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What MKBHD Didn’t Say About Solar

5 min readAug 1, 2023

MKBHD, aka Marques Brownlee, recently posted a 1 year anniversary video about his Tesla Solar Roof and Powerwall experience. A pretty decent video. There were a lot of numbers to convince you, the viewer, and himself, that it was worth the 9 year pay back period.

Back in 2018, we installed a 10.4 kW Tesla solar panel system (not solar roof) with three Powerwalls for roughly $55K before tax incentives. Over the years I’ve come to think of the “cost” of a home energy system quite differently. Maybe I can convince you too.

If you do decide to order a system for your home, and don’t have a referral link from a friend, feel free to use mine: http://ts.la/william5655.

Cash or Loan

When we purchased our system, we chose to use Tesla Financing. There were a few reasons.

#1: Lower upfront cost than cash. Just 10% down to get started. IIRC, we got a 10 year loan.

#2: Since solar offsets your utility bill, you will partially pay the monthly loan with the savings from your normal electricity bill…

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William Wen
William Wen

Written by William Wen

25 years in tech | 13 years @ Google | Tesla Investor since 2013 | www.linkedin.com/in/wil-wen | twitter.com/wilwen2

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