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hey everybody thanks for watching my name is Rick and today we’re going to give you a quick review of basically one year with Tesla solar officially the system wasn’t turned on until the end near the end of the month of February of 2022 but I had some time today so I thought I would put out some numbers and show you kind of how the system uh operated this year and then compare that to what Tesla promised uh I’ll give you a quick review if you haven’t watched my previous solar videos and what the system is and what it cost us um so let’s get started so our system is a 9.6 KW system it includes 24 solar panels the inverter as well as two power walls we went ahead and purchased we wanted to be able to back up the whole home if needed and also to use the power walls to charge or to provide energy to the house during Peak um usage time so we have a time of use plan here we do not have net metering so I kind of have my system set up to be uh as beneficial or the power walls to be as beneficial to us as possible providing energy when the prices are the most expensive and for the most part that works out pretty well there are some things that are a little bit annoying about that that maybe we’ll discuss later so that’s basically what our system is so the 9.6 KW 24 panels inverter and the two power walls um and the cost for the system includes everything from design to permitting to installation etc etc and Tesla’s warranty on this system is 25 years for the um or sorry Tesla says at least 25 years for the solar panels themselves and it says for 25 years they will make at least 80% of the name plate capacity so we’ll see how that goes uh as far as the inverter it covers defects for quote unquote at least 10 years and then the power walls are ALS also covered for 10 years and it says that it will produce or be able to store and then give back at least 70% of what was promised initially at 10 years and th these power walls are 13.5 kwatt hours each the total cost before tax breaks was 39,18125 in federal tax credit and then another ,000 or so through state so that brings the cost down to around 27 or $288,000 uh still a lot of money but way better than it was when we first looked at solar I know it’s probably been 10 years ago now and quite honestly the main reason that we went with solar is because we wanted to have some control over costs and you know it’s still going to take 14 years 15 years to quote unquote pay back what we put into this system but rates are going to go up every year and we just wanted to have a way to control that a little bit I mean we’re not huge and forgive me for those of you who are we’re not huge green people it’s not like we’re you know doing this to save the planet or something along those lines I mean obviously that’s important but for us it was about money and saving money and be able to control uh price increases um so that’s that all right so here’s a quick picture of the bill from Tesla so you can kind of see what everything costs and again I think we priced this out I want to say it was July of 22 and then um there was a revamp cuz we added a power wall in August of 22 so 9600 or 9.6 KW hour you can see the cost of the panels the installation um inverter Etc and then the two power walls there was a little bit of a discount for buying two the contact price was $ 3948 but we had put down $250 so that’s where I got my uh other total for you of there’s a quick breakdown of that now as far as the ordering process and everything it was very simple you essentially go online you upload your electric bill you have to take some photos for them of all the major appliances and things around your house that would use power like we have uh pool pump we have you know our AC and heat pump on the house anything big they want to have pictures of they want pictures of your meter they want roof pictures just to make sure everything is doable um initially I wanted to put this on my shop but the way my building constructed they would not um install on the shop on metal building I should say and I from my what I understand I could be wrong but a year ago I think they actually stopped installing at all on metal buildings which is unfortunate it would have been nice to have it over there all right so now let’s get into our electric bill so I can show you the differences month-to month so you have an idea of the savings each month um one caveat before we get started here is that we did have our Chevy Volt before before we had the plan design but we did not have our Tesla and I’m going to guess you know my wife does 20 to 30 m a day in the car so that’s all that it gets recharged maybe a couple dollars a day I haven’t really priced it out but figure $30 to $60 a month uh in charging when we’re using the volt every day and I don’t always drive it I drive my truck a lot of the times these time these days so something to keep in mind um as far as the size of the system why didn’t they give us a more so panels etc etc when you see the the difference in our bill so let’s take a look at that real quick I’m going to pull that up so I’m going to pull up a video of our bill and it’s going to be a comparison month to month I’m going to give you an idea just real quick while we’re while we’re sitting here and I’ll show you uh what it was 2022 so there’s January of 2022 and then January of 2023 I’m not going to go through all these but I I this this is basically I took this bill and then I made a graph for you to show you what the changes were month-to month as far as cost go and um it’ll give you an idea of you know the savings that we basically had and you can kind of see there um February was still a normal of 2023 was a normal month because the solar wasn’t turned on till the end but you can kind of see March April May we did have start having credits and savings and then the bill started um going up a little bit over the summer um it will be interesting to see it’s been pretty cloudy December here and colder than normal uh it’ll be interesting to see if kind of January February March April if we do make some credits or if um it doesn’t really we always have a little bit of a bill which I’m kind of thinking that’s going to be the case like I said we don’t have net metering here so you know I think last month our credit was $12.80 back to te they don’t pay much for what you sell back and our system is actually set up so that most of our power gets shoved into the um Power walls so that they’re available to run the house and run everything else during Peak charging times or Peak cost times so that’s the way that’s set up let’s take a quick look at a chart I put together of all those numbers we were looking at in that video of our bill from 2022 23 so if you look at January February uh you can see for some reason January of 23 and uh February of 23 actually my bill was significantly higher $60 no idea why that was um maybe we had a lot more Christmas lights in 22 but I’m not really sure there uh again the system went online the last 5 to 10 days of February and I’m sorry I didn’t look up the exact date but it was kind of at the end of the month um so you can the reason those are black there or outlined in black is because those are uh we actually paid every other number here is actually negative it’s less than we had the year before so starting in March down that’s all we saved 9871 compared to last year 9471 in April etc etc etc as we go down um we looks like in April and May of last year we did have a little bit of credit um once the system kicked on and we’ll be interesting to see if that happens again this year I’m not really sure if that will but anyway you can to get an idea of what the numbers look like you can see there in September I have an asterisk and that is because that’s when te’s rate hike of 10% went into play um so 2022 26 5630 is what we spent on electricity in 2023 was 1,466 for savings about $1,400 um so still that puts us at about 15 years or more of paying it back after the tax credits we’ll see how this goes over the this whole next year and we do really have two more months um of savings to kind of calculate into a full year U with Tesla so we’ll see um could be a little bit higher another I don’t know $100 or so and then if you were to you know take out the Tesla um that extra whatever it is a month $30 $50 a month I don’t know probably not 50 it’s probably close less than 30 actually um another2 50 to $300 savings there and then of course you know who knows cloud cover and heat compared to last year all those kind of things come into play um so overall happy with this for now it’ll be interesting to see when these next couple months get added in um one of the things that we need to talk about real quick and I mentioned it in two of my other videos is we did have those weird production decreases in the summertime and I still haven’t gotten a real firm answer I’ve gotten some suggestions from you guys as to what that may be te modulating the signal and or um the inverter getting too hot so there were some people who had some oil leaks or something or coolant leaks not oil leaks sorry had coolant leaks from their inverters I don’t see any signs of that with mine um it is frustrating that alls I get from Tech from uh tech support from Tesla is well we’re working on it we don’t really know what’s causing it but um we’ll we’ll let you know if we figure something out which I’m never going to hear anything I’m sure so we’ll see how that goes again this year I am going to build a shade so it kind of keeps the inverter maybe a little cooler we’ll see if that helps um but here’s a quick look from the app as to what I’m talking about those power those power drop offs um it’s very obvious when it’s cloudy you get more of a jagged line and on these you can just see they just power just drops off so I don’t know what that means or why and you can see the curve is not perfect in some of those days in the summertime whereas here’s an example of December of 2023 you can see almost every day is a perfect graph you know starts off in the morning sun comes up at Peak and then comes back down so I don’t really understand what that’s all about so that definitely affected production probably not more than 10 kilow hours a day but if you’re talking 30 you know 30 days not that it did it every day but even if it’s 10 days a month that’s 100 kwatt hours so that would definitely add up over time but we’ll see uh how that ends up working out um overall I I like having the solar system I do like Tesla’s app I like being able to control it and see on a daily basis what’s going on um you can on your own take it offline put it back online you can change the settings I mean I can turn the power you know have the power walls take control here and there um so anyway overall very happy with the system and uh hopefully this was helpful for you if you are looking into possibly getting Tesla solar if you have any questions as always please leave those below I also have my email that you can contact me if you have something uh else you want to talk about so thanks again take care we’ll see you on the next video …