Then they kind of just... stopped talking about it at all? In retrospect it was kind of a quiet sea change for the company as a whole.
Does anyone have (a non-political) opinion on Tesla Solar? And/or how I should think about getting panels (and battery) installed at my house?
People are just happy that consumers are choosing other alternatives instead of supporting certain billionaire. The Tesla solar roof has always seemed like an inefficient use of resources too.
Some quick googling and clicking result #1 (risky, I know) showed this [1] claiming that 2024 was the second record-breaking solar installation year in a row. And that 50 gigawatts had been installed in the US.
That makes me think:
* Isn't Tesla Solar's max 100Mw number rather, well, tiny? A small drop? Why, for a company like Tesla?
* The article's exactly right. They _should_ be able to find more customers.
Does anyone have more insight? Does this part of the company have a good reputation?
[1] https://seia.org/research-resources/us-solar-market-insight/
I have a feeling they are not really that competitive in this market segment, but were helped by a strong brand.
Anyone know if they actually make money on Solar at all, and have an idea what their profit margin is?
And what does the the competition look like (also for e.g. PowerWall)?
From my conversations it was a complete mess to get installed, with poor communication on their end. After it was installed he had 2 issues within 2 years resulting in them needing to replace hardware.
Add in that it was quite expensive, he is not a happy customer.
They literally work with their top influencers for FSD to make it looks more impressive than it really is.
He even talks about how everyone was having problems but "for whatever reason it went perfectly"... and it still took 8 months
https://electrek.co/2024/07/09/tesla-insiders-say-elon-optim...
For the installation - most roofing companies will install the roof mounts and screw on the solar panels for $1.5k-$2k (might be different in your area, but still cheap). An electrician can be hired to make all the solar panel connections and the grid connection for a few hundred $$$.
As the Project Manager - you'll need to source the panels, file the permits, and hire the roofers and electricians. https://www.solarwholesale.com/jerry-rig-everything/ can assist (assist, not do) all of that for you for a cheap price. $10k-$15k with Solar Wholesale will get you the panels and cables you need, plus the engineering drawings, the permit paperwork, and etc. (thank you for the great Solar DIY series Jerry!)
For $20k and working as the Project Manager yourself, you can get what most solar companies will charge you $50k for. Which is ballpark inline with construction project management costs - typical residential construction project management cost 40-50% of the total project budget. A lot of those projects as complex enough to warrant those fees, unless you have a lot of experience, but in my opinion adding solar to your roof is not a complex process and does not warrant those fees.
Political=> he did a full blown Nazi salute twice and has been working to have millions fired from their government jobs. The conservatives who don't seem as bothered by that have never been interested in EVs to begin with and his liberal fanboy customers will never buy from him again now. He is extremely unpopular in Germany and China's Tesla market is being out competed. I don't think that makes Tesla look good long term, so I'd be cautious about a long term investment with them like rooftop solar. That's just my opinion anyway.
Just talk to your neighbors about reputable local installers. They'll have panel and storage options.
That said, because these things are largely commoditized, there's some turmoil in the market. Our (excellent!) local installer was saved by the PPP during the pandemic, which was a bit of a sobering thought -- they're the ones backingthe 25 year installation guarantee!
Then Sunpower (our panel vendor, and one of the higher end ones, at that) went out of business. Our monitoring system continues to work thanks to the work of the bankruptcy courts, though it's been transferred to a company who is trying to support those assets be having a freemium model.
Just compare it to any other car company, be it the Big Three, European car makers or BYD.f
The whole purchase of SolarCity was one of Elon's companies (Tesla) buying another company of Elon's that was failing (SolarCity) because it owed a lot of money to a third company of Elon's (SpaceX).
Tesla's most recent quarterly shipments are down 13# Y/Y with likely worse to come. The brand is being publicly torched by the actions of its CEO. A protracted trade war with China could end very badly for Tesla. A trade war with Europe may see the EU replace its demand for EVs with the likes of BYD.
Solar is (now) a commodity business. The panels get ever-cheaper. The only real cost is installation. And a labor-intensive cost like that doesn't scale.
I predict that Tesla will be forced to try and save itself by ousting its CEO in the coming years.
In the bay area, it might be cheaper to opt into 100% renewable rate plans from CleanPowerSF or Peninsula Clean Energy. (Silicon Valley Power is 100% renewable by default, IIRC.)
All commoditized market segments are like that to varying extents.
I don't know if the Cybertruck will follow the same pattern, or if the whole company has jumped the shark, but if we're looking for non-political opinions I would not necessarily write them off on quality issues alone.
There are mounting challenges in climate tech - specifically in residential solar: 1. Residential solar has been under punishing economic headwinds. Tariffs (before this) against imported PV. The market has not been performing. 2. Many of the Public Utilities are making it very difficult for solar to work out financially for home owners - see CPUC in California changing the terms of NEM to the advantage of the Utilities as an example. 3. Energy storage in residential markets has ALWAYS been an insurance product/backup power and not a financially beneficial product. It is tough competition against generators etc 4. Utilities are wisening up and increasing their fees and reducing the benefits of on site power generation. 5. Residential solar has likely already found all the best home owners (ie lowest CAC) so are now pursuing harder to reach.
He then proceeded to not tweet about that part of his business.
(permitting requirements kick in above 3.68kW, see nice chart at https://www.energynetworks.org/assets/images/Resource%20libr... which gives the rules for ANY size of power station)
At worst, you need to deal with a roofing problem.
For backup purposes, a generator and some fuel seems to be a lot more bang for the buck.
The UK, on the other hand: https://www.fmb.org.uk/homepicks/news/surge-in-solar-panel-i... ; helped by an efficiency mandate on new houses.
1. The installer you choose is more important than anything else. The panels are pretty commoditized at this point. The battery cells are pretty much commoditized as well (they are 2-3 companies all of the major battery companies use). Your biggest worry is not if, but when, things break. Most well known manufacturers (REC, Enphase, Canadian Solar, Hyundai, etc.) have good warranty policies, but you need someone to coordinate that - so make sure your solar installer does that on your behalf.
2. A Powerwall battery is 13.5 kWh and has a 11 kW inverter. The base is $8k and $6k for each battery expansion. A similar, well known, brand EG4 sells the same battery for $3.7k and a similarly spec'd inverter is around $2.5k. Generally speaking Tesla installers quote much higher on labor than others too.
3. From the installers I spoke to they dont really like working with Tesla.
4. If you live in a place like Texas, Florida, etc., I wouldn't even bother with batteries unless you have a relatively small house. Most houses suck down so much energy that a natural gas generator is way more cost effective.
You can buy small solar panels in the supermarket, and plug them into the wall socket, which normally is a no no. Per household a maximum of 800 watt though.[1] For more you need something proper that does not just connect via a normal wall socket.
[1] Maybe also 2000 watt but only 800 feed into the grid?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
It seems that something is not working that great in the UK...
But solar has become a commodity product. Panel-wise the big bucks is in massive industrial greenfield installations, but Tesla's private-label brand can't compete on that market. In the residential market they are competing with every single local contractor who's willing to make a few bucks throwing bargain-bin panels on your roof, and their own system of proprietary panels and subcontractors can't compete with that either - especially when they force you to buy a power wall as well.
Eventually more green energy will overcome this issue
Many of the commercial solar and wind farms run on a contracts for difference price - they're guaranteed a price for the energy they produce and when the market price goes over that a rebate get's paid to a Quango and should eventually feed into bills payers prices
More than 40% of Texas's energy was carbon free already in 2022 [1], and they are still installing solar. Not on public lands, but most solar wasn't installed on public lands anyway.
Having said that, in the big picture the US is far behind China indeed regarding solar renewable installations. Compared to the EU, California is far behind and Texas is a bit behind. Germany for example sits at around 50% renewable [2].
[1]: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/blue-states-dont-build-red-sta...
[2]: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/germany-sets-new-re...
There are very few states in the US where net metering doesn't exist, with California having the NBT (and Arizona and Utah something similar iirc), and Alabama, South Dakota, Tennessee, Idaho, and Texas all have utility-set forms of net metering. Just because California has phased it out and it's a sunny state doesn't mean you can't install a solar roof in Massachusetts and benefit.
The cost of panels is dirt cheap (even with tariffs). You don't need energy storage if you pay $100/month in energy costs, just offset that. Home Depot will install it if you want!
Recently added another 4000kWh of yearly production to my garage for €4000 all in because why not. I also have a 20 kWh LFP battery now, €7000 all-in (and dropping quickly!), which works out fine.
Many people now buy "plug-in" products: small batteries or single PV panel that you just plug into the grid directly, no installation required.
All the issues you list are governmental issues, not PV issues. The global PV indsutry is EXPLODING.
Also how would they even know. These things feed in 800 watts max, it's barely anything.
In my country we don't even have to get permission for big products. I have 9kW of PV on my roofs and just put it there, same with the battery. It's the grids companies' job to figure out how to make it work, not mine.
The back up generator is really compared against the energy storage asset and not the solar array. On a multi-day/weeklong winter grid failure generator is a much safer asset to have to protect the home - even including your loss equation.
1. Length that the asset can provide power in a grid failure (multi day isn't possible at this point except incredibly small load profiles). As a buyer of a generator/ESS I want multiple day coverage on grid failure not momentary grid failure. 2. Cost is way too much for the power you get.
Unfortunate for this particular product (i do not like tesla anymore), i also never heard anything about it after that one Musk presentation infront of a house with tesla roof.
But if your ecosystem is Tesla (before Musk), the synergy would definitly be very nice.
'Just because' lucky enough some people do not mind investing money into beauty.
The biggest f* to the world is an oligarch / the richest person in the world, dismantling social help for poor people.
I'm pretty sure there have been death due to this.
You can't disrupt a governance and poor people like twitter without real consequences (and yes even for the twitter people it was shitty but lets be real, no food vs. getting fired from a well paying job is not the same)
Worldwide, electricity prices are set by the highest priced generator at the given moment of needed generation -- it's the dispatch curve. And generally, the generators that are the fastest to spin up to meet that incremental load are natural gas fired generators.
As to the GP's point, my intuition (happy to be proven wrong) is more that natural gas, and therefore electricity, is cheaper in the US, simply because it's more abundant in the US.
- I do want DC-direct car charging, not double conversion, something who exists in EU CCS-combo as a standard but not a single vendor implement it...
- I do want a LOCAL FIRST (and only eventually) system, some vendors offer that, I do not know if Tesla offer that but I doubt a bit
- I do want modular batteries because anyone have different storage needs
- a classic string inverter OR microinverter who do not waste p.v. power because modules output more than they can convert for AC usage, but DC direct for charging all batteries AND possibly for heat pumps compressors as well
Why I write this here? Well because Telsa have a single peculiarity "being ahead of the others" and actually for p.v. they are not ahead of anyone. My small system is built on a Victron master inverter (relatively FLOSS with a custom Debian named VenusOS, well integrated in Home Assistant), on BYD moderately modular batteries and Fronius p.v. inverters, good for the p.v. parts but very bad in software terms. It's still more open than Tesla and perform better than PowerWall+Solar roof in theory.
Tesla cars still have the best software even if way too much service-oriented, but beside that they have shown very little innovation and China taking on quickly, also some choices like do not have V2L I can use to power my main inverter and so a bit usable to power the home with extra storage of the car battery penalize Tesla as well.
Long story short in the past they was good. But tech evolve and they seems not much interested in positive evolution. I'm not interested in Cybertruck or in small usual cabin controls changes like directions on the steering wheel as buttons, I do care about substantial evolution.
If Tesla offer something like:
- a hybrid p.v. inverter with 400V DC + data channel and car charging home station
- modular storage from 5 to 50 to 100 kWh
- home heat pumps DC direct for sanitary water, home heating/cooling
I buy it, no question. If not they haven't nothing I can buy from different vendors, cheaper and even less closed.
2nd - much nicer to not have to waste a paid off asset at year 20.
You gave some personal experiences, so I will match yours. We had a 6.6kW solar panels, with a 4.8kW battery. We lived in a flood zone at the time, so I got a generator after the second time I dumped the meat in the freezer after loss of power.
With all that in place had the usual episode of weeks of wet weather (the monsoons), became an island, the power is disconnected because houses around us (but not us) are inundated as the power company doesn't like being blamed for killing people. The generator was a fail because it couldn't handle the startup load from the fridge and freezer motors.
I didn't have high hopes for the battery. Boy, was I wrong. Turns out 4.8kW is enough to drive everything overnight except hot water, air-con and 2 hour roasts in the oven. And I do mean everything - lights, TV, internet, cooking (well, fast heating), washing machines using cold water, fridges and freezes. It also turns out that a 6.6kW of solar can bring that battery to full charge during the day, even with blanket cloud cover and pissing down rain.
And to your point - it will happily do that for years, without fuel or maintenance. As for costs - a few days ago I saw 10kW hour battery advertised on Alibaba for $1,200, with 90 day returns. At that price, it will pay for itself in power costs. If you add in an electric car, it's a complete no-brainer as while electricity costs may be very cheap where you live, car fuel costs won't be. If that car is a BYD (it has a 3.6kW household power outlet), you don't need a house battery just for emergencies.
The USA is a huge place with prices all over the map.
Here are PG&E electricity prices in California from my recent bill:
peak: 53.0 + 18.3 = 71.3 c/kWh
partpeak: 51.3 + 11.1 = 62.4 c/kWh
offpeak: 34.4 + 09.8 = 44.2 c/kWh
Other installers might sell you LG panels and Enphase inverters and LG batteries, and then your monitoring comes from whomever, and the installation warranty provided by the installer.
So, no matter who you choose as a vendor, the parts are typically made by several different companies, and someone needs to install them and provide support.
I assume people who use Tesla as their middleman vs some other middleman do so for branding, monitoring, whatever reasons. Maybe they like the complete solar+powerwall battery+app solution. I don't know.