Gadgetory

what's up guys welcome back to Pauls hardware today's video is a follow-up to this video that I posted about three months ago in December which was my tesla powerwall and solar review where my follow up on my tesla powerwall and solar installation which has over 1 million views now so thanks to all you guys who have checked out that video I got a ton of awesome feedback from that video but I have a confession to make the thing that people commented about the most is also the thing I was actually wrong about the Corsair 1 is a gaming PC for people who want maximum performance with a minimal footprint don't let the size fool you though there's a core I $9.99 hundred K CPU and an Archie X xx atti in the Corsair 1 I 160 kept Chile with convection assisted cooling and separate clothes loops for the CPU and GPU there's also a corsair 1i 140 with an i7 9700 K and an r/t X 2080 so click the sponsor link in the video description to learn more so for this video I have scrolled through the more than 4,000 comments left on that original video and I'm going to be answering as many of the print relevant questions as I can today starting with some actual feedback directly from Tesla because I actually took a bunch of questions and forward them to them and Mark a Tesla lead systems engineer has responded and given some direct feedback on how the system actually works especially if there is a zombie apocalypse zombie apocalypse just being my shorthand term before the internet going out and the power grid going out so if you guys didn't catch my video series on this which started last year there is a playlist linked down in the video's description that goes through all of them I try to give as much detail as I could about the installation process but a quick recap of how my power system currently works I have a solar grid that's up on my roof that absorbs sunlight when it is sunny out that can then be fed to power my home or if there's more solar power being generated than my home is using it will store the excess power on my tesla powerwall which is also attached to the back of my house it is essentially a big battery so it's gonna store the power that's generated during the day and then in the evening when the Sun Goes Down I can draw power from the battery to power my home if the battery gets down to 10% in the current mode that I have it in it will switch over and start drawing power from the power grid because I'm still connected to the power grid that's why when the system was first installed it was a fairly lengthy process because we had to work with Edinson to get everything tied into the grid and they have to do inspections and all that stuff to make sure it's done properly so first question is about what happens when the power goes out or the internet goes out because we're tied into the power grid for one and then I also have a little black box that connects to the Tesla gateway that sort of monitors the power usage for the entire home and that reports back to Tesla and telemetry data so that they can monitor my power usage as well as make sure that the system is running at all times now in my six months review video I mentioned that if the power goes out or if the internet goes out that the system will automatically reset itself and you might not actually be able to use it so to clarify three questions presented to Tesla the first being if the grid goes down are we have a power outage and the internet is still working what happens Tesla said when the Tesla Gateway senses an out of spec grid connection or basically things aren't working properly with the power grid a contactor in the Tesla gateway will open up to separate your backed up loads from the grid the Tesla gateway and battery will form a micro grid to keep your backed up loads powered the micro grid will also provide the grid for your grid tied solar inverter so it can continue to operate when the Tesla gateway senses a stable grid connection for five consecutive minutes it will close the contactor to restore grid power to your backed up loads so the answer to question one is yes if the power goes out the system will separate itself from the grid and will operate as its own little micro grid powered from the battery or powered from the solar to keep your home powered even if there's a note no power coming from the grid so that's a good answer to question number one question two is going to be what if the internet goes down but the grid is still functioning and for Internet connectivity my system actually has two different ways of doing it one is through that little black box Tesla gateway and that is physically connected to my router via an Ethernet cable second is that the Gateway itself has two little knobs on top and that's actually for a wireless 3G connection so that's a failover if my home internet goes out it has its own 3G connection that it can connect to to communicate back to Tesla the information that Tesla so desperately needs so first answer that question is if my home internet goes down it will switch to the 3G connection and it will communicate that way and then every five minutes it will check if my home network is back up and then we'll switch back to that once it is back up and running it will prioritize an Ethernet connection over Wi-Fi or 3G I don't have Wi-Fi so it's gonna go with the Ethernet connection and then it's the Ethernet connection is not present or drops it will prioritize the wireless connection that has the strongest signal so basically Ethernet or 3G in my situation third part of this question is the zombie apocalypse scenario what if both the internet and the power grid go down how will my home a power system continue to operate and what happens if it lasts more than 24 hours mark was kind enough to humor my hypothetical scenario here he says during the zombie apocalypse the contactor will open up as previously mentioned and create a micro grid for your backed up loads and solar inverter it will also try to use the 3G connection to communicate with Tesla servers if the zombies have taken out the grid and all communications the system will run autonomously until the battery is completely discharged the battery will charge from excess solar not consumed by the loads in your home the solar panel should be cleaned of all dust dirt and gore so they can provide the most power possible so that's obviously you know a risk/reward scenario you go outside during a zombie apocalypse because there's as much blood splattered all over the solar grid gotta clean that off but then you're attacked by more zombies obviously you want to use shotgun in that scenario but I'm getting a bit out of range here in case of Judgment Day Tesla is sorry the robot overlords will take everything and maybe we'll get to catch up in the matrix or the Pens it's a little dark to sum up though and to correct my earlier video in the case of a zombie apocalypse or alternatively just the case of your power grid going out and your internet connection going out the system will continue to function there are fail safes in place that will check if either of those situations have been resolved in order to turn things back on but to sum up worst-case scenario zombie apocalypse I will at least still have as much power for my home as is provided by the Sun provided of course they haven't darkened the skies as well I'd have some more answers from Tesla these are some questions that I had a few more questions from the comments section in the last video and then towards the end I have a few more question from the comments section in the last video that I'm going to answer so stick around first question though is about the Internet connectivity of the system in general we have the 3G connectivity that's provided by the Gateway that's external then we also have the direct internet connection provided by the solar city box internally my question was if I didn't want to have that little solar city black box connected to my home router if I was freaked out about it being an Internet of Things connected device could I remove that and then when the system just communicate via 3G Marc's answer says the Tesla gateway or the gray box with horns does have built-in 3G if the solar city Gateway stops reporting in we will be able to monitor solar production using current transformers that wrap around the wires that tie your solar inverter into your panel you can decide to use only the connections the Tesla gateway has and remove the solar city gateway from your network the Tesla gateway in the Solar City gateway send data to different servers the servers do not communicate with each other the gateways don't talk to each other and losing data from the solar city gateway will not affect the data from the Tesla gateway the Tesla gateway it looks at the system as a whole including battery state charge level voltages grid state voltage frequency solar voltage solar current and total energy produced and the solar city gateway will look specifically at the solar inverter which includes a serial number the firmware version of the voltage the current the total energy produced etc the black solar city gateway also allows us to send firmware updates to your inverter if you do decide to remove the black box from your network I'm supposed to let him know and he'll prevent unnecessary phone calls and emails about it so the short answer would be that yes you can remove the black solar city gateway from your network but that would prevent the inverter from getting firmware updates which may or may not be an issue in the future fortunately though the Tesla gateway is still providing most of the data back so you still would be able to monitor everything via the Tesla app next up I wanted to give a quick plug to CW ne 88 who did comment on my last video and he's actually located in Australia I believe but he's done a bunch of very in-depth videos looking at the telemetry data that Tesla sends back to their servers as well as doing various tests to see what happens if you block that data being sent back to Tesla what happens in that circumstance actually discovered the system resetting itself after a period of time when it's not connected to the internet so my question for Tesla here was that other users have reported the system rebooting if it goes more than 24 hours without a connection to Tesla servers what are the consequences and can you elaborate on the other power states the system refers to if the grid power connectivity or data connectivity are lost Mark's reply was that when no connection is seen for two hours all interfaces being the ethernet the Wi-Fi and 3G are toggled but the system will stay operational if there's no connection for 24 hours and the system isn't backing up loads the whole gateway is reset this takes a few minutes and while rebooting the system is not available for backup and the summation of this is that that's the first step in troubleshooting for most technology devices turn it off and then turn it back on that's sort of an automated function the system will do to try to re-establish that connection he also says if you decide to go off-grid from Edison then your backed uploads will stay powered as long as your battery has charged and your solar is operating it would be similar to how you're operating now in self-consumption mode but with more battery usage Tesla is ok with this they actually have a few customers who are either entirely off-grid or just have very poor grid conditions so they're sort of in a off grid situation there are no negative consequences for being at near perpetually off-grid just losing connection for an extended period is not bad and then he has a few more notes that were more specifically towards me in my situation with my 3G connection on the exterior box the whole idea behind this is that Tesla servers are monitoring your system and if something goes wrong if suddenly your solar generation drops off precipitously or something like that they are going to contact you and try to fix the situation which I see you know some pros and cons to obviously having that support of them being able to tell you hey we think there might be something wrong with your system is good because that's not something that you might immediately know what's happening but of course the flip side to that is that you have data being sent to servers that are not in your home so some people may or may not be comfortable with that now something that CW any 88 has done here because he must be using PDF sense or something like that to have a fair amount of control over his home network is he's blocked the tesla gateway from sending that data back to tesla and that's how i ran a few of his experience he found and this is how he found that after 24 hours the system will reset itself he has done sort of an in-between situation where he only provides it access a short period of time every day so it can send its telemetry data back and I think that might be a good solution for anyone who's seriously concerned about data being sent from their home power system back to Tesla servers but my question was going to be how does this affect your warranty so that was my next question if I decided to block the systems data connectivity to Tesla via any method how would it affect the system's operation other than the apt not being able to show you the data usage anymore cuz that's no longer an Tesla servers and also very importantly would this affect the warranty Marc's answer was if the Tesla gateway was connected to your home network and you decided to block that traffic the Gateway would attempt to use 3G if 3G was unavailable Tesla would try to assess and alleviate any concerns to restore the network connection to the Gateway so Tesla would reach out to you and be like hey we noticed that we're not getting any data from your system anymore what's the deal if we're not able to get the connection restored then we can't send updates to the Tesla gateway in batteries some updates make drastic changes to behavior and performance of the batteries such as heat mode and the Gateway which has communications failover and high latency connection while there isn't a definite duration set refusal to connect the Tesla gateway to the Internet can shorten the warranty extended to the products refusals are handled on a case-by-case basis so this to me says they don't get people trying to do this very often so if it does happen they would get in touch with you if you responded to them and be like nod I want to I don't want to send you guys any data they would handle on a case-by-case basis I couldn't tell you exactly what that means when it comes to shortening the warranty period but it does appear to be something that happens seldomly enough that they're able to handle that on an individual basis so long story short there yes you could block the data yes it might affect your warranty and Tesla would get in touch with you to tell you about that or at least talk it over with you I suppose which doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me but let's move on to some other comments that I got these are all taken from the six-month review video and this is just an example of one of the many comments pointing out that it's stupid if the powerwall and solar grid doesn't work if the internet goes out and I'm sorry that I was wrong about that but hopefully this video has helped correct that and alleviate some people's concerns next question is from Mustafa Cole pan who says i spend 100 150 kilowatt hours per month you spent 50 kilowatt hours in one day solar panels should be enough to power our seven store apartment he lives in Turkey so thank you Miss toffee for commenting all the way from Turkey this is again just one example of a comment that came through many times people completely thinking it's preposterous and absurd that I was able to use that much power in my day I want to point out that the 50 kilowatt hour number was for the worst day of the year this is a worst case scenario this is super hot outside there's working in the home all day I also want to point out I work from home there's somebody here almost all the time which means heating concerns becoming heating and cooling concerns become an issue so point is yes I understand my usage is a bit high but bear in mind it's not just like normal home usage there's a business being run out of here as well and when we're talking about that number in particular that was when it was really really hot outside next up is SK metal 7 who says I find it ironic that you would spend that much money on this and then completely ignore how inefficient your house is you really should have had your house properly insulated you'll see much better ROI and your power wall will last longer first off sk metal 7 that is an improper use of the word ironic but i don't want to dwell on that i want to point out this hidden video that no one has ever seen before which was me having our attic completely reinsulated with blown-in insulation which happened about six months or a year before our pyro wall was installed I'm pointing this out just to indicate to you guys that I am aware that insulation is a concern when it comes to heating and cooling a home and that I've invested at least some money so far that not is not to say that this house is perfect by any stretch again it was built in the 60s in Southern California standards have changed over time so I'm pretty sure when it comes to stuff like a proper vapor barrier as well as insulation in the walls themselves yes there's more that could be done but I do intend to have that done in the future there's actually some work coming up on my house very soon so I'll possibly be looking into having the injection foam done to some of the walls to help insulate that a little bit better but also on the plus side I do have double pane windows on all the windows that are here so that helps a bit and then one of the other things I need to do is go around and check egress and ingress points where I might not have proper weather stripping going on so there's more to be done but I have not been completely ignoring the insulation factor of this so thank you for your comment next up is glass slinger whose I did not see anywhere that you figured the earnings you would make investing this installation money for the same length of time he's estimating it to be $70,000 talking about blue chip funds and could I make even more if I was willing to take on some more risk again there are many other comments saying like I should have just invested this money rather than spending it on this solar panel I would counter that by saying yes I could have also gone to Las Vegas and thrown it all on black when it comes to risk there's risk and just about any investment that you might make and I'm not going to dive into my opinions of how the stock market works or anything like that but nobody can guarantee me that if I was just to take this money and plop it all into the stock market that in ten or eleven years I would suddenly be making my money back there is also a risk that's plopping the money into the solar and power grid that I have just done might also backfire at some point but I think there's a little bit too much anticipated forward projection going on and of what's gonna happen in the future here and who knows maybe the people who said I should invest in the stock market are right personally I'd rather have this practical investment in actually taking sunlight and using the power to power my home versus dropping it onto the stock market so that some financial in between guys can bounce it around and somehow create value out of that I don't know I'm not a big fan of the stock market but let's leave it at that next question from grumpy Joe he just wants to know what's my AC set to because of course again heating and cooling are gonna be some of the main issues when it comes to actual power usage in my home he works in the AC business and we crazy Americans like to turn our AC to 18 degrees Celsius grandpa Joe I'm not gonna call you a liar or anything because I'm sure there are plenty of Americans who do do that but just to clarify here our AC during the summer is usually set to 81 degrees Fahrenheit that is twenty-seven point two degrees Celsius people tell me I'm crazy all the time for having it that warm but during the summer I live in shorts and sandals and I'm just fine with it also you know it's hot in California but it's a dry heat it's actually very true I got a few questions like this one from Killa cam asking why we didn't go with the Tesla solar roof versus the Tesla solar panels I was actually aware of the solar roof that actually completely replaces your roof with solar tiles which is pretty cool but at least at the time when I was doing the insulation Tesla was taking a bunch of their solar roof tiles that they were producing and using them to make a massive solar array on top of one of their factories I'm sure stuff has changed in the past year and a half or so but just at the time the solar roof was less available you have to remember I was first signing up for this stuff in 2017 but that's why speed-freak 3:08 - asks how much did this raise the value of your house which is a good question when you're talking about an investment if I sell it tomorrow would I lose anything and there's a couple responses I've included here ones from Derrick Cora who seems to know maybe a little bit more about me than this because he says he works for a local residential solar installer and he says that it most definitely would that's somewhat anecdotal but it seems to make sense to me the other follow-up to that question was diesel Ram charger who says it makes the house almost impossible to sell because of the solar contract and people don't want to assume the liability that is possibly a concern if you were financing your solar array however I paid for everything upfront so I'm not doing any financing that was also part of the reason I did this when you finance it you're paying interest charges on that so it really cuts into the amount of savings that you get for your investment and that's why I did it the way I did it that also sort of ties in to this next question represented by Kel'Thuzad who's saying that somehow tax credits work it means you would have he's talking about the difference between a tax credit and a write-off he's saying that I would be writing off nine thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars so I have nine thousand seven hundred twenty-eight dollars less taxable income caldas are you were wrong I'm sorry but you are wrong I just did my taxes I would have owed X dollar amounts apply the credit it is now that X dollar amount - nine thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars it is not as if I earned that much less and now I'm being taxed on that one much less money that is how the tax credit works and also pins a comment on that video from three months ago just pointing out that the federal tax credit in the US will be phasing out it's 30 percent through 2019 in 2020 goes to 26 percent and 22 percent in 2021 and then 10 percent in 2020 - I have one more question here that mark provided an answer to and it was just one that was kind of baffling me when they installed my new power panel it's a 200 amp panel upgraded from the old one damn panel and then it's got two sub breakers on it one is a 100 amp breaker that goes over to the other gateway that everything in the home is connected to and that one is backed up by the power wall and there's a second hundred amp breaker and that one is actually powering my AC units yet when I monitor my power usage and the AC is on I can tell based on the tesla app usage information i can tell that my AC is drawing power from the solar or the power wall not from the grid I was just curious how that worked mark said that we have CTS or current transformers at the main breaker which is right at the top with the mode that I'm currently using self-consumption the system will use the energy stored in your battery to power the home until the reserve limit you set is reach with the CTS place where they are that is the logical demarcation point between your home and the grid the system tries to minimize import from the grid if you lose grid power then the tesla gateway becomes the demarcation point and anything grid side of it becomes unpowered so this to me means that while the system has power from the grid it wants to make sure that any massive spikes that cause especially when the AC is first turned on are able to be covered by that so as long as I have grid power it's going to draw everything from the solar or the battery it's a great power work to go out however then it would switch the demarcation point and I would basically have a mini grid from the sub panel which means that if the power were to go out or zombie apocalypse mode I probably wouldn't be able to run my AC and that pretty much sums up the questions and answers that I've gotten and received and hopefully fed back to you guys and hopefully that has answered some of your questions especially if anyone is actually considering investing in a system like this for their home there were a lot of other questions specifically talking about different regions and a really big part of the reason why I'm mainly focused on here's my experience is because there's so many variables that go into that not just the cost of the system itself but the cost of power where you live whether you're using net metering or not and of course the weather in your area how many days of some let you get in a year versus not so for that reason anyone's decision to invest in whether it's solar or power wall or a combination of both should greatly depend on your specific situation so please do a little bit more research to find those variables out before you go and invest thousands of dollars the I already pointed out by many people is that Tesla had to contact Edison quite a few times to like get permission to operate and stuff in this installation which is kind of funny you know the history there between the two of them but guys it's gonna wrap it up for this video thank you so much for watching hit the thumbs up button on your way out let me know if you'd like to see another follow up I know I haven't been doing these too frequently it's been about nine months since the system was turned on now I'm considering doing a one-year follow-up to this too so let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in that and if you guys have any other questions that weren't answered in this video leave those down there as well thank you again for watching and we'll see you guys next time