This $40,000 Tesla Solar & Powerwall Setup Is The Ultimate Home Power Station 

Would anyone be interested in an energy channel? Wouldn't really be car related but more on the production, distribution, storage, and usage of everything energy!

Been living with a setup like this for almost 4 years. Life is good being your own utility company.

Undecided with Matt Ferrel said in one of his videos that there was a Tesla bug that was overstating power production. He said Marques Brownlee had the same bug. Maybe that explained the 15 kw production on a 10kw system.

I went through a 10 day outage from a hurricane 5 years ago. I spent that time researching solar. I installed a system like this with 3 powerwalls and I have coasted through multiple hurricane outages since then.

2 minutes in and I'm so jealous. That's exactly the home setup I want.

Love my PowerWalls! They were awesome during our last Hurricane. We lived off grid for 11 days!

We installed a 11.5 kw system a year ago, and I love it. After rebates it ended up costing about the same as a Camry and now I've got free electricity for the rest of my life.

I installed a DIY 10kW 30 panel system for $5000. I made a video about it to make people realize that the systems can be cheap and DIY friendly if you employ a simple ground mount design, and are willing to tackle a relatively simple project on your own. I did this with no prior experience in this area or special equipment or tools. This is the real goal with electric cars, to have the ability to power them with the sun. I don’t have a battery back up yet, but I will be getting my cybertruck in about a month and hopefully with the provided gateway, will be able to use it as a battery back up and have the ability to charge it with the solar panels. I am grid only at this point. Looking forward to the content.

Dropping in to say I enjoy your other videos too but this subject is usually more interesting to me. I can't afford a $90k EV, but solar can actually pay for itself over time so it's something more likely to be in my future. Your friend was very gracious to allow the access and to answer questions at the end. Sweet guy, and a good look for the solar/EV community to have people like him evangelizing!

Yes, I have solar and have followed you for 2 years and just joined your channel. You Out of Spec reviews on the electric cars are the best. I'm looking to purchase my first ev in June 2024

I would keep the powerwall between 20 and 80% and only leave it at 65% minimum if storms are expected. He would import much less electricity. I wish solar was practical for me but I'm a low user of electricity and there is no payback yet in FL. Nice showing of this great system.

I have powerwalls and solar. I charge my cars off the grid at night and export during the day. I live in CA so the cost savings is significant, I can get back over 2x the energy I export. I believe energy storage in general is part of the overall long term benefit of EVs that detractors are missing. Picking up renewable energy and storing it for later will benefit everyone, and better energy storage will come directly out of the mass production of batteries for EVs. Tesla's integration here is next level Apple grade stuff. I am so impressed with the integration and the continuous adding of features, the "overflow solar into the car" being one of them. One negative I can see is you can't set a charge limit on the batteries so they do charge up to 100% every day. In theory that is not good for the powerwall's battery chemistry. In the winter I run my batteries down as little as I can and still arbitrage rates, however during the summer I need all the power I can get from them to run my two AC units so they get run down a lot lower then.

Installed a solar array on my roof two years ago, talking to several installers, including Tesla. Ending up going with twenty seven 400 watt Q-Cells equipped with Enphase micro-inverters. Tesla was price competitive, however, there were other concerns. Tesla resists customization on their installs and refused to incorporate micro-inverters to help deal with shading issues. It was also difficult to get a human to talk to and there were persistent rumors about overestimates on power output. Very happy with my current Q-cell setup. My home uses about 11,000 kwh's/year. The solar array produces about 9000 of that and, in addition, Dominion Energy gives me about $400 in additional credits each year, allowing them to count my production towards state requirements on the utility to produce a certain amount of energy from renewable sources. I charge my BMW i4 almost exclusively at home adding about 1350 kwh's to drive roughly 5000 miles/year.

Great video - similar setup with Model 3&Y, 2x Powerwalls and 40 Panels (Panasonics) producing 15kw peak in San Diego… with 25k miles between both cars we only export energy! Love it!

Rob is my hero - awesome setup albeit expensive, definitely GOALS

I would absolutely love to see more content regarding solar and battery back up solutions.

Yes, Out of spec energy would most likely be one of my favorite channels A Tesla solar roof pretty much only makes sense if you have to do a major overhaul of your current roof.

That was indeed the inverter you identified on the side of the house. There is no reason not to charge in off peak hours when you are on a net metering system. Love the free power on my system, for the house and the car. So far, we are in the green by a long way with no power bill, just a monthly connection fee.

In San Diego we no longer have net metering for NEW systems. Utility wants to pay 2 or 3 cents a unit and charge 39 cents a unit to replace it! Unless a a battery that has 5 times the storage is installed, the payback period is probably increased by 10+ years. If CATL or another competitor can produce a lower energy density (heavier) battery with excellent cycle life, homeowners have the option to shaft the utility that IS shafting them. Also, joining the Tesla VPP program yields far more income. Converting DC to AC and AC to DC for charging your EV is losing 16% of that power, when a low power DC charge directly to the EV keeps that loss to simple line length.

With my Tesla Solar system, I have it set to drain to 20% to power my house. Storm watch would charge it to 100%. When it felt a storm was approaching that could cause an outage. And I always had the ability to immediately charge the battery, if I thought something, that might not be a major storm but enough that there could be an issue I could change the setting to accommodate that.

With regard to his panels pulling in more energy than their rating...that can happen on full sun, cool/cold days. The panel ratings are based on performance at certain conditions, including a certain temperature. Solar panels do better when they're cool though, so that can lead to what you were seeing, provided the inverters have the extra capacity to handle it.

Great great info! Yes, we need more of this.

You can force the powerwalls to charge by moving the slider then just before charging completes go into the utility rate plan and manually adjust export price and force grid export. Do this all day every day and make bank. Our electricity bill last month in UK was -£40.

Welcome to my world! You should come up to VT sometime, we're in the middle of building an entire neighborhood with solar and Powerwalls!

Yes to out of spec energy! Tesla/EVs was my gateway drug, but now I'm a full-blown green energy nerd

Let me say great video, I love the fact that it’s a great way to draw energy and have a peace of mind, and an energy channel would be nice. Thanks for the education

Awesome! Appreciate all the information you share with us. Very helpful. Thanks for all your hard work and long hours.

We're in the middle of the transport and energy transition. You do a great job of covering the transport element and it makes sense for you guys to cover all of it. Have fun, there's loads of content.

Yes, Kyle, yes! Electric mobility has a lifecycle, and for the consumer it begins and ends at the home. Simply plugging in is super basic. I would love to have trustworthy educational information on integrated home power. To date, my experience is money-grubbing 3rd parties who do not explain the engineering and numbers behind installation options.

Yes to a home Solar PV, Battery, V2H focused channel. I have the Enphase version of what's in this video, waiting for Enphase bi-directional charger and Rivian to support V2H.

It is like having your own gas station with your own oil grid and your own oil refinery at home. Whoever can afford it , definitely worth it!!

I'm in the UK and have had a solar PV+Powerwall 2 installation for three years. I've also had a TMYLR for two years. I have 16x400W Sunpower panels on a south-facing roof, feeding a 6kW SolarEdge inverter. PW is AC connected, so provides up to 5kW. My energy distribution network operator placed an export power limit of 5.4kW, so there's a gizmo to throttle the inverter if necessary - actually rarely happens. We have smart utility meters with 30-minute reporting that allow energy suppliers to offer a range of time of day import and export tariffs tailored to EVs, heat pumps, spot-market pricing, etc. I run the PW with the recommended 20% backup reserve because we rarely get power outages and they don't normally last longer than 30 mins. We did have one event when our electricity supply cable joint broke and the PV+PW ran the house off-grid for three days until power was restored. Good job it didn't happen in December! Storm Watch will charge and hold the battery at 100% if wild weather is forecast. This system provides 75% of house energy annualy, 90% if I include smart overnight charging at cheap-rate in the winter. We export 50% of what we generate. I found that exporting surplus solar during the day and charging the car overnight at cheap rate works best. I have a 7kW myenergi smart EV charger. Tesla and our energy provider make available to download loads of very useful system performance data, which I have squirrelled away over the past few years for analysis:)

You should consider making a video about Tesla Wall Connector Dynamic Power Management. Adding a power meter allows the wall connector to reduce power when the house is pulling a lot of power and allow peak power when home power draw is low. No one is talking about this. It saves thousands in service upgrades, and gives you peak charging.

Great video - We just got almost exactly the same setup (8.1KW system with 2 power walls all Tesla $37K total cost - 30% Federal Government Incentive). Most of our stuff is mounted on the south-facing side of the house, outside, directly next to the main panel. While you can't really justify the system from a cost-savings perspective (at $150/month it would take 250+ months (21+ years) to amortize, people spend money on standby backup generators (like Generac), which cost between 5K for a partial backup and 20K for a whole house backup + installation cost. If you consider that, it does make fiscal sense. Add to that the 30% Federal Government incentive (which applies to the entire project (including power walls)), and it is a no-brainer. +++ on an energy channel - it would be a neat way to bring the entire "solar-electrical revolution" together.

Would be a popular channel. I’ve got a similar SolarEdge system with oversized array that integrates everything and charges my EV on the sun. You can even heat your hot water on solar too.

This is so great!!!

I highly recommend something similar to a keshee battey kit (13.4 kwh) for $2500 over the powerwall. I got those and they are excellent.

We are installing a similar system but using Enphase (solar panels micro inverters, controller, and batteries). They can do everything the Tesla can, but costs less. Depending on your utility, they often pay more for your solar (peak hr) production than they charge for your night time (off peak) usage.

Yes - energy channel please! This was great & would love more on this charging topic. Alternative channels seem offer personal bias. Go Kyle!

Anything y’all would do I would watch. The way you’re able to explain information and make it understandable is amazing. An energy channel would be amazing!

Really really interested in this!!!

Power wall are actually the cheapest solution(other guys were more expensive). I needed 3 power walls, 2 years ago local installer wanted $15k for each, yaiks . we have net metering so power walls were only for back up, decided to save $45k. Bought F150 lightening with 98kWh battery (6-7 power walls) and have set up to back up the house with the F150 and have perfect truck.

Solar panales are rated at 25 degC. On a super cold day they could produce more than that since they get more efficent below 25 deg C, but 15 kW is not possible on a 10 kW system. SOlar panels normally heat up in the sun and are usually hotter than 25 degC, plus losses in sun angle, inverter, etc normally cut power by 20% or so. Likely a bug in the reporting, or some miswired current transformers.

Yes please! I would love to see an energy channel! Panel warrantees are based on maintaining 80 percent of the label power so many manufacturer will sandbag the rating to ensure they achieve it long term. However, installers will usually put in an inverter that is less than the systems rated power to reduce clipping at low production times (morning/evening). Not sure what’s going on here.

Pretty interesting. The way I look at the net metering thing, it may not be making HIM more green/as green as he could be, but it's helping OTHERS be more green, so it's still a net positive over all

lol even the home owner association head guy was afraid to show off his solar panels.

That’s a dream garage! And Yes I would love to see more content like this. I’m thinking of adding solar panels and this is exactly what I would do minus the Porsche lol

I recommend adding a Chargehanger for cable tidyness

I have a Generac PWRCell system with Sense energy monitor. I charge our 2 Tesla’s from extra solar using TesSense.

Yes Out of Spec Solar would rock, just looking at 16KW system for our house near Vancouver BC for not only charging our EV's also net metering, backup power on outage etc.

Getting ready to go with EcoFlow Ultras and ground mount panels because I can install them easily vs Tesla Powerwall 3 only being available through an installer.

1) wire outside home is better in case of fire n debug 2) charging from battery is better because u do not pay energy distribution cost. Basically there is lot of transmission loss from the grid. I would suggest drain battery to 10-20% at night to charge and same way use battery to power up home during peak hours. Export max electricity during peak. Rest up charge battery or car

Nice to see an tightly integrated system. I have a disparate one where nothing talks to nothing and it is a bit of a faff, but that's what you get when you go incremental (and don't want to pay Tesla prices on the energy stuff).

Thank You for All that you are doing for our Planet Earth.... Peace.. Shalom.. Salam.. Namaste 🙏🏻 😊 🌈 ✌ ☮ ❤

What a massive house in NY!

Out of Spec Energy, Definitely, You Nailed it Again Kyle

Great video. Definitely should do an Energy channel!!! Th reason we didn't go with the Tesla Solar panels because they switched to one main inverter. We went with Tesla PW x3 and SunPower Equinox E20 327W system - 54 panels, with micro inverter on each panel. Our place have lost of shade. Also SunPower provide an architect signed solar generation plan. Planned generation was 11,400 kwh, actual 10.9 in 2022 and 11.2 in 2023. With these panels our ROI is about 17 years.

Also - you can drain a lot deeper at night, if you need more energy next day, typically the sun is shining anyways and will charge your PWs

Looking at replacing my 18 year old PV system since hail destroyed my roof but solar ok but panels today are twice the wattage and not a lot larger. With a mature neighborhood the large tree shadowing was hurting production of my string inverter setup. Weird thing is panels are 10x cheaper but everything else hasn't scaled down, they're actually more expensive.

If you do an Energy channel, I'd be super interested in what people are doing like on Farms with Methane capture, or perhaps small towns are doing either with generators, wind/solar, and or various other types of unique situations. Most energy channels seem to really only be covering experimental potential future stuff just cover "does this make sense for you" type situations.

I have a 4.8kW Powerwall+ system with my MYP and love it. I plan to expand my system if Tesla does bidirectional charging on its other models.

So cool to see the integrations between products!

Is very neat. Battery and solar panel prices have plummeted over the last 12-24 mos too

I have a 7kW solar system (~40kWh per day) and two Powerwalls, with 2 EVs charging from it (a Tesla Model S and a Rivian R1T). I had to write my own software to make it possible - mixing a 2016 Tesla wall charger and an OpenEVSE. But it works great, and I’m in the process of adding automation based on weather forecasts - to prioritize charging the Powerwall from the grid at night if there’s not going to be much sun the next day.

Out of Spec Energy. Yes. Keeping the system off grid is tough, more battery or more solar for cloudy days.

Yea,that was pretty neat.

It'd be cool to see you and your dad (or anyone)get a matching solar setup and compare the differences based purely on location

Kyle, I was surprised to hear you hadn’t dived into this energy cycle before, specifically because of how you’ve spoken in the past about grid powered, solar enhanced Megapack charging stations and similar. The home scenario is exactly the same just scaled down to the single family home level; solar PV system, Powerwall (or similar) and grid tied.

I have the same excess power production bug on my system. I've had them come by and try to fix it. I gave up and the instant power rating is wrong, but the historical is correct.

New Channel sounds like a great idea. Buying into home energy generation has scary prospect because of the high final cost numbers. $300 light bill seems better than a $40,000 solar install. Trading a loan payment for a light bill makes so much more sense when you realize that the final cost of solar is set and cost of electricity from the grid is not. Living in NC where new net metering will go into affect soon, I will be upgrading my system with battery backup and makes the purchase of a monsterous truck like the silverado ev and its 215kw battery more appealing to me. Not only as a vehicle, but as a means to go offgrid in the future using the teucks massive battery to get through the winter months without paying Duke Energy $28 a month just for the privilege of being connected to their grid and taking my solar for pennies in the summer

Yes. Yes. Yes. An alternative energy channel would be wonderful. On some days in Texas, alternative energy provides 90% of the energy to the Texas grid.

Thank you Tesla for good product

Lovely house. Brilliant installation. Got to video on Porsche 👍

Really cool you grew up in Dix Hills! I lived there when I was in high school. I’m having a Tesla install, about same size as Rob’s, 10.53 kW with two Powerwall 3 in July. If you’d like to video the install, let me know!

For sure add solar system or energy plants in general. Would be a awesome addition. I have diy a 11kw system I run 9 months out of the year mostly off grid. I run my model 3 performance on solar as much as possible. Living in Minnesota is tough from November to February to get enough solar power. It would be cool if u interviewed other youtube solar channels, Some are interested in evs also.

We have a Tesla Solar Roof and Powerwalls. I also have a BMW i3 REx. On a sunny mid-March day when we don't drive a vehicle at all, the solar offsets about 55% of our energy usage. Got it right after they built their solar tile plant in NY and got NY-made tiles. So far in March '24, solar only accounts for 28% of our energy. In February it was 21%. Only 12% in January. 11% in December 23. It was 26% in August '23, but the absolute amount of solar generation was much higher due to it being summer. But the A/C was also running high so it drew a lot of electricity from both the solar and the grid. Our best month recently was May '23, which was 38% solar. Overall, our solar does offset some of our energy usage, but it really leaves a lot to be desired. We're nowhere close to being self-powered, even when we aren't driving. And if we ARE driving the i3, and charging it at home, that pulls down our solar offset significantly. BTW, the 5 minute outages every month or so are standard. It's technically just a really quick light flicker, as either the inverter or the grid performs some kind of self-test, and runs off of the powerwall for 5 minutes. If you connect directly to the grid you wouldn't even notice those as outages at all. I would recommend Powerwall to anyone - it is a good system - but I would not recommend solar roof. Solar panels will produce more energy per unit area, so just get those. Also, using a third-party EV with the Tesla system doesn't give us any kind of EV integration with the Tesla app. It's very much a walled garden, leaving our EVSE as just a generic load (but we can obviously see in the Tesla app graphs when the EVSE charges, as it forms the single biggest load spike on our usage graphs). One thing to keep in mind: the guy in this video has a much bigger house than me. Assuming that your solar setup is giving you slightly more energy than you consume per unit area of panels or solar roof, then it stands to reason that the bigger your house, the higher % of your energy budget is going to be offset by solar. Therefore with a small house, you can expect a relatively small impact.

Looks like a great system. The price is a head scratcher. I priced adding Powerwalls to my solar system and it was cost prohibitive at more than $30k added to my solar system cost.

👍👍😎✌️🤟 Definitely, so. Yes, do it . Awesome home and setup.

I was just thinking "Kyle doesn't have enough to do. He needs another channel"

That was awesome Kyle and Thankyou Mr. Rob for allowing us to learn from you. that's exactly what I want to have my house set as for the same reasons Mr. Rob expressed.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it yet but recently there was a bug in the Tesla app that doubled energy reporting, Marques Brown I think might have been the first person to report it and have a Tesla engineer troubleshoot and fix the issue. Not sure if it's been fully rolled out yet, but that's how the system is get way above STC rated power generation.

The power is limited by panels, and further limited by inverter. Solar is very expensive in US compared to Australia as you have tariffs on cheap Chinese panels that work well. The panels are on the south side as that’s where the sun is, especially in winter. Mine face north as I am in Australia. East and west is okay however facing away from sun is not.

I have one Tesla vehicle. Tesla model y performance. I have 60 panels on my roof and I went with enphase. I will be doing the power wall also with the same company.

Same system here and 3 years in and it works amazing…Tesla doesn’t get enough credit!

I noticed the chimney on the roof- since Tesla uses string inverters, won’t the revolving shadow from the chimney greatly diminish the output of the panels? I assume, with a chimney feature, that micro inverters (such as Enphase) would have been a better choice than Tesla.

I think this will be the biggest channel of them all. Home electric storage is a much bigger opportunity as it is just getting started and so much bad info from people trying to sell stuff as opposed to a neutral party helping to disseminate the info.

Would love an energy channel. Another good channel for home charging and power banks is Solar Surge.

Fantastic video

This is excellent! Excellent service to the society at large!

I have an Enphase Micro-inverter setup on 2 houses. First is 4.5kW Solar running for 11.5years and produced 65MWh, no storage. Second is 12kW solar and 20kWh storage running for just 7 months and produced 10.4MWh. I have a Chargepoint Home Flex hardwired and 48 amp capable so the Taycan can get 11kW.

Definitely would be interested in an energy channel! I always thought that you should be integrating this into your RU-vid videos. I remember the video where you showed the Tesla Powerwall that you had still boxed in your garage and was hoping at the time that you would show how it would be used (without solar) to flatten the load. Tesla has gone back and forth about allowing the purchase of the powerwall without installing solar. A solar installation just doesn't make sense for some houses and the powerwall has many advantages especially when the utility all allows you to sell back electricity at peak times. One issue that no one seems to talk about that I would like you to cover is dealing with roof repair and replacement once you have solar panels on the roof. This will happen and would like more information on how people deal with this.

The carbon footprint for net metering is not a function of batteries or the percentage of production you use as any excess reduces the footprint of the grid itself.

his 2 inverters are 7.6kw each. Great video!! I have a 6kw system with 2 power wall 2's installed last March.

Opt for REC panels, Enphase microinverters, Tesla Gateway-2, Tesla Powerwalls-2, and the Tesla Universal Wall Connector. The last three Tesla components are essential for accessing "Powershare" bidirectional charging.

I have a 16 kW pv system and 3 powerwalls I ordered from Tesla Jan 2021. 1 year later they were installed. I got them for self-reliance, but benefit from cost and environmental reasons too. Our peak kWs is 13, since our home is a smaller 2 story, with a multi angle roof. I have panels facing all directions. From Sunset to sunrise I'm getting power. Minimum sunny day is 40 kWhs in December, Max is 106 kWhs in May. Super rainy days still produce 5kWhs. I sized it to be 80% offset, but adding 2 evs, and my wife started a cottage kitchen bakery from our home, it dropped to 66% offset. We moved our pool pump to overnight, using any excess battery soc, down to 20-40%, then it uses grid power at 6c/kWh. I charge my EV for free at work from solar, 80% of my miles. I can charge it from home from excess solar as well, or worst case from the grid at 6c/kWh. Our peak costs are 10c/kWh in winter 5-9 am and pm, and 24c/kWh in summer 2-8 pm. The batterys keep us from using the grid during those times. So the other 33% of our total home power use is super off peak at 6c/kWh between 11 pm - 5 am. My power walls are outside, on the NE wall, shaded by trees and the house. They get

You should do a Tesla Powerwall and maybe Solar install video at your new house and partner with Electric Pro Academy on RU-vid!

It's correct to say Driving on Sunshine 😊

Also, consider photovoltaic thermal, geothermal heat pump (for cooling too), thermal storage, super insulation and isolation/sealing, heated garage(s) and driveway(s)...

I'm building my solar system as we speak in Southern Colorado. My initial setup is 8kw of panels, ~15 kwh of battery, and an 18k PV/12k inverter. I will double my battery bank probably at the end of summer 2024, and also probably add another 4kw of panels for a total of 12k worth of panels.

Absolutely interested in out of spec energy