THE VERDICT: Tesla Powerwall and Solar Review After 6 Months!
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What’s up guys welcome to today’s video this is my long waited follow-up to my Tesla solar system and power wall
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installation which I documented over the summer in 2018 and I promise you guys I was going to do a follow-up where I gave
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an assessment of the actual performance of the system the cost involved whether I think it was worth it as well as any
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other details I think might be useful and that is what we were doing today let’s get started of course here’s hydro
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with the timeline how long did it actually take for this whole project to get installed and up and running it has
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been 15 months since I did my initial $500 deposit for my tesla powerwall and in the in-between we’ve had hurricanes
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we’ve had some snafus when it comes to scheduling but ultimately everything did get up and running but I actually kicked
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this whole thing off on September 4th 2017 I put a $500 deposit down and the idea at the time was get this installed
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now during winter and possibly spring so it’s ready for the summer of 2018 and we’ll see as we proceed how that
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actually went on the 13th I was contacted by a Tesla rep to proceed with the project on the 15th I requested
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assistance getting an entire system put together not just the powerwall but also solar panels and potentially a main
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electrical box upgrade on the 19th I was advised that the plans for my system would take about 30 days to complete and
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that there would also be a potential delay due to disaster assistance that Tesla was participating in due to the
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Hurricanes last year in Texas Florida and then eventually in Puerto Rico with hurricane Maria in October of 2017
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I sent them some copies of my utility bills and I received my first power wall order confirmation email but it was only
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for the powerwall note that I had asked for assistance with a main panel upgrade and solar as
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well so moving on to November 2018 I pointed out that the plan only included the power wall and that I wanted solar
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and electrical panels well I had a call with a Tesla rep on November 9th and then we signed updated project documents
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on November 13th planning to go ahead with the power wall and the solar note again that the main pan
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still was not included although I will take some responsibility here because I didn’t notice that either on November
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13th they did the first site survey and actually sent out a rep to walk through and do a solar meter that they put up on
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the roof in the back to sort of gauge how much solar was being received in that location this was also my first
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introduction to Tesla safety procedures and I actually really appreciate this they secured all the ladders when
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they’re going up and down not off of the roof and they always drill into the apex of the roof and use tie downs with
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harnesses for all of their employees that are working on the roof again just for safety and I think that’s a good way
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to go about doing it also in November I registered on the Tesla website because Solar City was actually starting to be
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phased out Tesla has a better brand name since Elon sent his car into space so Tesla now in that Solar City they merged
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together and then all the documents were signed by all relevant parties on November 26th and I was still
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anticipating delays at this point so it was a month later on December 23rd that I got the installation scheduled email
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yes for 4 months later in April so April 2nd and this again was due to power wall
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orders being backed up due to Puerto Rico hurricane Maria relief so I was ok with that although I want to point out
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that I did ask Tesla after the fact if normal people should expect this amount of delay and they said no it should
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happen much quicker however if you go on the test website right now they’re currently delayed until like next year
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sometime they are backordered so I don’t know what to tell you exactly but this was my experience so moving on to
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January 2018 and I received my first initial contact with Southern California Edison who is my local utility here who
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Tesla has to work with in order to do all this stuff after that point I was copied on regular email updates between
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Edison and Tesla but I did not need to participate at all they handled everything between the utility and Tesla
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team an SCE engineer was assigned to my project on January 17th so jumping ahead to March on march 8th I had my first
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Tesla site walkthrough apart from the initial one that they did in 2017 and then after that we had some scheduling
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issues Tesla somehow had two installation teams assigned to my project they’re gonna try to install
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early on March 20th but that was never actually confirmed so a team showed up that day but we weren’t ready for them
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so it got pushed back to April 2nd everything was ok though I March 26th Jerry one of my favorite Tesla Tech’s
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who I worked with showed up to do another walkthrough he also discovered at that point
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the main panel upgrade was not actually set up yet so we had one week to kind of scramble to get that main panel upgrade
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arranged added to the project and it had to be approved by Southern California Edison as well I was worried it was
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gonna delay stuff even further since it was already April but fortunately they were able to expedite everything and we
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move forward with the main panel installation on April 2nd about a week and a half later on April 11th I paid
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the first half of my invoice and the solar was scheduled to install but then the team arrived they inspected the roof
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and they decided that my roof was too old and we’re now they have a policy that they will not install solar on top
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of a roof that is too old and might need to be replaced soon which makes sense but they usually let you that know that
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at the beginning of the installation process so fortunately they said because they hadn’t caught that they offered to
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cover the cost of reroofing the area under the solar array so that was like bonus free part of a roof for me which
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is cool although it did introduce a little bit more delay to the installation so the power wall was
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installed on April 11th and then a couple weeks later on April 26th we scheduled the reroofing with Tesla’s
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roofing guy Adolfo and that was scheduled for the week of April 30th to May 4th on May 2nd the roof was replaced
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and then on May 11th the solar array was finally installed and then you have to wait again maybe as little as a week but
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up to a month they said because the utility has to give permission to operate so we had a couple weeks we’re
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waiting around I was hoping to turn it on because I was going to leave for a couple weeks to go to Japan and Taiwan
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for two weeks at the end of May and beginning of June and then of course as we’re at the airport on May 25th
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I get the permission to operate email so we had to go away for two weeks before I could come back and then actually turn
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the system on which I tried to do on June 11th as documented in my installation video it was unsuccessful
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at first on June 12th I called Tesla I just sort out registering my gateway to my account D from Tesla helped me out
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with that and then I was able to turn the system on Rey so that is the recap of the installation from initial deposit
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to system being turned on in mid-june it took quite a while again your mileage may vary if I have any advice to offer
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for you it would be to know what you wants at the beginning because I sort of said hey guys I’m signing up for a power
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wall baby you could also figure out the solar and the electrical panel I needed to be a little bit more forthright with
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that and be like I want this this and this and then I think they would have had the plans ready from day one and we
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would have maybe not had to deal with those delays that happen in little time in like December January and
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February moving on to my actual setup though the specs of the system my solar panels are model SC 325 solar city 325
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which is 325 watts per panel that’s peak if it’s getting full sunlight and making all the use of all the sunlight and I
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have 18 panels so that gives me a five thousand eight hundred and fifty watt peak output array of course you’re never
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really gonna hit your Pete peak output for various reasons efficiency and how much Sun is actually hitting in the
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direction of the sunlight and everything so I’m actually dealing with probably more around five thousand to fifty two
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hundred Watts peak generation my main electrical panel is now a two hundred amp panel upgraded from the 100 amp
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panel that was here from the sixties when my house was first built and then I have a 100 amp subpanel and that is what
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the tesla powerwall is connected up to so that is the battery backed up circuits on the 100 amp panel the
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remaining hundred amps for my main 200 a panel are fed over to my air conditioner unit I was initially told that the AC
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wouldn’t be backed up by the power wall but I think it kind of is actually more on that in just a minute
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finally of course I have the power wall to and that features a fully integrated Tesla inverter 14 kilowatt hours of
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energy storage five kilowatts of continuous power and seven kilowatts of peak power round trip efficiency is 89%
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for the AC power wall that I have and the operating temperature range is negative 20 C all the way up to 50 C so
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that’s a pretty wide range for most people it also comes with a 10 year warranty with unlimited cycles so that’s
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pretty nice too in case you’re wondering it weighs 269 pounds or 122 kilograms now if
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you’re actually going to be using your solar end power wall setup you will be using the Tesla app this is actually
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pretty useful because it lets you see a live view of solar generation from your solar array that’s in yellow also it
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shows you how much power your home is currently using that’s in blue also how much power your power wall is delivering
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to your home or if it’s charging from the solar that’s in green and then your electric grid power is listed in white
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if you’re drawing from the grid or if you’re feeding power back to it so a few examples here of solar generation here
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at my home going from summer to fall to winter so back on July 7th in the heat of summer I generated 32.2 kilowatt
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hours on a bright sunny day where I was getting most of the solar generation for most of the day it’s not too bad
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although of course it’s hot at the time too so you have to bear that in mind as well on September 23rd in fall I
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generated about five point six kilowatt hours this is also on a bright sunny day so I’m just
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trying to see in the best conditions depending on the month how much power I’m actually going to get of course the
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days get shorter here in the winter as it does in most places that’s not on the equator so if you move to December
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actually December 9th just recently 22.7 kilowatt hours is how much power we generated so as you can see it’s gonna
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dip down in the winter and get better in the summer so I have a few examples to share with you guys so back on July 8th
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we have a heavy a/c usage day it was very hot outside we had to have a/c on and we drew 50.3 kilowatt hours for the
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entire day there now on this day you can see draw spikes in the 8,000 watt plus range which is far beyond what the power
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wall is actually actually able to handle so you’re gonna always be drawing power from the grid on a day like that when
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you’re drawing more power than what the power wall can push to you so there you obviously draw some grid power on that
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day we actually drew 21.6 kilowatt hours from the grid but you can see there’s a good 30 kilowatt hour gap there that was
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covered by the solar so that’s nice let’s move over to a worst-case scenario day it’s hot and it’s also partially
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cloudy and it’s still the summer for some reason that happens sometimes late summer here in California we got 25
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point one kilowatt hours from the solar on this day it was pretty spotty during the day it was kind of partially cloudy
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off and on we drew 28.9 kilowatt hours from the grid and that was due to the heavy
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air-conditioner usage that we had going on throughout the day but we also only had 1.8 kilowatt hours drawn from the
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power wall which is much less than the previous example where we had about 30 kilowatt hours that is because the power
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wall started with low power because we had had several days of heats where we were using the AC during the day the
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power wall would run out at nights and then in the morning when it’s supposed to start charging itself back up again
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when the Sun comes out we’re turning an air conditioner back on again so the AC is using up so much power that the power
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wall can’t charge therefore we only got 1.8 kilowatt hours of usage from it but again that is a worst case scenario with
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50 3.5 kilowatt hours of home usage on that day let’s switch over to November jump for a couple months and we’ll talk
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about a rainy day because rain is nice here in California it keeps fires from happening and stuff but it also keeps
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the Sun from shining so on a rainy day we get 5.1 kilowatt hours and you feel like your solar generation is pretty
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used we also used 18.1 kilowatt hours that day so you can see there’s a pretty
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substantial gap that had to be covered by the grid and if compared to just the day prior we got twenty two point four
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kilowatt hours of solar generated and that was on a bright sunny day it was nice that those work back-to-back so I
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can give an a/b comparison between the two the other thing that happens in the colder months here is heating starts to
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become a concern my wife gets chilly so we have a portable electric heater that we use in the bedroom house heating is
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fortunately handled by natural gas but you can definitely see small spikes in usage on that day from the heater
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cycling on which of course does increase power usage even when you don’t have to worry about the air conditioner and one
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more example day here and this is actually the 12 hour charity livestream that we did just a little over a week
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ago so on this day of fortunately it was cool so we didn’t need to turn the air conditioner on and I was actually pretty
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surprised that with our three-person streaming setup that we had going on out here in the garage
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we were only drawing about 1,500 to 2,500 watts for most of the day there was also a bright sunny day so we had
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twenty two point seven kilowatt hours of solar generated that was able to charge the power wall while also providing
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power for us while we were out here gaming and stuff so that day we didn’t even have to switch over to grid power
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until about 8:00 p.m. this is on a day when I was expecting we were gonna be burning up all the power that was coming
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in so I was pretty happy about that and also a great demonstration of how the battery allows us to stay self powered
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during those key evening hours when power draw typically increases in residential neighborhoods and often your
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rates can increase as well on that day we use thirty eight point nine kilowatt hours total which is a lot considering
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that we didn’t have the AC going so when it comes to general usage the thing I noticed most of all I think was just a
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couple months ago in October when I kind of forgot it was there the month of October was actually a good month when
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it comes to solar generation it was very dry here in California but that meant it was very sunny and I was also pretty
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cool out so I didn’t need the a/c we had lots of solar coming in wasn’t using exorbitant amounts of power so we
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actually got a credit in October of about twenty-five dollars the other thing I mentioned earlier is that the
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air conditioner was not supposed to be powered by the solar and the power wall but I think I know how it actually works
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even though the AC is not directly connected to the 100 amp panel that the power wall backs up we have a two phase
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power delivery system here so I believe what’s happening is when the AC is on its drawing power on one phase to power
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the air conditioner while it’s also feeding power back the powerwall on the other phase so from
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SES perspective it’s a net zero and so effectively we are powering the AC with the storage power here so I believe
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that’s how it works don’t quote me on that for sure but at least when it comes to functionality and usability that’s
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the only way I can see it working says it’s physically not connected otherwise and now on to the cost-benefit analysis
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I know a lot of you guys have probably been waiting for this I’m going to take into account the upfront cost of the
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system we also have a tax credit that’s coming in actually I’m going to be getting that tax credit in another month
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or two when I file my taxes for 2018 and then there’s also of course the estimated time that the system might
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take to actually pay for itself so I have about three full years of electric bill history from 2016 to 2017 to 2018
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however I can only really do direct comparisons from July onward because of course the solar and everything wasn’t
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installed before then so if I’m looking at the last five months of the year July through November you can see that my
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average power bill was about a hundred and eighty four dollars two hundred and eighty seven dollars in 2016 and 2017
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now if you look at 2018 my July bill was eleven dollars and 81 cents my August bill was the most expensive one at a
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little over seventy dollars September was about eleven bucks in October I got that $25 credit and then in November
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we’re at about ten dollars so I’m a virgin about fifteen dollars and 74 cents per month that I am paying in my
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electric bill which is pretty minimal but some people were like well shouldn’t you be making money on this Paul maybe
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but let’s take this a step further if you compare what I’m paying on average per month now to what I paid on average
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per month in 2016 and 2017 I’m saving about a hundred and seventy dollars per month one 69.6 nine
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according to my calculations the overall cost of the solar and powerwall system including the electrical panel upgrades
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that I got was thirty two thousand four hundred and twenty-five dollars and seventy five cents I paid this upfront
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because I didn’t want to finance it and if you calculate that it’s actually still pretty expensive and it will take
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quite a while for me to recoup my cost on this but you also have to take into account that right now there is a
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federal tax credit of 30 percent towards your solar system that you have set up so I’m going to get a tax credit of a
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little over nine thousand seven hundred dollars that will apply towards what I owe for taxes so I will owe about nine
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thousand seven hundred dollars less on my taxes this year which is pretty nice that means my total cost was twenty two
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thousand six hundred ninety eight dollars divided that by the savings per month of about
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170 bucks that gives you about a hundred and thirty three months that means I will pay off the system or the system
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will pay it for itself in just over eleven years about eleven point one five years to be specific this does fall in
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line with my expectations when I was getting the system installed the anticipated time to pay for itself was
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ten to fifteen years so that’s just about right and I want to point out that the solar array has a twenty year
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warranty and the powerwall has a ten year warranty and the entire system has an estimated useful life of thirty five
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years so hopefully the powerwall won’t give out prior to me having the system pay for itself but the powerwall is
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actually not that difficult a thing to swap out or even add a second one to but assuming that my average cost savings
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stays about what it’s been so far I think it’s safe to say that I am happy with the investment I have made so far
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so let’s talk about pros and cons what do I like about this system well one it just works not to quote Jensen or
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anything like that it’s been functional and like I said during the month of October I kind of forgot it was there
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and it ended up getting me a credit also speaking of it’s really nice to get a credit on your power bill from time to
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time or at least know that when you’re not here like if I go on vacation during the summer or something like that it’s
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still here sucking up the Sun juice and converting it into electrons and all the sciency stuff that goes on behind solar
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power the final thing to point out would be that it was was nice to get like half of a free roof from Tesla although
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that’s not something that people would usually expect but it was good of them to cover that once they discovered that
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it was something that needed doing although it did delay the project by a week or two but it wasn’t too bad
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as for dislikes though I have noticed and this is a minor thing but either the solar inverter or the power wall is
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right on the outside of my bathroom our ensuite bathroom back there and it makes the noise kind of a weird just a noise
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that I can hear from time to time like I said it’s minor we can only hear it in the bathroom but that I pointed out I
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would also prefer to not have the always-on Tesla reporting square that’s got to be connected to your network that
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sends telemetry data back to Tesla all the time it’s always got to be there it’s always got to be on and the Tesla
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will turn itself off if it doesn’t have connection to that after a period of 24 or 48 hours or something like that
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it’s weird also considering that there’s a pretty stark lack of detailed usage reporting available on the Tesla website
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if you log into the Tesla website it basically shows you what you have installed there’s nothing you can see as
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far as like what it’s been used or anything that the app is pretty detailed on
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what’s what it shows you but only for the past day or two if you go beyond that it just gives you bar charts
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without too much actual specific numbers on there and there’s no way to like exporter or porch or anything like that
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those are some features that I feel like it would be really nice to add in the future and it would have made making
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this video a little bit easier – finally it is nice to have the battery backup but if you wanted to have the battery
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backup or sort of view it as an independent system like if the grid went out or if there was a zombie apocalypse
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and the internet didn’t work anymore and the grid didn’t work anymore you would still be kind of Sol with this system
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again because of that Internet connectivity requirement for the system I’d like to have a zombie mode where you
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can like shut yourself off the grid and still be able to get solar power and use your power wall just in case of some
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horrible situation like that to give yourself a little bit more usage out of it without having to like get back on
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the Internet in order to get it to turn back on finally I want to remind you guys that I am in Southern California we
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have much sunlight here all the time or a lot of the time so the effectiveness of solar for you is gonna vary greatly
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depending on your weather of course you can always add more panels to your array if you aren’t generating enough
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electricity for your needs but that of course ups the cost of the system – my advice for you is to let
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Tesla know upfront what you want installed especially if you’re going beyond the power wall it’s also
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including a main panel upgrade and then finally I wanted to give a shout-out thank you to the folks from Tesla who
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helped me out with this installation that includes Jerry Powell Johnny Jonathan Cora and Tom from the
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installation team and then on the planning side ian connor melissa and Don were all very helpful in this
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installation but guys that is gonna wrap it up for this video thank you so much for bearing with me as I have waited so
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I could have some actual data to share with you guys about my usage of the power wall over the past six months or
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so also a huge thank you to any of you guys who use my Tesla referral link which is down in the video’s description
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if you happen to actually purchase something from tesla powerwall or otherwise they do not sponsor me or
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anything like that but if I get enough referrals I can potentially get a free red power wall signed by Elon Musk which
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would be super cool and would also add to my my power capabilities here in my home thank you all so much for watching
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though and one last teaser I know this video has been long anticipated and I’ve delayed it but I have one more coming
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soon a follow up on the HTTP see unprecedented anyway guys thank you so much for watching we’ll see you next
