Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Tesla Solar: 5 Years Later”.
Thank you to energy stage, watching a portion this video, it has been 5 years since I installed solar and battery backups at my house and 5 years ago. I did it when Tesla solar wasn’t quite in existence, yet it was Solar City Plus Tesla power walls and that setup for me has been absolutely awesome. Yes, I Revisited this setup about 2 and 1 half years ago, but the landscape has changed quite a bit and my usage has changed quite a bit as well. So I have to kind of give you guys a 5 years later with not just Tesla solar but sort of solar in general, as you guys decide, if maybe it might be right for you all right.
So one thing to remember about solar is that everything like about it from cost efficiency and Effectiveness is going to change depending on where you live. So I live in Southern California, Southern California, Edison is my utility and it’s sunny most of the time where I live. So I don’t have to deal with snow or really super inclement weather electricity is also super expensive here.
So I certainly have the I think, the ideal situation for solar, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or should install a system if you have variables that are sort of different than mine. This is just my experience of kind of a little bubble here in Southern California. So in the video I made about 2 and 1/2 years ago, I kind of went into a bit more detail about why I installed solar, but here in Southern California I have three kids. It gets very hot. We tend to run our air conditioning at night to keep everybody nice and cool. I also Drive EVS, so those were being charged in the summer months and you can see this bill from September 2017. My electric bill was going as high as 5 $ 140, and that was the highest. It ever got um, but usually in the summer it settled around 400 and then in regular months it kind of came around between 250 and 300. So it was very expensive.
All right so my setup, I have just over 11.3 KW uh system on my roof and I have two Gen 2 Tesla power walls at about 13 1 12 Kow. Each installed in my garage Tesla now has slightly more efficient panels and power. Wall 3s have come out. So when that first video came out um I was had an EV. My wife was driving a Honda Odyssey, so we were a 1 EV family.
Since then, she now drives an EV as well, so we’re a 2 EV family. When people ask me about solar – and I say that I have Tesla solar for some reason – a lot of people think you have to have a Tesla to use. Tesla solar, I don’t have a Tesla at all – still works exactly the same. We also built a pool in our backy yard 2 years ago.
The pool heater uh runs off of gas, but all the pumps and stuff is electricity. So I’ve definitely seen my electric usage go up since that first video I’ve also seen my build go up a little bit too so now, maybe between1 and even $ 200. During the peak months, despite even having that solar, we use a lot of electricity in our house now, in all fairness, I’m not doing anything to reduce my electric usage. I fig I got solar. I can run the AC as much as I want. I could probably drastically reduce that bill uh.
If I kind of take a a closer look at how I was using the power in my house uh. What hasn’t changed is how I use solar. I think there are a lot of misconceptions that go into solar.
The first one is how to use it. I think a lot of people assume you’ve got solar on the roof. It’S going to power your house during the day, and if you don’t have a way to store that excess energy like batteries, then that is 100 %.
Accurate, if you add batteries to the equation, things start to change with what you can do now again here in Southern California, IU Southern California Edison. They allow us to sell Excess power back to the grid and, as I understand it, that’s becoming more and more prevalent with the other utilities. But you have to check where you live, if that’s an option.
So what a lot of people are doing – and I imagine most folks solar – is going to charge their battery packs. Those battery packs are filled up, they’ll power, their house with those batteries and that’s a pretty simple way to go now. What I really liked about what Tesla was doing was that you have the option to manage everything from the app and you can see where the power is going.
I can see at any given time what my panels are generating. I can see if that power is going to the house if it’s going to the packs, if I’m selling it back to the grid. It was a lot of like trial and error to see how to get this right way. I set it up that was most efficient for me that reduced my cost was actually in the morning in a nice sunny day, use that power to charge up my battery packs around noon 1:00. When it’s peak time, when rates are the most expensive, I started using the power that I’d saved in those battery packs to power. My home and all the power that’s being generated from the panels was being sold back to the grid and that’s generally worked out really well. So if you thinking about solar, the benefit of doing it now is that you have a ton of options, things that I didn’t have years ago, but if you ever tried to look up all different companies, you got to give them your personal information times. Have them come out, give you a quote: it is a long, arduous pain that you don’t need, but fortunately there’s a better way thanks this video sponsor energy Sage.
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Go to this link. Uh energys, sage.com, p/j, rer Link’s, going to be in the description. Put your information there they’ll give you all different solar options. You have in your area, so you can avoid having to Loop up all different choices that you’ve got all right. So I think the big question a lot of people have, I think solar is generally regarded as a good thing, but the reason lot of people don’t do it or aren’t sort of thinking about doing if they don’t really own their home or the cost. So for me, when I installed this system um again about fiveish years ago, I paid $ 49,000 for everything and back when the system was installed. There were for insane tax incen I was able to get, was around $ 115,000 off of the system and I’m not renting it here I own it now. I didn’t have $ 50,000 to sort of pay to go ahead and do this so I was able to take out a lowest loan with no prepayment penalty, and this is where solar made a lot of sense for me.
So, first the tax savings were really nice, but my average electric bill, even on a colder month, was around $ 250 to $ 275 for solar. I was now paying $ 250 uh per month, so I got the benefit of having solar on my house. I got the benefit of having it add Equity to my home, although I can’t really quantify what kind of equity it added uh or how much, but my out of pocket stay the same and when that is ultimately paid off, then I get the benefit of having Solo and essentially being able to run my house pretty close to off- grid. So that’s my situation, but I know that it’s been a while, since that happened, and so prices are different now, so I went into Tesla system and priced out a new system for my house.
If I were to install it today and here’s a breakdown all right. So, interestingly, this was really surprising, seems the price hasn’t changed nearly at all, since I installed my system, at least, if you go with Tesla – and that is I I just found that surprising CU. I know there are a lot of people out there that want to wait to install a system. They expect the hardware to get better, more importantly, to get cheaper, but that doesn’t appear to be the case, at least with what Tesla is doing.
If I could go back 5 years and redo my system, I would definitely do things differently. Um, just over 11 Kow system was what I was told was going to be enough. I would have liked to have had more panels on the roof and I would have liked to have added at least one to two more battery packs and it would have increased the cost of the system. But I really like the idea of being able to someday.
Take my house completely off the grid or have the option to take it uh Off the Grid. I can’t quite do that with the system now I could get close and run my house, probably for maybe 12ish hours, but if I wanted to sort of do that for longer, I would need more power being generated and more power to be saved in the battery Packs, I think, for the solar system. A lot of it is a peace of mind right now. It’S not saving me a ton of money. Aside from that initial first year, savings and taxes cuz I’m still paying off that loan once that loan is paid off. I think then I’ll start to see real savings from the system or, if I sell my house, presumably it’ll, add some sort of equity uh onto the home.
But it’s all about in peace of mind. To me, I, like I, like the idea of driving electric and having that power in the battery pack. If I want, if I want to charger from the Sun, I have the option to do that. I like being able to power my house off grid for a smaller period of time. I wish I could do that for more. It’S just been a really nice peace of mind uh to have in the case of an emergency.
It’S not a necessity of any stretch to the imagination, but it’s a real nice thing to have .