- [Sven] This video is
brought to you by Skillshare. (chill music)
(birds chirping) (car swerves) So in 2019, I ordered a Tesla solar roof, and it took 424 days to be completed. Now, it's been in operation
for over eight months. So I thought it might be a great time to take a look at the data and see how it stacks
up with my expectations. We take a look at my electricity bills from previous years to now. Take a look at the
monthly solar generation. And finally, after months
of zero rain in sunny, drought-stricken California, my roof has built up quite a dust layer and I'm going to actually clean my tiles to find out if it increases
my energy production. All of this in this video. (chill music) All right, let's take a look at the data. First of all, I'm gonna
show you the Tesla app, give you an overview of what has been produced
over the past eight months. This is the app, and you see that I have two batteries, and it's charging right now because the sun is out. It's a little cloudy today. So we have 2.8 kilowatts being produced from the sun right now. 1.7 of that goes into the grid, one kilowatt is actually used to run the electricity
in the house right now, and then a little bit
goes into the battery. If I would draw electricity right now, the city will charge me per kilowatt hour, 16 cents, I believe. If I feed it back to the city, it will count as 16 cents that they have to eventually give me. It's a credit, it's a net credit. So if let's say I'm using more electricity than I'm actually producing, and I'm pulling electricity
out of the grid, I can use up that credit. Okay, so you kind of
understand the system. Now, let's look at today. This blue one is home usage. So, so far, today, I've
consumed 7.9 kilowatt hours. This is how much I've
produced today so far, 5.1 kilowatt hours. If you see that curve, you can see it's quite disrupted, and this has to do with the cloud cover that's currently happening today. Let me show you what a
regular day looks like. This is how, I'd say 85% of every day, this kind of smooth curve is
what happens in California with so many sunshine days. So in the morning, it starts off as the sun is
coming from around the horizon and it's going higher and higher. The production increases as
it hits the perfect angle towards the roof, and then at some point in the afternoon, like 3:00 p.m. or so, it comes down by... Let's say like 7:00 p.m., production stops completely. So this is a normal day. And as we're going backwards, the tendency should be that it's higher because the best time in terms of where the sun is in the sky is gonna be around June 21st. Going back, day by day, I actually discovered that my
best day for solar generation was June 9th. It came in at 45.5 kilowatt hours. The days around June 21st, which should have been better because of the sun's higher path, were about three to four
kilowatt hours less. And there could be two reasons for that: more dust on the panels or hotter days. Both would contribute to
reducing the efficiency of my system. - 99% blue skies and golden sunshine, all along the way. - [Sven] The system size,
by the way, is 7.9 kilowatts with an actual peak performance so far of around 5.9 kilowatts. Instead of doing it by day, I'm now gonna go into a week. So this is what the solar generation for a week in August looks
like, 247 kilowatt hours. Now, how much did we
actually end up using? Overall, 254 kilowatt hours. So we've produced slightly
less in August in that week than we've actually used. But because we're feeding
back into the system at peak times, what we're feeding back is
actually worth three times the amount of what we're actually pulling if we use most of our energy, for example, like here on that Thursday to charge our car at night. Let's look at how this
stacks up on a monthly basis. So this is every day
for the month of August, we produced 1,049 kilowatt hours. And how much did we consume? 1,334. So we are negative in August, and this mainly has to do with that we're using more AC. I would say August and
September are really the hottest months in LA. Surprisingly, September
is hotter than July. I'm gonna go back one month, July. We've used 1,231 kilowatt hours and we produced 1,140. So we're still slightly negative. Let's go back one more month, June. We produced 1,177 and we used 844. So our production is
slightly higher from July. It was 1,140 as opposed to 1,177, but our consumption is
drastically lower in June, almost 400 kilowatt hours that we used up less than year. And that has to do with
June being much cooler; less need to run the AC. Let's look at this on a yearly basis how this stacks up. So the first month in January, we've used more energy than we produced, and then the next one, two,
three, four, five months, we produced more energy than
we actually ended up using. And the last two months, which is July and August, we are producing less
than we are consuming. So overall, on a yearly basis, we are still ahead. If you look at this, we've consumed for the
entire eight months, 6,778 kilowatt hours and we produced 7,568 kilowatt hours. Okay, before we move on and take a look at my electricity bills, I wanted to take you on a
journey of me experimenting with cleaning the tiles. You already know
California is super sunny, great advantage, sun
every day, but no rain. The last time it rained was
maybe sometime in March, and as you can see, my tiles are pretty dirty. How does that affect efficiency? I needed to find out. The first thing that I
did is I did some research and I realized you shouldn't
be cleaning them with tap water because especially here, the water is very hard, it has a lot of calcium,
a lot of minerals. And if you know anything
about washing your car with regular water, you have these stains there, which are these little calcium craters. That cannot be good for the tiles because it could mess with the efficiency, just as much as the dust. Then I was looking into
ways to filter the water, make it soft, get out all the minerals. I looked into systems and they run something like 400 to $600, and that gives you a few hundred gallons, 200, 300, 400 gallons. But I realized this is
probably just too much of an overkill, too much of an expense. And then I remembered I'm
actually collecting rainwater, and rainwater, it shouldn't
have any calcium in it. So I just get outside and get some of the
rainwater to test my theory. As you can see, I do some filtering
before the water arrives in the rain barrel, so it's kind of a passive gravity system where a lot of the debris
doesn't even make it into the barrel. So I'm testing the water now. I still had this TDS meter from one of the zero water filter systems that we used at some point, and I'm gonna use it now to measure, and there's eight parts per million. Nine, 17, 18. So something around less
than 20 parts per million. Now, how does this
stack up with tap water? First, I have filtered tap water. Even though it's really good
at getting the chlorine out and all the toxins, we still get all the calcium in there, it's not good for filtering that. Yet, we still have 398
particles per million. And this is tap water
straight without me running it through the house filter. And that comes in at 435. So the filter is doing something, is getting some of the toxins out, but very little of the actual minerals. So now that we know
that rainwater should do a much better job at cleaning the tiles, how do I get it from the rain barrel, up on the roof. I'm going to compare my
solar production before and after cleaning my tiles, but first, I'd like to thank Skillshare for their support. It's an online learning community where millions come together to take the next step in their creative or career journey. It offers thousands of classes on topics, including illustration
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starting a YouTube channel. - [Marques] So this class, we're gonna go through the sort of production, the creation from start to finish of one of my tech review videos. - [Sven] While MKBHD has
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your creativity today. And now, back to cleaning my tiles. (upbeat music) I need to find a way to pump the water from the
rain barrel to the roof. The bigger question is really, does it make sense for
me to clean my tiles once or twice a year, or is it safer and more cost-effective not to clean the tiles? Because if I would pay for
a service of doing that, I'd be paying a couple
hundred bucks at a minimum. So I had this water pump that I used for an aquarium that we used to have. And I'm just going to hook this up and connect it to a hose. Now, here's the thing, I read some reviews of
people cleaning cars with water hoses. And even though they filtered
the water main, made it soft, they still had calcium
stains on their cars. And the reason being is that
they used just a regular hose that they hooked up to a faucet before, and it actually accumulates
all those minerals. Luckily, I had hoses
that I've haven't used for regular water, just for rainwater. So those should have not
a whole lot of minerals. (upbeat music) I did invest in a water fed pole with a special brush for
cleaning solar panels. It extends for a 24 foot reach and set me back by about 250 bucks. So let's plug in the water pump and find out if there's
going to be enough water, feeding to the brush. Do you notice the little bird that wants to get in on the action? The water pressure is not great. The good news is I
probably won't be emptying that rain barrel all too quickly. I really wanted a pole that is long enough to reach all parts of the
roof without me having to actually step on the tiles. They're very slippery. And even with a low pitch roof like mine, the chance to fall off the
roof is extremely high. So it's gonna have to work from a ladder or not at all. I tried different techniques and settled on a slow,
up and down brush stroke, where it creates an actual
water film on the tile before brooming the dirt
down to the next row. And it was quite effective, but it also took me a good hour to clean just one side. Wow, this actually works. Totally clean, nice. I can actually see the panels. The biggest challenge
was the water pressure, especially going up on the top rows. You can see that I only used
about five gallons or so. So I called it a day and
ordered a bigger pump. While we wait for the new pump to arrive, let's return to my eight months review and how my electricity bill has changed. So our very first bill that
we got was for January, 2021. We still paid $87 for electricity. That is still a carry over from December when the system wasn't on. The rest that you see in that bill, that's water, trash, and there's a sewage fee. So $87, we spent in electricity. Now, let's compare that bill with the previous year, 2020, when we didn't have a system, and the electric portion was $125. Now, the system was fully
covering the entire month, starting with the February bill. And now, our electric went down to $30. Let's look at what it
was, the year before. So $30 as opposed to $140. And in that $30 for the electric part, there's actually a service charge of $11, and then some additional fees and taxes to be able to connect to the grid and be able to feed into the grid or pull from it. In March, now, my electric bill
went actually down to 23.20, So $15 of that is just fees I have to pay every month for just being connected, and the rest of it, I still used up 105
kilowatt hours at 8 cents. Yes, I can produce lots
of energy during mid-peak, but I cannot produce
energy off-peak at night because there's no sun, but I was anticipating that whatever I generate during mid-peak would then be somewhat calculated against what I use during off peak
at a 2:1 ratio, right? Because mid peak, I would get credit for 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Alright, you get the idea. I continued to break down each month, but let's go straight to August. Let's take one more look at what my bill was in August, which is like one of the
most intense months in terms of what I pay for electricity. So in the previous year, I paid $204 for electricity alone. Now, with the solar system, I only pay $35. That's about a $170 saving. Adding up all those numbers, I come to a total electricity
bill for eight months to about $270. Now, I also accumulated
a net credit of 207, so my total bill has
actually reduced to $62 for eight months, and that's a total saving of 1,067, compared to the previous eight months and an annualized saving of $1,600. And with that, let's bring it home by cleaning the rest of my tiles and see how much it actually
increases my solar production. Nice, here's the new pump. It's about twice as
powerful as the other one. (upbeat music) (water dripping) With the new pump, I have a good steady
flow going to the brush. I perfected my technique, taking my sweet time, going from tile to tile and let gravity do most of the work. Okay, I kind of get the hang of it now. Got a really good flow going, holding that 24 foot pole and just going back and forth. It does go in your arms and I'm definitely gonna feel it tonight. ♪ Come and ask me ♪ ♪ What you want to know ♪ ♪ And we can go from here ♪ ♪ Oh it just keeps turning ♪ ♪ Here I am still learning ♪ ♪ How about what it is that you need ♪ ♪ What it is you bleed for ♪ - This all definitely works. But I'm not gonna lie, this took me about six hours to clean the entire roof. I can probably bring
that down to four hours, but not much less. (chill music) Alright, we did use pretty
much all of the water, that's a 55 gallon rain barrel. So is it worth my time? Well, after cleaning my tiles, I took a screenshot of the
next day that had full sun, and I compared it to the
closest day of full sun before I started the cleaning process. So on July 20th, we had a full day with
37.7 kilowatt hours. Then I cleaned, and then I had an increased
production of 41.7, which is an increase of
four kilowatt hours or 9.6%. At best though, that is worth $1 per day in
additional produced electricity. If we assume that efficiency will decrease as the tiles get dirty again, let's say over a six months period, the median value of additional
electricity comes to $88. So is it worth $88 to work for four hours? Would I pay someone like
$250 or so to clean my roof? I think not. In the next video, I really
talk about the financials; how much the system has cost us, and I give you a complete rundown of how close we are actually to being completely paid off. Plus, I'll also talk
about one service call that I had to place because something did
go wrong after a storm. I'll report on how
difficult or easy it was to get Tesla to fix it. All of this in the next video. Thanks so much for watching and keep things sunny, cheers. (gentle music) Oh, and if you're thinking about getting a Tesla solar roof or the panels, which supposedly have the
best deal on the market, please click my referral code to check out all the
current savings, drawings, and free supercharging miles if you are into getting a Tesla. The link, as always, in
the video description. (gentle K-pop music)
