if the crew is that detail oriented.

I'm not sure if these sticker came from the panel or the power optimizer, but regardless it'll allow me to identify their locations.

 

[mnsweeps]

@MS3dude, thanks for picture. Now I know what to look for. Also I see your inverter is outside near main panel. Where did your gateway go? My gateway and inverter are outside next to main panel. I guess they are flexible on the locations.

and you mentioned they installed network cable to inverter to be hooked up to your router? I bought an outdoor cat7 network cable and will ask the same in case I have to monitor using the Solaredge app.

 

[BrettS]

But, if you ask me if the serial number for 20 really maps to panel 20 on the map, I would tell you I've not sure if the crew is that detail oriented.

The point of those maps is to be able to tell the physical position of each optimizer, so I would certainly hope that serial number 20 maps to panel 20.

I'm not sure if these sticker came from the panel or the power optimizer, but regardless it'll allow me to identify their locations.

Those stickers are from the optimizers. Panel serial numbers wouldn’t do you any good because there is no way to identify a panel in your system by it’s serial number.

 

[bhzmark]

This is what I got. Since the 4 planes have 3, 4, 6, and 7 panels, I have confidence I know which panels are on which plane for sure. But, if you ask me if the serial number for 20 really maps to panel 20 on the map, I would tell you I've not sure if the crew is that detail oriented.

I'm not sure if these sticker came from the panel or the power optimizer, but regardless it'll allow me to identify their locations.

View attachment 598323

Interesting. How is that information useful? Does the Solaredge app information tell you something about each optimizer? So for instance you can see if an optimizer, or related panel, isn’t working right? And then you physically know where to find it?

 

[BrettS]

Interesting. How is that information useful? Does the Solaredge app information tell you something about each optimizer? So for instance you can see if an optimizer, or related panel, isn’t working right? And then you physically know where to find it?

Yes, exactly. The SolarEdge app actually supports a physical layout view of your panels, however, the installer needs to manually tell SolarEdge where each panel is. Since Tesla doesn’t officially support the solaredge app then you can still see the information for each panel, but they just show up in a line in random order like this:

However, by clicking on each panel you can see the optimizer serial number, so you can take that map and which panel is which. If you have one panel that is really underproducing, for example, you could see which one it is and see if maybe you had a shade issue in that location during parts of the day.

If you can get your physical panel layout into the solaredge app (again, this is normally done by the installer, but Tesla will not do this) then it will look like this:

The paper map is needed to be able to tell the SolarEdge app where each panel is located, but the physical layout makes it much easier to see how your system is performing at a glance. And in my case above you can see that I do have a bit of a shade issue in the lower right.

 

[bhzmark]

thanks, very interesting. wish I knew that two weeks before they installed 20kW.. any chance they keep track of that if you don't ask them ahead of time?

 

[mnsweeps]

@BrettS Good info. Once my install is complete, do I have to call SolarEdge before I start using their app or can Tesla enable something on their side to feed data into the Solaredge app?

 

[BrettS]

@BrettS Good info. Once my install is complete, do I have to call SolarEdge before I start using their app or can Tesla enable something on their side to feed data into the Solaredge app?

You need to get the SolarEdge account from Tesla. After you have that then you can log into the SolarEdge app. However there will be no data in the SolarEdge app until you connect your inverter to ethernet. Note that doing so will cause the Tesla app to stop working though (unless you have powerwalls). Technically Tesla could feed the data to SolarEdge, and in fact they used to do this. But they no longer do.

 

[BrettS]

thanks, very interesting. wish I knew that two weeks before they installed 20kW.. any chance they keep track of that if you don't ask them ahead of time?

It seems like they might. I believe that one person had success requesting the info from a technician who came to work on his system a few weeks after it was installed. I don’t know if you can make a request over the phone to get the info.

Or you can do what I did and spend a few hours on your roof with a phone duct taped to the end of a pool pole so you can stick it under the panels and take a picture of the optimizer’s serial numbers. It sounds like a lot, but it actually wound up being quicker and easier than I thought. I think it was only about 2 hours for me to get all 48 of my panels.

 

[mnsweeps]

You need to get the SolarEdge account from Tesla. After you have that then you can log into the SolarEdge app. However there will be no data in the SolarEdge app until you connect your inverter to ethernet. Note that doing so will cause the Tesla app to stop working though (unless you have powerwalls). Technically Tesla could feed the data to SolarEdge, and in fact they used to do this. But they no longer do.

ok. I have Powerwall too... I want to use the Tesla app and Solarapp at the same time. Also does inverter have wifi connection or does it have to be hardwired?

 

[BrettS]

ok. I have Powerwall too... I want to use the Tesla app and Solarapp at the same time. Also does inverter have wifi connection or does it have to be hardwired?

As long as you have powerwalls then you can use both at once. Unfortunately the inverter must be hardwired. SolarEdge does sell a gateway, similar to the Tesla gateway that can be plugged into your network. Then the inverter can communicate wirelessly with that gateway, however I believe the gateway is a couple hundred dollars. But it may be an option if you really don’t want to run a wire to the inverter.

Oddly, the inverter supports WiFi connections in other countries, but for some reason that option is disabled in the US.

 

[mnsweeps]

As long as you have powerwalls then you can use both at once. Unfortunately the inverter must be hardwired. SolarEdge does sell a gateway, similar to the Tesla gateway that can be plugged into your network. Then the inverter can communicate wirelessly with that gateway, however I believe the gateway is a couple hundred dollars. But it may be an option if you really don’t want to run a wire to the inverter.

Oddly, the inverter supports WiFi connections in other countries, but for some reason that option is disabled in the US.

ok thanks for info. I have kept network cables ready so I can request Tesla to hardwire my inverter to my wifi switch in my garage.. same goes with TEG which I will ask them to hardwire to the same hub.

 

[BrettS]

ok thanks for info. I have kept network cables ready so I can request Tesla to hardwire my inverter to my wifi switch in my garage.. same goes with TEG which I will ask them to hardwire to the same hub.

Tesla will definitely hardwire the TEG for you, but I don’t believe that they will hardwire the inverter for you. Tesla does not support hardwiring the inverter, and as discussed above, if it is hardwired it will prevent Tesla from connecting to your inverter. Maybe if you are nice to your installers they will do it as a favor to you, but I certainly wouldn’t expect them to do it.

 

[mnsweeps]

Tesla will definitely hardwire the TEG for you, but I don’t believe that they will hardwire the inverter for you. Tesla does not support hardwiring the inverter, and as discussed above, if it is hardwired it will prevent Tesla from connecting to your inverter. Maybe if you are nice to your installers they will do it as a favor to you, but I certainly wouldn’t expect them to do it.

ok... for some reason I thought you mentioned if I have powerwalls, Tesla can connect to my hardwired inverter ....

 

[BrettS]

ok... for some reason I thought you mentioned if I have powerwalls, Tesla can connect to my hardwired inverter ....

Because you have powerwalls your Tesla app won’t be affected if you hardwire your inverter because the Tesla app will get it’s data for solar production from the TEG. With a solar only install the Tesla app gets it’s data from the inverters through the little black zigbee gateway, so hardwiring the inverters will break the Tesla app. But Tesla doesn’t support hardwiring the inverters either way.