‘I’m sick of this’: Adelaide dad’s $240,000, 18-month Tesla nightmare

An Adelaide dad is considering legal action against Elon Musk’s Tesla after an 18-month nightmare.

Chris Firgaira has had ongoing issues with his 10 Tesla Powerwall off-grid set up for past 18 months. Source: YouTube

EXCLUSIVE

An Adelaide dad is considering legal action against Elon Musk’s Tesla after an 18-month nightmare with his $220,000 Powerwall solar energy installation.

Chris Firgaira, 33, says he is at the end of his tether and simply wants a refund from the electric car giant, which has failed to fix ongoing problems with his off-grid battery set up for the past year-and-a-half.

The IT expert had the 10-battery system installed in early 2020 in order to power both his small business and family home from the property.

But Mr Firgaira says the system has caused nothing but headaches since day one, with “100 to 200 power outages” in the first two months alone – sometimes lasting up to eight hours – numerous burnt-out devices and tens of thousands of dollars in lost income.

“It’s super stressful for the family,” the father-of-three said.

“It was never mentioned that was a risk for us. It’s not something I would wish upon anyone. We’ve had whole nights where we’ve had no power, the system could not get online. We’ve had to send workers home, had business interrupted.”

Chris Firgaira says the ordeal has been stressful for his family.

On its website, Tesla describes the Powerwall as “a battery that stores energy, detects outages and automatically becomes your home’s energy source when the grid goes down”.

“Unlike generators, Powerwall keeps your lights on and phones charged without upkeep, fuel or noise,” it says.

“Pair with solar and recharge with sunlight to keep your appliances running for days.

“Powerwall reduces your reliance on the grid by storing your solar energy for use when the sun isn’t shining. Use Powerwall alone or combine it with other Tesla products to save money, reduce your carbon footprint and prepare your home for power outages.”

But while Tesla claims it can do off-grid 10-Powerwall setups, there are only a handful around the world – most are backed up by grid electricity, papering over any outages – and Mr Firgaira feels like he paid to “be a part of R&D” for the company.

“At the beginning there were actually only three 10-Powerwall installs in the world that were off-grid,” he said. “[They] probably have the exact same problem.”

After moving into the new property, Mr Firgaira needed more electricity than the standard 63-amp feed from the street in order to power both his business and home – but upgrading the grid supply would have “cost us a lot of money to rip up the garden”.

His 10-Powerwall set up has had issues since day one. Source: YouTube

“We were probably spending nearly $10,000 on electricity a year across the business and home,” he said. “We worked out we could do a large solar system which could deliver that 200-amp feed, be able to pay itself off and be off the grid.”

He went with a verified Tesla installer to set up the system, comprising “$220,000 of batteries, solar panels and wiring”. Of that, $150,000 was from a South Australian government-backed solar loan, with another $70,000 in cash.

“Tesla was fully on-board, they said it was going to be fine,” he said.

According to Mr Firgaira, Tesla soon worked out that the system was being overloaded due to having too many Powerwalls connected at once – but after 18 months of attempted firmware fixes, it hasn’t solved the problem.

“Having so many Powerwalls requires the main gateway unit to control all of the Powerwalls, to give them instructions on how much they discharge and charge,” he said.

“The gateway is being overloaded, reaching 100 per cent CPU and RAM usage. There’s too much info when they are all online.

“Any short amount of time [in that state] is enough to bring the system to a halt. The whole system just freaks out and reboots. It can take 10 seconds and it can take half an hour.”

Elon Musk reveals the Tesla Powerwall in 2015. Picture: Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters

In addition, Mr Firgaira says attempts by Tesla to upgrade the system’s firmware have fried or corrupted numerous electronic devices including his front gate, pool pump, airconditioning motor and numerous PCs due to repeated power cycling.

“During these upgrade cycles, the system goes into this chaotic state that takes between four and eight hours, turning off and on 50 times,” he said.

Mr Firgaira has posted multiple videos on YouTube and TikTok, begged for advice on the Tesla Reddit forum and even tweeted directly at Musk, to no avail.

“Tesla please oh please refund our 10 Powerwall set up, I’m sick of this!” he captioned one TikTok video this week showing his pitch-black home during another outage.

Mr Firgaira, whose outdoor sports adventure business Archery Attack was severely impacted by Covid, estimates that he has lost at least “three or four weeks” of full-time government IT consulting work.

That time was instead spent “supporting Tesla and their efforts to try and resolve the issue”.

“It’s just crazy,” he said. “I’d estimate about $20,000 of hardware and personal time lost in damages, on the conservative side.”

The total cost of the batteries, solar panels and wiring was around $220,000.

Meanwhile, Tesla keeps giving him “noncommittal responses”.

“They just say, ‘Thanks for letting us know you’re having an issue.’ I seem to be stuck with engineering,” he said. “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone regarding how we reach a resolution – is refund an option?”

Under Australian Consumer Law, consumers are entitled to a refund or replacement when a product has a major problem.

Mr Firgaira believes after 18 months of failed repairs he is in a position to request a refund – but it will likely require costly legal action against Tesla.

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Tesla please oh please refund our 10 Powerwall setup, I'm sick of this!!!!!!! #powerwall#failure#tesla 18 months

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After news.com.au contacted Tesla for comment this week, the company instead reached out to Mr Firgaira to “discuss compensation”. He said he was told that their goal was still to fix the issue – but he simply wants to “remove myself from Tesla”.

“I was a massive fan but I don’t want to touch their products anymore,” he said.

“Given how long it’s taken for a resolution and how problematic it is, I’m just not excited about Tesla anymore. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth.”

He also wants Tesla to remove from its website that it can do off-grid 10-Powerwall setups.

“They shouldn’t advertise it,” he said.

“The most confusing and contentious point for me is that Tesla seems to express that the off-grid Powerwalls cannot guarantee 100 per cent uptime … [but] this was never expressed to me during deployment, and had I known this, I would not have embarked on this journey.”

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

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