Thinking of Solar + Powerwall?

Summary

Micah

David, in terms of your overall experience with solar and the Tesla batteries, and clearly you’ve had a very positive experience, are there any final thoughts that you would let, you’d wanna let people know who are perhaps on the fence thinking about solar, maybe a battery before we go?

David

Sure. I would say don’t overdo it. I overdid it. I way overdid it, right? Getting all these quotes and talking to all these people and everything. So what’s really important is, it’s really important that you understand what you’re, what you want out of this system. 

Are you looking for cost savings? Are you looking for environmental input? And everybody has all that in there, but what’s most important to you? Understand how much you use. Look at your electric bill, you can figure that out. And then you want, you wanna really be careful that you pick an installer that knows what they’re doing that’ll get it done right the first time and and make sure that everything connects.

Another interesting story: so my neighbor did not go with Solar States. He had already signed up with the other provider in the area and he had a, he ultimately had a good experience with them, but they actually had told him that they had to reduce his number of solar panels. And he asked “why?” 

And it’s because PECO refused it. Now I shared that story with Dan. And you guys actually sit on a council with PECO, I believe. And somehow through that process we were able to cause that Engineering study to be completed and fixed and they were able to not require anything else to be done.

So both my installation was a hundred percent of my projected need and my neighbor’s installation was as well, because of what you guys, your relationship with PECO. So people don’t understand that, at one level, solar is super simple, right? It just can, it just connects directly to the grid and produces power.

And if you use it, great, if you don’t use it, it goes to back to the grid. But there’s a lot more to it. And all the interconnect process and the time, permission to operate and all those things you don’t want just your average electrician doing this. This has to be done by people that really know what they’re doing.

So look for track record. Talk to the references. Actually talk to the references. Don’t rely on just what Google says. Go talk to people that have done it. Hopefully somebody that’s had it for a couple years and somebody that’s most recently done it, so you’ll get a sense of what’s really going on there.

If you picked the right installer and you understand what you’re trying to achieve you, you’ll have a great result. Don’t overthink it, but understand what you want.