Tesla Standard Panel Install Pricing

[TheTalkingMule]

It was a major turning point when Tesla moved to set, online pricing for standard solar panels earlier this year. Seemed like the price varied from state to state based on interesting factors, but strangely pricing was locked in at a certain price per Watt regardless of array size.

Obviously we know there are a LOT of static costs for solar, the marginal cost of doubling the array size isn't even that much. Well I don't know when it happened, but Tesla continues to evolve logically and is now showing cheaper installs for larger arrays on a "per Watt" basis. The XL(15.2kW) for instance is showing $2.22/W in PA, whereas the Small(3.8kW) is $2.62/W.

Great to see and glad Tesla is improving the customer acquisition process almost quarterly. We should start seeing Tesla Energy absolutely crushing Sunrun in any markets they overlap. Adoption will skyrocket if they can keep up this progress on a transparent sales process and improve overall service.

Next things I'd like to see:

• Simple panel and/or inverter options like you'd see with any other product. Maybe offer a Chinese panel and also the Panasonics from Buffalo.
• Continue to slash internal commissions and eventually customer referrals.
• Straightforward offerings of both panels and solar tiles as they ramp. These are for the most part separate markets, don't dance around the fact there are two distinct offerings or try to upsell/downsell.

Offer the product, install it efficiently, service customers.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

It was a major turning point when Tesla moved to set, online pricing for standard solar panels earlier this year. Seemed like the price varied from state to state based on interesting factors, but strangely pricing was locked in at a certain price per Watt regardless of array size.

Obviously we know there are a LOT of static costs for solar, the marginal cost of doubling the array size isn't even that much. Well I don't know when it happened, but Tesla continues to evolve logically and is now showing cheaper installs for larger arrays on a "per Watt" basis. The XL(15.2kW) for instance is showing $2.22/W in PA, whereas the Small(3.8kW) is $2.62/W.

Great to see and glad Tesla is improving the customer acquisition process almost quarterly. We should start seeing Tesla Energy absolutely crushing Sunrun in any markets they overlap. Adoption will skyrocket if they can keep up this progress on a transparent sales process and improve overall service.

Next things I'd like to see:

• Simple panel and/or inverter options like you'd see with any other product. Maybe offer a Chinese panel and also the Panasonics from Buffalo.
• Continue to slash internal commissions and eventually customer referrals.
• Straightforward offerings of both panels and solar tiles as they ramp. These are for the most part separate markets, don't dance around the fact there are two distinct offerings or try to upsell/downsell.

Offer the product, install it efficiently, service customers.

If you ask, you can get different panels. They just try to keep the pricing simple on the website.

We just added another 12 panels to our system. Originally, they quoted us the new 315 Watt Chinese panels but we asked for 325 Watt Panasonic panels from Buffalo and got those and only had to pay a little more.

They cut the referral program way back. It used to be $700 (?) credit or $400 cash. Now it's like $100, so not really much of an incentive.

 

[Mardak]

For reference, the old fixed $/W scaling around here without tax incentives:
3.8kW for $10,017 = $2.65/W
7.6kW for $20,034 = $2.65/W
11.4kW for $30,051 = $2.65/W

New pricing:
3.8kW for $10,517 = $500 more expensive $2.78/W
7.6kW for $19,034 = $1000 cheaper $2.52/W
11.4kW for $28,051 = $2000 cheaper $2.47/W
15.2kW for $36,069 = $4000 cheaper (if XL existed before) $2.39/W

We just got the small size installed for the old price, so luckily we ordered in time although the process did take a bit longer than originally expected due to some custom panel placement requests.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

It was certainly a great window to get a small I install cheap. We originally had the small option at $2.50/Watt here in PA. Pretty good deal.

With all this effort Tesla is putting into streamlining and scaling their customer acquisition process, I see their installs averaging $2.00-$2.25/W by spring 2021. Only 8 years behind the rest of the world!

 

[Mardak]

Another 3 months has passed and more price changes it seems. Here's Nevada before incentives:

  Date    Small   Medium    Large  X-Large
Sep 19  $10,017  $20,034  $30,051  $40,068
Dec 19  $10,517  $19,034  $28,051  $36,069
Mar 20  $10,000  $18,000  $26,500  $34,500

So compared to 6 months ago with a fixed $2.65/Wh:
Small: -$17 $2.65/Wh
Medium: -$2034 $2.38/Wh
Large: -$3551 $2.34/Wh
X-Large: -$5568 $2.28/Wh

And looks like right now these states have the lowest residential at $2.12/Wh for 15.12kWh XL $32,000: Colorado, Deleware, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington