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Solar Power Monitoring and Billing through SolarCity
After experiencing some growing pains with my SolarCity installation, I’m happy to say that I’ve been up and running since February 23rd of 2015 and ready to share my experiences with how the system is monitored and billed.
Savings
The savings on your electricity bill begin immediately after installation of your SolarCity system, and affects both the supply and delivery portions of your bill.
Savings can be pretty dramatic depending on the size of the system and, obviously, how much sunshine your region experiences. The following utility bill is a great example of how I was able to reduce my energy dependence from the grid by over 90%.
However, despite the reduction in energy needs from my utility company, the cost is not directly proportional to the amount of energy used. Here’s why.
Billing
Having such a drastic reduction in kWh needed from the grid actually comes with a price. Almost everyone who signs up with SolarCity opts-in to a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) which means you pay nothing upfront (for the gear, install etc.), but you pay SolarCity for every kWh their system generates. That rate can be variable or fixed. I pay a fixed rate of $0.1420 per kWh generated for 20 years. That may sound high to you but considering my local electricity rate is $0.2470, I’m saving 43% per kWh.
It takes SolarCity some time to get up and running with their billing system. For me it took them 3 months to send me the first bill and because of that I received a hefty bill (thankfully late winter months) for all 3 months in one shot. After that, the bills arrive monthly (note that SolarCity requires EFT/Autopay to be set up).
The bills are simple and only state the amount of kWh generated, the rate you pay, and the total amount owed.
SolarCity collects data generated through their system via a standard internet connection, which they also use for billing purposes. On the first (large/3 month) bill I received, I noticed a difference of 10% (additional cost for me) between the billed amount and the amount the system had reported being generated so I naturally brought this to their attention. The customer service folks that I spoke with weren’t of much help and just told me to read each the meters at the beginning and end of each month if I truly want an accurate reading of how things get billed. So, that’s what I did.
Since inception I’ve saved $320 (over roughly 3 months) or about 42% off what I would have paid National Grid. And the system cost me nothing to install (I actually got a $1,000 Tesla-owner check from them).
They also have an estimated cost savings on the front page when you log in but it’s totally incorrect:
The mistake they made here is that they’re assuming your electricity rate doesn’t change over time. My electricity rate rose significantly after I signed up for SolarCity and because of that I’m getting a larger savings than what they’re reporting.
Monitoring
Monitoring happens online through MySolarCity.com. The interface is geared more towards new referrals than for actual owners of their system. The section I use most often is the Power Guide.
Power Guide gives an hour by hour break out of your energy generation along with the weather pattern for that day (ie. how much daylight, cloud coverage …). Hovering over each colored bar will show you the energy generated per inverter. The data can be downloaded in a CSV format and then imported into Numbers or Excel for your own post processing.
If you have multiple inverters, the CSV data for the day is a bit of a pain to analyze since it also includes the energy generated every 15 minutes per inverter.
Power Guide also includes a summary for the year.
The platform also provides a view of your energy generation as it happens in real-time which updates continuously.
Having this features allows you to watch the sun rise and set as viewed through the perspective of your panels which is kind of fun.
It’s not totally accurate as I’ll see data from certain days which look completely off.
API – Not
I’ve set up automated tweets for detection of Tesla Superchargers in real-time and decided to the same by sharing my SolarCity data through my home-grown program that fetches the data from Power Guide and then tweeting it.
It would be really nice if SolarCity decided to create a simple REST API that would allow owners to fetch their data.
Summary
SolarCity makes a lot of sense when it comes to cost savings and they’re able to provide this with no upfront cost to the owner. One needs to analyze the effective savings based on the cost incurred when generating energy through the SolarCity system versus your electricity cost, and then decide if the savings is worth the hassle. I’d recommend filling out their contact form and sign up for a consultation to get started.
The billing and monitoring side of SolarCity could definitely use some improvement, and hopefully this will improve over time as the business continues to grow.
I hope this post and series has been helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comments below.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
