Woohoo!! Our Tesla Solar Roof installation is officially completed*! On Friday the team came out and finished up the last* of the tiles that needed to be cut and a carpenter came along to re-install the J-channel, that part of the siding that borders perpendicular surfaces like the roof above the bay window and the back door overhang. They packed up all the equipment that had been sitting in our back yard for the past month (a big tile saw, a break for bending conduit, various pallets of solar tiles, rolls of flashing, etc), Ryker shook my hand and away they went. The carpenter had a little more work to do so he came back today and finished up. So, as of this moment our installation is done*!
You’ve probably been wondering why the asterisks. That’s because there are technically still three steps left before we’re living our solar dreams:
- Inspection by the city (or maybe it’s the utility, which is also run by the city?)
- Moving the octagonal window upwards (technically replacing it with another one)
- Getting Permission To Operate (PTO) from the utility company
I was expecting a delay before the inspection could be set up, but they called today and said it’s scheduled for tomorrow! The guys at work had a point — since the guy from the utility company who came out to see what was going on when the PowerWall folks disconnected our electric meter was excited and full of questions about the Tesla Solar Roof, maybe those guys have been waiting eagerly for us to request an inspection so they can come see it in action?
Derrick told me again this morning that the window is on order and that he’ll get back to me on scheduling the installation.
I don’t know when the PTO will happen yet, but I did get the impression based on an email from Zuky the Energy Advisor in Las Vegas that Tesla isn’t going to formally request PTO until we pay the final invoice for the second half of the job that they’re getting ready to send us. I’ve seen here and there that it could take upwards of a month to get PTO, so we’ll see what happens.
Oh, I forgot to mention — Mike from Gutters For Less mentioned to me that he thought we were within the first 10 or so Tesla Solar Roof installations in the state of Virginia! I’m not going to assume that, but it’s reasonable. I don’t know how many crews they have working in our area but if it takes a month each they can’t have done too many in the first 6 months of the year.
Also, in case you were wondering about that ticking noise we heard Thursday night, Ryker and company investigated and as best as they can tell it was just a case of the RSDs getting mixed signals. Apparently when the inverters turn off for the night (or when you turn them off manually) they send a signal to the RSDs through the electrical wiring to say “Hey, I’m not delivering power to the house anymore so you should de-energize the attic wiring too.” When that happens, the RSD physically disconnects which makes a click sound. In our case since the main solar system shutoff handle outside was in the “OFF” position but the inverters were turned on they somehow wound up sending repeated “turn on” and “turn off” signals to the RSDs, causing them to click on and off again rapidly. He said it wasn’t a fire hazard or anything and it shouldn’t happen when the outside cutoff handle is on the ON position (which will be basically always unless our electric meter is being serviced or something) so they didn’t replace the RSDs or anything. They did turn the system back on for a few hours to make sure everything was still working fine, and just before they turned it off the roof was generating 8 kW of power! We still haven’t gotten to see what it’s capable of producing at high noon or on a low-humidity day so that could go even higher.
Anyway, below you’ll find a gallery of some photos of the final product! (Technically most of these were taken Friday while some of the J-channel replacement still wasn’t done, but from the distance the drone is hovering it’s hard to see the difference anyway.)
And here’s a clumsy video flyby of the front of the house:
In my next update I’ll tell you how the inspection goes.
The Hickory Hill Solar Project 