![\"Tesla](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/tesla-powerwall-settings.png\")
In November 2022, I closed on my new construction home made by KB Home.\nIt was a great purchase and very little regrets were made - I recommend buying a new construction home to anyone who can buy one.\nEven though the home is not in the greatest area (I’m a gentrifier), the fact that it has all the bells and whistles of a new home made it so much more convenient than living in an older house, especially when you work from home.
\nFirst Republic has a program called Eagle Community Home Loan that provided low interest rate mortgages for home buyers in “certain” areas, i.e. gentrifying areas such as where I purchased mine.\nThis means that I was able to close at a 3.75% interest rate with zero points and $4k in lender credits even though mortgage interest rates were about 6% at that time - I believe the fed interest rate was around 3.75% at that time as well.\nA 6% interest rate would’ve meant about $1.1k/month more in interest!\nThese really low interest rates are the reason First Republic went bankrupt.\nUnfortunately, they didn’t have a referral program at that time, otherwise I would’ve tried to have other buyers use them as well.
\nI’m not going to discuss all my options but the key functional ones are:
\nA problem with a lot of new construction homes is that the builders rush.\nHere’s a list of problems I experienced:
\nHere’s a list of key post-purchase upgrades and installations that I did after I moved in:
\nI only had one regret: not upgrading my dish washer. The included dish washer is very basic and misses a key function I want: setting a delay on when to wash the dish washer. The main reason I want this is so that I can run the dishes overnight when electricity is cheapest.
\nPerhaps the most important tip is to find a real estate agent to become your buyers agent that will split their commission with you.\nMy friend gave me half his commission (while 1099’ing me) and all he had to do was sign his name.\nIf you’re looking for someone to split a commission with in Southern California, let me know.
\n", "url": "https://jongleberry.com/posts/buying-a-kbhome-new-construction", "title": "Buying a KB Home New Construction", "summary": "My experience buying a new construction home from KB Home and what I've learned about the buying experience and building homes", "date_modified": "2023-09-06T00:00:00.000Z", "date_published": "2023-09-06T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Ong", "url": "https://jongleberry.com" }, "tags": [ "personal-finance", "real-estate" ] }, { "id": "https://jongleberry.com/posts/things-you-should-do-to-maximize-savings-with-a-tesla-powerwall", "content_html": "After fidgeting around with my Tesla Powerwall for over a year, I’ve finally settled on these TODOs for maximizing your savings.\nThese TODOs assume you have a Powerwall for the purposes of saving money, not for backup or self-generation, as the goals will be different.\nI, for example, am not worried about backups because there aren’t many outages in my area, but care about savings due to the high electricity rates in my area.
\n
If you are on a time of use electric plan with your utility (which you should be doing when you have a Powerwall),\nenable the TOU option for the Powerwall to maximize savings.\nIf you don’t have TOU with your current utility provider, look into switching to TOU.\nSolar panels and battery allow you to shift your energy usage and exports to the best times with time-of-use plans, maximizing the benefits of the system.
\nLower your reserve to the recommended 20%.\nYou can risk going lower but you don’t want your Powerwall running out of energy if there is in fact an outage as low power can damage your Powerwall.
\nThe rates that Tesla provide aren’t accurate.\nFor example, as I am on NEM 2.0, it had my buy and sell solar prices to be equal, which is not true.\nI am taxed about $0.03 per kw imported from the grid, which Tesla did not take into account.\nBy adjusting the rates, the Powerwall became smarter and tried to minimize the amount of power I import from the grid by using as much of my solar as possible whereas before it assumed importing and exporting at any time was equivalent cost-wise.
\nAdditionally, there may be additional taxes and fees not taken into account.\nFor example, Santa Ana levies a 5.5% tax to my electricity bill, which is used to subsidize low income households.\nThis tax is not taken into account by Tesla’s rates and have to be updated manually.
\nBy default, only solar will be exported to the grid when it is being generated.\nBy selecting “Everything”, your Powerwall will export all its energy at the peak hours to maximize savings.\nThis will cycle your Powerwall all the way to the reserve percentage you set above.
\n![\"Tesla](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/tesla-powerwall-energy-exports.png\")
In the image above, my Powerwall is charged by solar during the day, then exports all its energy down to the backup reserve percentage during the peak hours of 4pm-9pm PT.
\nIf you don’t have sufficient solar to charge your Powerwall, you’d want to enable grid charging to top off your battery.\nThis will also enable Tesla to maximize your savings, especially if you’re on net metering.
\nHowever, you may be ineligible for this; I am ineligible for 5 years because I got an SGIP Rebate.
\nThere is no control over when Storm Watch pulls energy from the grid.\nFor example, if a storm watch alert comes in the middle of peak hours,\nyour Powerwall will charge from the grid at peak hours at peak prices, which may cost you a lot of money.\nWhen you get a Storm Watch notification, skip it if it’s going to charge your battery during peak hours.\nTry enable/disabling/skipping as needed so that it’s charged off peak hours.
\nLastly, you’ll want to join one of the many virtual power plants.\nThis is similar to above where you export all your Powerwall energy to the grid,\nbut with VPP events, you will export the energy at a time requested by your electricity company and receive extra money to partipate, usually an extra $2 per kwh.
\nIf you’re ineligible for a VPP like me, join a demand response program like OhmConnect.\nI earn about $7 per OhmConnect event and they occur throughout the year (at least 3x per month), yielding a higher return than VPP seasons as VPP events are becoming less common.
\n\n\nInterested in buying Tesla Solar and/or Powerwall? Use my referral code!
\n
\n\n", "url": "https://jongleberry.com/posts/things-you-should-do-to-maximize-savings-with-a-tesla-powerwall", "title": "Things You Should Do to Maximize Savings with a Tesla Powerwall", "summary": "If your goal is to maximize your savings when buying a Tesla Powerwall, follow these steps ASAP!", "date_modified": "2023-09-04T00:00:00.000Z", "date_published": "2023-09-04T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Ong", "url": "https://jongleberry.com" }, "tags": [ "personal-finance", "tesla", "solar-battery", "real-estate" ] }, { "id": "https://jongleberry.com/posts/four-months-with-tesla-powerwall", "content_html": "Sign up to OhmConnect with my referral link.
\n
In November 2022, I bought a new construction house in Orange County, California which included a 3kw solar array.\nAdditionally, I purchased a $14,700 option to purchase a Tesla Powerwall.\nThe solar array is estimated to be $9,740 retail by the installer.\nI didn’t have a choice with the solar array - I didn’t even have the option to add more solar panels.\nHowever, was my $14,700 Tesla Powerwall a good purchase decision?
\nThe primary reason was I got a Powerwall was that if I didn’t, I would be thinking about getting one every day, which would take up a lot of brain capacity.\nThe cost of using my brain capacity on it would cost much more than the amortized cost of purchasing the Powerwall, as you’ll see below. The second goal was for cost savings, especially since the builder wouldn’t allow me to add more solar panels.
\nThe final goal was for backup during outages as I experienced quite a few outages living in Westwood, Los Angeles.\nInterestingly, I found SCE to be a much more reliable electricity provider than LADWP.\nEven if I broke even in cost savings,\nI’ll be happying knowing that I won’t be susceptible to power outages except for a few appliances.
\nI was disappointed with how my Powerwall was set up because it did not provide whole-home back up to my fully electric house.\nInstead, it was set up as a partial-backup with the following bypassed:
\nI don’t mind that my EV chargers bypass the Powerwall, but was quite disappointed to learn that my HVAC, washer/dryer, and water heater were.\nI can choose to charge my EV at night, but being price sensitive to running the AC, running the washer/dryer, or taking a shower during the peak hours of 4pm-9pm is quite annoying.\nIf the Powerwall backed up my HVAC and washer/dryer as well, I would be saving a lot more money.
\nHowever, I don’t think a whole-home backup would even be possible with just one Powerwall.\nThere’s no mechanism for it to communicate with the other appliances (except for the EV) to turn off or lower power usage during an outage,\nso there’s a chance that the appliances would pull too much energy and break something.\nYou’d most likely need multiple Powerwalls to make sure this doesn’t happen as well as more solar panels to charge them.
\n![\"SCE](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/sce-winter-rates-2023.png\")
![\"SCE](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/sce-summer-rates-2023.png\")
For Southern California Edison, the peak hours are between 4pm and 9pm, which is around when solar panels stop generating electricity.\nThe Powerwall’s time-of-use operational mode does a great job at maximize savings by:
\n#1 & #2 saves the ~$0.30 difference per kw between on-peak and off-peak pricing.\nThus, if I offset 4kw that day, that’s $1.20 saved!
\n#3 exports all the energy generated by the solar panels to the grid.\nIf you only had solar panels (i.e. no Powerwall) that generated, say, 5kw during the peak hours, but your house used 3kw, your solar panels would only export 2kw to the grid at the on-peak rates.\nHowever, with a Powerwall, the 5kw will be exported to the grid at the on-peak rate and the 3kw used by your house will be discharged from the Powerwall using an off-peak rate, maximizing savings!
\n![\"Powerwall](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/powerwall-daily-usage-example.png\")
My monthly solar generation and Powerwall discharge according to the Tesla app, which only includes electricity that passes through the Powerwall:
\n| Month | \nSolar Generated (kWh) | \nPowerwall Discharge (kWh) | \n
|---|---|---|
| 2023 January | \n238.5 | \n141.8 | \n
| 2023 February | \n308.4 | \n149.9 | \n
| 2023 March | \n388.8 | \n144.4 | \n
Note that these are winter months, so the solar generation should increase significantly in the summer months.
\nIn total, I was able to get $9,072 in rebates from my $24,440 ($9,740 + $14,700) system, making the net price of the system to be $15,368.
\nThe U.S. governments provides a 30% tax credit on solar, which I took for both my solar panels and Powerwall.\nThis amounted to $24,440 * 30% = $7,332.\nThe rebate for the Powerwall alone was $4,410.
SGIP is a California program that incentivizes installing energy storage systems.\nMy Powerwall was only eligible for a $1,740 rebate.
\nLet’s calculate how much the Powerwall is saving me and whether it was worth it.\nThe Powerwall cost $14,700, which I was able to bundle into my 30 year, 3.75% mortgage.\nThis ends up being about $68.08 per month with interest.
\nAfter the tax rebates of $4,410 and $1,740 for my Powerwall, the net price is $8,550.\nEven though I amortized the Powerwall over 30 years at a low interest rate,\nI got a rebate for almost 42% of it within the first year!\nThe $6,150 rebate’s portion of the loan is like taking out a tax-deductible loan at 3.75%, which I would happily take at this time, so we can consider it income positive and ignore it for the rest of the calculations.
\nDue to the rebates, to break even, we can lower our target monthly savings of $68.08 to $39.60, which is how much a 30 year loan for $8,550 at 3.75% is.\nCost-shifting 150 kWh every month at a price difference of about $0.30 equals $45 per month saved just from the Powerwall.\nIt’s worth it, currently barely, but the savings should increase in the future as the price difference in on-peak and off-peak increases as CA adds more solar panels.
\nIf it weren’t for the tax credits, this would not be economically feasible at all.\nMortgage interest rates reaching 6% also makes it economically infeasible.\nIf you aren’t able to roll it into your mortgage like I did, it would probably be economically infeasible as well as the rates are probably higher, the loan term is probably shorter, and the interest wouldn’t be tax-deductible.
\nBecause the loan for the Powerwall is rolled into my mortgage, the interest portion is tax-deductible up to a limit.\n$14,700 over 30 years at 0% interest is about $40.83/month, so the payment’s average interest portion of about $68.08 - $40.83 = $27.25 is tax-deductible.
Additionally, the Powerwall allows my solar panels to return more energy to the grid during peak hours.\nHowever, it would be difficult for me to calculate how much money this actually saved me because I don’t have easily-accessible hourly data.
\nAlso, note that the solar panels and the Powerwall are excluded from property tax assessments.\nNot really a savings, just not an additional cost.
\nThe Tesla app tells me an estimate amount of savings of my entire system.\nThe numbers also don’t add up - a lot of times, it says that I used grid energy during peak hours, but individual days don’t show an grid energy usage during peak hours.\nI just don’t bother looking at Tesla’s estimated savings number at all.
\n![\"Tesla](\"https://jongleberry.com/blog-images/powerwall-2023-02-savings.jpeg\")
\nI’m pretty sure I am saving more than what Tesla tells me since the amount of electricity generated from my solar panels for the month alone almost adds up to the estimated savings Tesla shows.
\nTesla has a Storm Watch feature which fully charges your battery before a storm.\nHowever, I live in Santa Ana, and every Santa Ana Wind triggers a Storm Watch,\nwhich is quite often and quite annoying.\nAdditionally, Storm Watch overrides the Time of Use plan, so it may charge your battery at peak hours, costing quite a bit of money.\nI disabled it and only enable it temporarily when I want to fully chage my Powerwall from the grid.
\nThe Powerwall has a setting for how to charge your EV during an outage.\nHowever, as mentioned above, my EV chargers bypass my Powerwall, and there is no setting to disable this.\nOf course, this really doesn’t matter because my EV wouldn’t charge during an outage, but it is annoying that I can’t disable it.
\nOverall, I am happy with my purchase, but it would be difficult for me to recommend it for most people from a cost-savings perspective.\nLike I mentioned above, this is only economically feasible for me because I was able to roll it into my 30 year mortgage with a low interest rate.
\n\n\n", "url": "https://jongleberry.com/posts/four-months-with-tesla-powerwall", "title": "Four Months With Tesla Powerwall", "summary": "How cost-effective is the Tesla Powerwall?", "date_modified": "2023-04-03T00:00:00.000Z", "date_published": "2023-04-03T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "Jonathan Ong", "url": "https://jongleberry.com" }, "tags": [ "personal-finance", "tesla", "solar-battery", "real-estate" ] } ] }Interested in buying a Tesla Powerwall? Use my referral code!
\n