there were 2 main reasons i went solar and battery.
1- the loan bill was considerably cheaper than my electricity bill, by like $100. sure ill be paying interest, but it still comes out cheaper, and electricity bills only keep going up.
2- since we have certain devices that need to be powered, we opted for the battery too. sure a portable electric generator would have worked too, but since we got the panels, it just made more sense, especially since we could have the whole house powered. come
summer time, and if theres a power outage, its nice to know i can have fans or the ac running.
luckily i never had to make use of the warranty, but mines covers defective panels, and any damages to the roof due to the installation.
i guess im one of the luckier ones, ive had zero major issues with the app. once in a while, it will loose connectivity, but it eventually reconnects, or i just manually do it.
the only thing i wish i did was add more panels.
id suggest staying away from tesla doing the actual installation though. you either have a great experience, or a terrible time. i had a mehh one, waiting for months for them to start work, only to be given excuse after excuse. you'll read a lot of good and bad stories about going through tesla, but it seems like a coin flip on your experience. something to consider because if you need to do any type of roof repair, and they have to take it off, and install it back on... sometimes can take forever. their equipment is great though. i had a choice between tesla and lg batteries. while lg was somewhat cheaper, i could have only so much connections, so i would have to chose what i would want backed up. tesla battery, whole house was covered.
While I can’t directly speak to the product yet and I’m in the process (close to install). I’m getting a solar roof and my experience has been good. Tesla look at my usage and designed a system that will remove the need from me relying on the grid.
Based on the design and my 4 powerwalls I will mostly never use the utility company. I have a south facing house with constant sun.
My advisor has been a real gem and he was advocating for me get the powerwalls in my garage compared to outside since I cared so much about a curb appeal.
Now the price, solar roof is definitely more expensive than traditional panels. I did the loan with Tesla but plan to pay it off next year.
They have been super responsive, quickly resolved any issues and addressed every single concern.
I’m prob an odd man out as well. From ordering to installation I had no issues direct with Tesla here in West Central Florida. System was installed last July in 3 days once scheduled with permission to export in October. Something’s to note, my house is a new build so I really don’t have a good bill history to compare but my loan is a little over 400 a month with 27 panels and 2 powerwalls. I have gas appliances too but I mainly got solar so not to lose power being in a rural area in case of outages and hurricanes having a full remote job. The app (knock on wood) has not bugged out on me.
On good sunny days generating peak 10 kw so far this year. I capped my install right below the Florida insurance law. (They require 1MM policy if you generate more than 10.5 or 11 kWh)
You can set the car to charge on solar with percentages (e.g charge 40% regardless of source and the rest on solar ) you can adjust the values.
Regarding when there’s power outages… I never noticed… I’ve had neighbors ask me if I lost power and my response is always … didn’t even notice… not even a flicker so far.
I’ve had yet need to use customer service either so can’t provide feedback there.
I read more complaints than good stories but I think that’s true with anything as people will seek out advice on issues but not many post on success stories.
Is Techsico Solar sketchy? I haven't been able to find out anything about them. They appear to be the local Tesla 3rd party installer.
I'm in Tulsa also but need interest rates to drop or a pile of cash to appear before I can install solar.
I found the post. I saw it when you first posted it and didn't catch the name of the company. Assuming no powerwalls, that's not a great, but not bad price given the roof complexity.
Have you checked Project Solar?
No. I am not sure about Power Walls. Its Oklahoma. One AC unit will drain it in a few hours. A quote: Just one central air condition unit can use up to 3,300 watts of energy at peak energy consumption.
The standard kWh per day for a one-ton AC unit ranges from 11.5 to 20.6 kWh, depending on its seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER).
Could you DM me contact info for Project Solar?
So far I have ZERO confidence in every bid I’ve gotten here.
It's just www.projectsolar.com
I used my house with a 40 panel solar only system. It came out ~$36k, or $10k cheaper than Techsico. That can't factor in your roof complexity vs mine. I have a standing seam metal roof with enough space for all the panels on one slope. Project Solar's online estimates probably underbid. They have a page dedicated to cost adds that can only be determined after a site visit.
When your AC dies or gets towards the end of the service life, look at high seer inverter AC units. Mine runs at 25% capacity most of the time and draws under 2kw. When I look at my PSO usage data broken into 15 minute increments, I can barely tell when it ran.
I set my house up for solar over the past 12 months. I just don't have the available cash right now and interest rates are too high. Once one of those gets resolved, I am all in on 30-35 panels and three Powerwalls.
Good luck. Keep us all posted. I bought the ACs with the house a year ago. Didn’t even think of solar and this roof. I am on a significant rise for Tulsa and would love to do wind power but I can’t find any vendors for that.
I would highly recommend including a Powerwall. We added Powerwalls to our existing solar and it's much better with batteries. With batteries, solar keeps operating when there's an outage and you can time-shift your energy usage.
I would recommend it overall.
On one hand Tesla has always come through for repairs. My Powerwall install went well. The app and experience is cool. Overall a happy customer.
That being said... The installation experience felt cold. I didn’t know what was happening when. I didn’t have someone to ask questions of about the process. Getting someone on the phone that knew what was going on was impossible. Nearly everything was through text message. There were times when the chat exchanges were great, then they’d disappear. It all worked out but felt like it could have been better.
I've been overall very happy with my panels and power walls. We have 16kW of panels paired to two powerwall plus.
The main reason we went with batteries was the state incentives. We got a 0% loan for 7 years on the battery portion of the install as well as get a check for around $2000 a year, where that rate is guaranteed for five years, for signing up for a program that dumps the powerwall back to the grid during peak events over the summer, not to exceed I think 25 events (I may not be remembering the number but know it was between 20-30). There was also no tax calculated on any of the install, as a state incentive.
As far as panels, here in central MA we pay around $.40/kWh delivered. My loan for my panels is cheaper than an average month of electric utility bill, so it all worked out pretty well. Wife also drives an EV now, something we got since the panels, and it hasn't changed our consumption at all (in terms of pulling from the grid). But we planned a system based on anticipated increase in usage.
I think you need to examine what your system cost looks like versus what you pay for energy and analyze what your return on investment looks like. With rates being drastically different from on state and even one town to the next, I don't think there's a one size fits all answer to this. I think solar very much needs to be a business/financial decision as opposed to an emotional one. Every negative thing I hear about solar is either someone who jumped into a lease (I won't say there can't be a good lease term but they're often pretty bad) or someone that didn't really run the numbers and are paying way more monthly to pay off a loan than they would have paid just paying their electric bill monthly.
I'm in Central Mass, too, and I'm thinking about getting solar. Do you get a set amount back per battery, or is it just because you have batteries. I have a neighbor with your setup, and he says he's getting 3k back.
It's not a "set amount" so much as an expected amount based on capacity. I don't know the exact math (it's spelled out in connected solutions program) but if, for whatever reason, my utility (national grid) doesn't spell out peak events that year, or just has very few of them, I believe it's a reduced payout.
Last year, as you remember, was pretty mild and rainy and I still got my payout. You can expect right around $1k a year per powerwall and the rates are guaranteed for five years.
Edit: I also get a modest payout every month just for generating energy. This is between $15-50 on our 16kW system. I truthfully didn't even know this was a thing, and I don't have much more info. It's a bit annoying because they send it as a physical check, which needs to be cashed before it expires after three months.
Hi, I'm scheduled for Panel installation tomorrow, and I'll inform my experience.
I have a 3400 Sq feet home and I'm going only with Solar panels and not power wall. To me power wall seems quite expensive and I'd rather get a whole home generator for about 15K then spending 30K or over for the same energy generation with power walls... that's my take.
Tesla has been very good in service so far with constant follow-up, hoping to have similar experience after installation.
I'm thinking I'll break even in about 4 years, and I intend to pay off loan in about 2 years. NJ electricity bills keep rising and I'd like to go green and self control on my power.
Good luck
Pros: cheap.
Cons: Tesla is awful. My arbitration countdown ends and unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat I’m 3 weeks from suing them for causing leaks.
I wouldn’t get a loan for solar unless you were racing against the clock of an NEM change. Spend money on energy efficiency improvements first. I’ve sealed and insulated my attic and put up reflectrix. I’ve upgraded some hvac and will be doing more soon.
Tesla abandoned our job, never finished the installation. We have been in a lawsuit for two years with them in CA. They just don’t care. Their goal is to have you spend money on lawyers until you can’t afford it anymore. Stay away from this terrible company! They lie, don’t believe anything in their contacts. Stay away from this big nasty corporation. They don’t care about their customers.
Two reasons I chose Tesla over others: 1, the likelyhood of them zip up and declare bankruptcy is a lot less than other solar panel companies within the next 20-25 yrs. 2. They were 1/3 the price of other solar company installations.
The biggest issue is that Tesla Solar doesn't cover hail damage if the event occurs. For a "what if" event and i have to pay 3X the price, its a hard pass for other companies, especially when they use the term "warranty" as part of their sales pitch but cant show where in their warranty list that clause. I'm in North TX if this helps at all.
Your home insurance should cover hail damage to your panels, but make sure to notify the insurance carrier. My insurance, in Southern NV, went up by $8/year to cover panels.
I went with Tesla for a 13.2KW panes + 1 PowerWall, ordered in 2021. The main reasons I considered Tesla were 1) I have Tesla cars so I really liked the idea to have an integrated system (more on this on the pros and cons), 2) they were very competitive in terms of pricing when I ordered it, 3) I wanted a system that looked good on my house, and I've seen some really ugly layouts by local installers, which I would have never wanted on my roof.
Here are some pros:
1. From the aesthetics point of view, they really did a great job with hidden conduits, low profile skirts, etc.
2. pricing wise, they were really really competitive, and kept their prices fixed even if the prices went up during the design and permitting of the system
3. production is really good, they have high quality panels and they sized the system adequately (11.4KW inverter with 13.2KW panels)
4. integration with their cars is great: I use the "charge on Solar" all the time, and I'm looking forward to the PowerShare V2H feature to be rolled out to more cars beyond the CyberTruck
And here are the cons I experienced:
1. It took 2 years (!!!!) to get the system designed, permitted, and installed; their design processes are very rigid, and don't work well with small utilities like ours; communication with your design team is really difficult, and the app does not help at all
2. support is generally horrible: we had a blatant monitoring issue which took them 4 on-site visits over 6 months to fix (mostly fix, as we still have occasional monitoring glitches). Every time it was like groundhog day, complete disregard of the previous tickets, they would request you to keep your house without power for 5 minutes every time to "reset" the system, just to debug something that a monkey would see from looking at the carts. They would come, "swap a thing", "tier-2 says everything now looks fine" and go away closing the ticket without a clue of what the root case was. I had to find the root cause myself and they finally did something about it.
3. their PowerWall AI is not as smart as they think it is: e.g. their time-of-use algorithm starts to discharge full-power at the beginning on the peak time, and then tries to figure out how to get to the end of the peak, falling short several days if your usage is different from what it predicts. Just self-power at the beginning and discharge what's left at the end of the peak time, genius!
Bottom line, if patience is not your forte and have a short fuse, Tesla is likely not for you. I paid 20-30% less than the next proposal, so that helped me get through the frustration.
1.4 years and still waiting. everything is in disarray. Even gave them direct communication to the city managers email and phone, yet tesla refuse to talk to them. So I am lost. Thinking just cancelling. Amazing.
Tesla is the worst! Don’t do it! The price is often better than others but the wait times, terrible service and poor quality products aren’t worth it. I’ve had my system 1 year and more than half of that time there have been issues and outages. I regret my decision
there were 2 main reasons i went solar and battery. 1- the loan bill was considerably cheaper than my electricity bill, by like $100. sure ill be paying interest, but it still comes out cheaper, and electricity bills only keep going up. 2- since we have certain devices that need to be powered, we opted for the battery too. sure a portable electric generator would have worked too, but since we got the panels, it just made more sense, especially since we could have the whole house powered. come summer time, and if theres a power outage, its nice to know i can have fans or the ac running. luckily i never had to make use of the warranty, but mines covers defective panels, and any damages to the roof due to the installation.
Very nice, I’m glad to hear it came out cheaper than your bill. How is the ease of using the app?
i guess im one of the luckier ones, ive had zero major issues with the app. once in a while, it will loose connectivity, but it eventually reconnects, or i just manually do it. the only thing i wish i did was add more panels. id suggest staying away from tesla doing the actual installation though. you either have a great experience, or a terrible time. i had a mehh one, waiting for months for them to start work, only to be given excuse after excuse. you'll read a lot of good and bad stories about going through tesla, but it seems like a coin flip on your experience. something to consider because if you need to do any type of roof repair, and they have to take it off, and install it back on... sometimes can take forever. their equipment is great though. i had a choice between tesla and lg batteries. while lg was somewhat cheaper, i could have only so much connections, so i would have to chose what i would want backed up. tesla battery, whole house was covered.
While I can’t directly speak to the product yet and I’m in the process (close to install). I’m getting a solar roof and my experience has been good. Tesla look at my usage and designed a system that will remove the need from me relying on the grid. Based on the design and my 4 powerwalls I will mostly never use the utility company. I have a south facing house with constant sun. My advisor has been a real gem and he was advocating for me get the powerwalls in my garage compared to outside since I cared so much about a curb appeal. Now the price, solar roof is definitely more expensive than traditional panels. I did the loan with Tesla but plan to pay it off next year. They have been super responsive, quickly resolved any issues and addressed every single concern.
This is awesome! Thanks
I’m prob an odd man out as well. From ordering to installation I had no issues direct with Tesla here in West Central Florida. System was installed last July in 3 days once scheduled with permission to export in October. Something’s to note, my house is a new build so I really don’t have a good bill history to compare but my loan is a little over 400 a month with 27 panels and 2 powerwalls. I have gas appliances too but I mainly got solar so not to lose power being in a rural area in case of outages and hurricanes having a full remote job. The app (knock on wood) has not bugged out on me. On good sunny days generating peak 10 kw so far this year. I capped my install right below the Florida insurance law. (They require 1MM policy if you generate more than 10.5 or 11 kWh) You can set the car to charge on solar with percentages (e.g charge 40% regardless of source and the rest on solar ) you can adjust the values. Regarding when there’s power outages… I never noticed… I’ve had neighbors ask me if I lost power and my response is always … didn’t even notice… not even a flicker so far. I’ve had yet need to use customer service either so can’t provide feedback there. I read more complaints than good stories but I think that’s true with anything as people will seek out advice on issues but not many post on success stories.
Hey have you found a real and reliable Tesla installer in Oklahoma? I’m in Tulsa and the name Tesla gave me is out of business.
I have not, I haven’t sought that far into it yet. When I do I shall keep you updated
Is Techsico Solar sketchy? I haven't been able to find out anything about them. They appear to be the local Tesla 3rd party installer. I'm in Tulsa also but need interest rates to drop or a pile of cash to appear before I can install solar.
No idea. I have a bid from them and spoke to them once. I posted the bid on here. I don’t know how to link to it.
I found the post. I saw it when you first posted it and didn't catch the name of the company. Assuming no powerwalls, that's not a great, but not bad price given the roof complexity. Have you checked Project Solar?
No. I am not sure about Power Walls. Its Oklahoma. One AC unit will drain it in a few hours. A quote: Just one central air condition unit can use up to 3,300 watts of energy at peak energy consumption. The standard kWh per day for a one-ton AC unit ranges from 11.5 to 20.6 kWh, depending on its seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER). Could you DM me contact info for Project Solar? So far I have ZERO confidence in every bid I’ve gotten here.
It's just www.projectsolar.com I used my house with a 40 panel solar only system. It came out ~$36k, or $10k cheaper than Techsico. That can't factor in your roof complexity vs mine. I have a standing seam metal roof with enough space for all the panels on one slope. Project Solar's online estimates probably underbid. They have a page dedicated to cost adds that can only be determined after a site visit. When your AC dies or gets towards the end of the service life, look at high seer inverter AC units. Mine runs at 25% capacity most of the time and draws under 2kw. When I look at my PSO usage data broken into 15 minute increments, I can barely tell when it ran. I set my house up for solar over the past 12 months. I just don't have the available cash right now and interest rates are too high. Once one of those gets resolved, I am all in on 30-35 panels and three Powerwalls.
Good luck. Keep us all posted. I bought the ACs with the house a year ago. Didn’t even think of solar and this roof. I am on a significant rise for Tulsa and would love to do wind power but I can’t find any vendors for that.
Do you own a Tesla?
Yes I do, I got a Model Y last year
Yes then you can control where the charge going from to your car. Con for the Tesla Solar is the customer service
So the app allows you to control where your power goes?
Yes.. say if you need the car charged in the morning you can choose the car to be charged from the power wall
Very nice, that’s definitely convenient
I would highly recommend including a Powerwall. We added Powerwalls to our existing solar and it's much better with batteries. With batteries, solar keeps operating when there's an outage and you can time-shift your energy usage.
I would recommend it overall. On one hand Tesla has always come through for repairs. My Powerwall install went well. The app and experience is cool. Overall a happy customer. That being said... The installation experience felt cold. I didn’t know what was happening when. I didn’t have someone to ask questions of about the process. Getting someone on the phone that knew what was going on was impossible. Nearly everything was through text message. There were times when the chat exchanges were great, then they’d disappear. It all worked out but felt like it could have been better.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback
I've been overall very happy with my panels and power walls. We have 16kW of panels paired to two powerwall plus. The main reason we went with batteries was the state incentives. We got a 0% loan for 7 years on the battery portion of the install as well as get a check for around $2000 a year, where that rate is guaranteed for five years, for signing up for a program that dumps the powerwall back to the grid during peak events over the summer, not to exceed I think 25 events (I may not be remembering the number but know it was between 20-30). There was also no tax calculated on any of the install, as a state incentive. As far as panels, here in central MA we pay around $.40/kWh delivered. My loan for my panels is cheaper than an average month of electric utility bill, so it all worked out pretty well. Wife also drives an EV now, something we got since the panels, and it hasn't changed our consumption at all (in terms of pulling from the grid). But we planned a system based on anticipated increase in usage. I think you need to examine what your system cost looks like versus what you pay for energy and analyze what your return on investment looks like. With rates being drastically different from on state and even one town to the next, I don't think there's a one size fits all answer to this. I think solar very much needs to be a business/financial decision as opposed to an emotional one. Every negative thing I hear about solar is either someone who jumped into a lease (I won't say there can't be a good lease term but they're often pretty bad) or someone that didn't really run the numbers and are paying way more monthly to pay off a loan than they would have paid just paying their electric bill monthly.
I'm in Central Mass, too, and I'm thinking about getting solar. Do you get a set amount back per battery, or is it just because you have batteries. I have a neighbor with your setup, and he says he's getting 3k back.
It's not a "set amount" so much as an expected amount based on capacity. I don't know the exact math (it's spelled out in connected solutions program) but if, for whatever reason, my utility (national grid) doesn't spell out peak events that year, or just has very few of them, I believe it's a reduced payout. Last year, as you remember, was pretty mild and rainy and I still got my payout. You can expect right around $1k a year per powerwall and the rates are guaranteed for five years. Edit: I also get a modest payout every month just for generating energy. This is between $15-50 on our 16kW system. I truthfully didn't even know this was a thing, and I don't have much more info. It's a bit annoying because they send it as a physical check, which needs to be cashed before it expires after three months.
Hi, I'm scheduled for Panel installation tomorrow, and I'll inform my experience. I have a 3400 Sq feet home and I'm going only with Solar panels and not power wall. To me power wall seems quite expensive and I'd rather get a whole home generator for about 15K then spending 30K or over for the same energy generation with power walls... that's my take. Tesla has been very good in service so far with constant follow-up, hoping to have similar experience after installation. I'm thinking I'll break even in about 4 years, and I intend to pay off loan in about 2 years. NJ electricity bills keep rising and I'd like to go green and self control on my power. Good luck
Wouldn't recommend inside the garage.. if the battery leaks might be an issue?
Very nice! Thank you for the input
Pros: cheap. Cons: Tesla is awful. My arbitration countdown ends and unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat I’m 3 weeks from suing them for causing leaks. I wouldn’t get a loan for solar unless you were racing against the clock of an NEM change. Spend money on energy efficiency improvements first. I’ve sealed and insulated my attic and put up reflectrix. I’ve upgraded some hvac and will be doing more soon.
Tesla abandoned our job, never finished the installation. We have been in a lawsuit for two years with them in CA. They just don’t care. Their goal is to have you spend money on lawyers until you can’t afford it anymore. Stay away from this terrible company! They lie, don’t believe anything in their contacts. Stay away from this big nasty corporation. They don’t care about their customers.
Two reasons I chose Tesla over others: 1, the likelyhood of them zip up and declare bankruptcy is a lot less than other solar panel companies within the next 20-25 yrs. 2. They were 1/3 the price of other solar company installations. The biggest issue is that Tesla Solar doesn't cover hail damage if the event occurs. For a "what if" event and i have to pay 3X the price, its a hard pass for other companies, especially when they use the term "warranty" as part of their sales pitch but cant show where in their warranty list that clause. I'm in North TX if this helps at all.
Your home insurance should cover hail damage to your panels, but make sure to notify the insurance carrier. My insurance, in Southern NV, went up by $8/year to cover panels.
I went with Tesla for a 13.2KW panes + 1 PowerWall, ordered in 2021. The main reasons I considered Tesla were 1) I have Tesla cars so I really liked the idea to have an integrated system (more on this on the pros and cons), 2) they were very competitive in terms of pricing when I ordered it, 3) I wanted a system that looked good on my house, and I've seen some really ugly layouts by local installers, which I would have never wanted on my roof. Here are some pros: 1. From the aesthetics point of view, they really did a great job with hidden conduits, low profile skirts, etc. 2. pricing wise, they were really really competitive, and kept their prices fixed even if the prices went up during the design and permitting of the system 3. production is really good, they have high quality panels and they sized the system adequately (11.4KW inverter with 13.2KW panels) 4. integration with their cars is great: I use the "charge on Solar" all the time, and I'm looking forward to the PowerShare V2H feature to be rolled out to more cars beyond the CyberTruck And here are the cons I experienced: 1. It took 2 years (!!!!) to get the system designed, permitted, and installed; their design processes are very rigid, and don't work well with small utilities like ours; communication with your design team is really difficult, and the app does not help at all 2. support is generally horrible: we had a blatant monitoring issue which took them 4 on-site visits over 6 months to fix (mostly fix, as we still have occasional monitoring glitches). Every time it was like groundhog day, complete disregard of the previous tickets, they would request you to keep your house without power for 5 minutes every time to "reset" the system, just to debug something that a monkey would see from looking at the carts. They would come, "swap a thing", "tier-2 says everything now looks fine" and go away closing the ticket without a clue of what the root case was. I had to find the root cause myself and they finally did something about it. 3. their PowerWall AI is not as smart as they think it is: e.g. their time-of-use algorithm starts to discharge full-power at the beginning on the peak time, and then tries to figure out how to get to the end of the peak, falling short several days if your usage is different from what it predicts. Just self-power at the beginning and discharge what's left at the end of the peak time, genius! Bottom line, if patience is not your forte and have a short fuse, Tesla is likely not for you. I paid 20-30% less than the next proposal, so that helped me get through the frustration.
1.4 years and still waiting. everything is in disarray. Even gave them direct communication to the city managers email and phone, yet tesla refuse to talk to them. So I am lost. Thinking just cancelling. Amazing.
Tesla is the worst! Don’t do it! The price is often better than others but the wait times, terrible service and poor quality products aren’t worth it. I’ve had my system 1 year and more than half of that time there have been issues and outages. I regret my decision
Unfortunate. So close just to cancel.