I run six Model Ys. We have passed two million kilometres fully electric. Tesla makes the best car I have driven. That is why I ask a question that should not exist: how can a company able to sell a Model Y that changes your life fail at something so simple as commissioning a Powerwall and honouring the warranty on a premium product?
This is not a forum post. It is a Powerwall 3 we installed in August for a private customer in the Valencian Community, which failed from the factory, and a manufacturer that admitted the defect… then asked for thermal pictures of the roof. Meanwhile a company of thirty people picked up the phone, swapped the battery and left the house running. Tesla Energy did not.
1. The car is Tesla. Energy is not
I have written about FSD on Spanish roads. I hacked my own car to measure it. 140,000 km a year. We arrive on site in a Model Y or a Model 3. The customer sees the car, sees the charge, and Tesla sells units on our referrals. For me Tesla vehicles are still the best on the market.
The Powerwall should be the same obsession applied to the house. It is not. The car changes your body. The home battery, when it is born wrong, leaves you in the dark between a protocol and a blank portal. That gap — between the Model Y and Tesla Energy — is what I cannot get my head around.
2. Commissioning a Powerwall is not “quick”
A premium product in 2026 should hang, update and work. The Powerwall 3 does not. It ships with stale factory firmware. Commissioning is not a torque job. It is a session:
- Tesla One, Gateway, comms, diagnostics. A liturgy a certified installer knows by heart and that the customer did not ask to pay for.
- Without internet, there is almost no unit. Updates, logs, escalation, Job Check Out: all of it goes through Tesla’s cloud. On a finca or in a village with patchy coverage, the premium battery is an expensive cabinet until someone brings a 4G router.
- A Deye hybrid or a Felicity IP65 does not ask for that religion. You install it. It works. If it is born wrong, it is changed. Tesla charges for the logo and leaves you tied to Tesla One.
The “quick” setup of a Tesla Energy product is not quick. It is slow, dependent and, when it fails, useless. That, in a car, Tesla would not allow. In a home battery, it does.
3. When it fails, the premium warranty evaporates
In September the unit tripped. Arc fault. Defect. Diagnosis on site. PV disconnected. On 16 September, Installer Support EMEA acknowledged an equipment fault. That should have closed the argument: product, not roof.
The next move was to ask for the panels to be inspected with a thermal camera under load. Thermography of a roof that was no longer feeding the unit that was tripping. They admitted the factory fault. And then they asked us for pictures of the roof.
The customer did not want a patch. He wanted a new unit. Tesla offered a limited RMA: patch the isolator. Repair in pieces. Delay. That is not the warranty of a premium product. It is a protocol that treats the European installer as the default suspect and the customer as someone who can be made to wait.
4. The Partner Portal loads blank and nobody picks up
The certified installer opens the Partner Portal to see how the case is supposed to be handled. It loads blank. Nobody picks up the phone. The file exists — CI01EEB8CD — and support hides behind useless bureaucracy.
On atodosol.es I told the case with the company: no amounts, no customer data, with the question to Elon. Here I tell the personal doubt. How a brand that has made me sell cars, and that I myself drive every week, can forget the owner of a Powerwall the day the unit is born wrong.
5. Thirty people, 24 hours. Hundreds of thousands, silence
A Todo Sol is a small company. In-house team. Zero subcontractors. The phone is picked up on Saturdays, Sundays and at four in the morning. Not because we are heroes. Because the customer who calls you on a Saturday is the one who builds a company. If a Deye or Felicity unit is born wrong, the unit is changed. Full stop.
Tesla Energy, when the Powerwall fails, stalls. The premium customer is left between a voicemail and a blank portal. One of the most valuable companies on the planet cannot do what a thirty-person firm does at dawn: pick up, diagnose, replace, leave the house running.
The question is not whether a small company can give 24-hour support. The question is how Tesla cannot. Or will not. The effect is the same: the Powerwall owner, the day there is a problem, is forgotten.
6. On 26 September we changed it ourselves
We did not wait any longer for useless protocols. On our own authority, we replaced the defective Powerwall 3 with a new unit. It worked immediately. System up. Solar charging the battery. The roof, suddenly, was no longer the suspect.
That is what the warranty should have done the day after the fault was admitted. A small company did it. Tesla did not. That is why A Todo Sol is pausing new Powerwall installs. That is why, for now, I do not recommend it. The batteries we do install — Deye, Dyness, Felicity 16 kWh IP65 — are at atodosol.es/en/batteries/.
7. The doubt that will not go away
I am still a Tesla car person. I still put kilometres on a Model Y. I still think FSD, when Europe bothers to homologate it, is one of the best things I have driven. And I still cannot understand how the same brand can build that… and then offer a patch, a blank portal and a roof as scapegoat when a premium battery is born wrong.
If this reaches someone inside Tesla Energy, the question is one: is this how you defend Europe? A Powerwall that fails from the factory gets replaced. The rest — thermography, isolators, empty portals — is a disgrace wearing a Tesla logo. A small company should not have to teach you how to pick up a phone.