Why now is the best time to get Tesla Solar
By: Bhargava Ramisetty
Tags: Solar, Tesla, Renewable Energy, Home, Solar Energy

Source: tesla.com

You might have heard about solar energy by now. If you haven’t, without going deep into the scientific details, it’s essentially a system of panels that rely on light particles known as photons from sunlight to hit their surface in order to create a flow of electrons. A flow of electrons = electricity. For more information on how solar cells generate electricity, view the following video:

Is solar right for me?

In order to answer this question, I would recommend that your present circumstances fit ALL of the following conditions:

You and/or your family own a house that is on an independent lot and plan to live in that house for at least 10 more years. Your house’s rooftop is not obstructed by tall trees nearby and is properly exposed to direct sunlight throughout the day. Your house’s roof is large enough to support a minimum of 12 panels with the following dimensions: 68.5" x 40.6" x 1.57". This means the panels will cover 228.3 sq ft of your roof for 12 panels. You live in an area with clear skies and sunny weather for at least 4 months per year. If you live in a region that is frequently cloudy, then avoid buying solar for your home. Your monthly electric bill is at least $75. The dollar figure varies by region. However, you should be consuming a minimum of 10 kWh per day. Check your monthly electric bill to ensure that you are. You have sufficient cash savings and are ready to pay a minimum of $8200 for your Tesla solar panels. If you are not in good financial standing, making a large purchase even if it pays itself off later on may not be the best idea. Make sure you feel comfortable parting away with a large sum of cash or can manage monthly payments through their financing options. You will have paid federal income tax during the year you plan on getting solar that exceeds 22% of the total cost of your solar.

If you met all of the above conditions, then getting solar for your house is a great idea and you should continue to read the entire article. Otherwise, I would recommend you do not go for solar.

Why Tesla for Solar?

When it comes to deciding whom to go with for setting up your solar, you want to ask yourself, why Tesla? The reason I’ve ultimately decided that Tesla Solar was the best option for me was due to their low cost. Nearly every other solar provider will likely charge you more and may possibly require you to submit a lot of your personal details before you even know how much you’ll be quoted. However, Tesla is one of the few, if not the only provider that offers an upfront price and will never follow up with you to convince you to buy solar from them. This hands-off and straightforward approach made them the easy choice for me because I was assured that they wouldn’t be following any shady business practices to up-sell you on solar even if it isn’t within your best interest to get it.

Their easy-to-use website assured me that their smallest system will cost $8200 upfront and will produce $90 worth of electricity a month. That means after federal tax credits, the total cost will be $6,396, which requires 71 months to break even, or about 6 years, which makes buying solar today a great investment. In the past, when the cost of solar was greater, breaking even typically took close to 15 years! By reducing that to under 10 years, solar instantly becomes an attractive option for many homeowners.

For an additional $100 off, feel free to use my referral link to place your order: https://ts.la/bhargava60188. The $100 will be sent in the form of a check within 60 days after your utility company approved you to activate your system.

On top of all this, you want to be assured that your solar provider will also stay in business during the 25+ year lifetime of your system. Given that Tesla has recently surpassed every automaker in the world to become the most valuable company to produce automotive vehicles, I have little doubt that they’ll go out of business. Their product warranty is generous, but not uncommon, with 25 years of coverage that guarantees that the solar panels will generate at least 70% of what they did when you first got them.

Should I also buy the Tesla Powerwall?

Source: tesla.com

The Tesla Powerwall will store all of your solar energy into a large battery pack and is drawn from it on-demand. This has several advantages. It ensures that nearly all of your solar-generated electricity is stored for later use, always lets you consume additional electricity at the lowest price, and can also supply your home with electricity in case of power outages. Purchasing this will allow you to claim 22% federal solar tax credit on the cost of the Powerwall as well. However, I personally do NOT recommend buying this because it is quite expensive and the benefits do not justify the cost ($11,500 before tax credits). By using net-metering, you claim credits through your utility company for generating more electricity than you consume at any moment because you will be sending the solar-generated electricity to the grid for other people to use. Through net-metering, you will maximize the benefit of solar energy. The goal is to pay off the cost of solar by generating enough electricity worth the cost of the solar cells. Therefore, adding a Powerwall will significantly prolong the time you have to wait before the cost of everything is paid off.

Navigating Through the Installation Process

In order to get started, you will first need to visit Tesla.com place a $100 deposit and submit various photos of your home’s electric lining. The process will be clearly outlined on their website and will let you know what photos they require you to send. Once you manage to send them the details needed, they will notify you with a document outlining how your solar panels will lay on top of your house’s roof. If everything looks good, which it normally is, you can electronically sign it and send it back to them. They will follow up with you ask you sign a purchase agreement document as well. This purchase agreement should have the name of the recipient who plans on claiming the 22% federal tax solar credit.

Once you finish signing the necessary documents, Tesla will send the details of the solar project to your city’s permit office. For my city, it typically takes 2 weeks before they approve or rejected the project. It wasn’t until the 4th attempt (a 3-month delay) that my city’s permitting office felt that Tesla had provided sufficient information to them to ensure that the installation plan is safe to proceed with. This 3-month delay was more of my city permitting office’s fault than Tesla’s as the reasons for rejection felt seemingly minor, but they wanted everything to be perfectly outlined before they approved it. Luckily for my city, I got a hold of the permit coordinator over email who provided me a link where I can track the status of my permit. See if you can find out whether your city has a way to track the status of your permit by contacting the permitting department through phone or email. Within a week or so after approval, Tesla will email you select a day for the installation. They will arrive at 7am on installation day and may require 5–7 hours to install. If you opted for a larger system size, they may have to come back another day to finish the installation.

Once they finished installation, you are not quite ready to start using solar energy! Tesla will follow up with you on when the utility company will send a representative to inspect the installation with your Tesla project coordinator. If they discover anything off about the installation, they will notify you and the project coordinator about what issues need to be fixed before final approval. For my project, they simply required Tesla to cover any visible metal pipes connecting the panels to the inverter to be covered in non-reflective paint in case the sunlight shining on it created glare that might obstruct people’s view if they are nearby.

The final step before you can have your home powered by solar is to receive an email from your utility company with approval to operate your home with the solar panels. This approval typically requires you wait ~2 weeks.

Now that you are ready to operate your home with solar, you can now install the Tesla mobile app to track how much electricity your panels are generating in real time. During the day of installation, Tesla will provide you with a “gateway” device that need to be plugged in at all times for you to track your daily solar generation in the mobile app. I personally had issues viewing the real-time analytics at first even after I connected the gateway device, but calling Tesla support over phone resolved that issue. This is a neat feature that will let you track your electricity usage and solar panel generation in real-time. Although as time goes by, you may not find yourself tracking the daily solar generation vs your daily electricity usage as it may seem trivial and mundane.

Final Thoughts

Tesla Solar is one way for you to future-proof your home by ensuring your home is partly powered by renewable energy. Electricity rates also go up periodically, allowing you to increase your savings on electricity more and more as time goes by. Investing in solar will only require 6 years for me to pay off the cost of the project because I will not be generating more electricity than I consume. Utility companies will typically only let you claim credits to reduce your bill to $0, although they may charge you a minimum service fee even if you generated more electricity than you consumed for that month. Generating a huge excess of electricity will not provide you any additional financial incentive, so it makes sense to select a system size that will generate just the right amount or even less than your electricity needs to ensure you can break even on the cost of the project as soon as possible. Since Tesla only offers 4 general sizes for everybody to choose from, I recommend choosing the largest system size that will not generate more electricity than you will use. For a typical home, the 4.08 kW or 8.16 kW sizes will be sufficient depending on your electric bill. If you anticipate owning an electric car after the solar installation, feel free to opt for a larger system size to plan ahead for when you will need significantly more electricity.

For more information, feel free to leave a comment, visit Tesla’s website, or contact Tesla customer support (+1 (888) 518–3752) for more information. If you feel ready to power your house with solar after reading this and would like to support me for the information provided, feel free to use my referral link to place your order and to receive a $100 rebate after your solar installation: https://ts.la/bhargava60188

Disclaimer: I nor this article are in no way affiliated with Tesla. Information presented in this article is either opinionated or based on my personal experience from ordering solar from Tesla. The federal tax credit rate of 22% only applies for systems activated in 2021. Activations thereafter may be subjected to not receiving tax credits. Please rely on the information presented in this article at your own discretion to help you decide whether solar is right for you.