Florida is actually a very UN-friendly market for grid-tied Solar in the US… despite great solar exposure, and high energy needs with air conditioning. The local Utilities have done a good job blocking customer-owned grid-tie Legislatively and with regulatory red tape. Along the same lines, sadly, as Arizona. Utility Laws and management vary widely from state to state, and many are stuck in the ‘old school’ business plan where they think they can only make money by producing the energy, thus work hard to block any 3rd party from feeding in energy to ‘their’ local distribution grid.
Telsa battery wall is quite different than Tesla (Solar City) Solar division. The Solar PV arm has an aggressive marketing and Lead generation engine, selling/installing the cheapest equipment possible, and making their money by Financing the residential deals, with Lease s if the can since that allows them to retain the tax credits. The financing terms are somewhat predatory, and generally only pencil out in markets that have expensive electricity, and reasonable grid-tie regulation. Their Solar division bails out of ‘difficult’ markets, and focuses on high-margin areas… which is why they have no presence in FL, AZ, and recently left NM.
The Tesla ‘battery wall’ product is quite separate from PV… it is designed to be ‘ac-coupled’, charge itself during off-peak periods from the grid, and the take the home essentially off grid during peak periods until the internal batteries are exhausted, then re-connect to the grid in the next off-peak period to recharge. Or, serve as a ‘generator’ during grid outage… but can only recharge if the home ALSO has Solar for extended outages. The current battery wall product is designed to be ‘plug and play’ such that multiple units can be added in parallel to increase battery capacity, charge rate and discharge rate (each unit has 12kwhr usable battery capacity, and may be charged/discharged at a max of 5 kw). The company I work for has just signed up to be an authorized Dealer in NM for the battery wall, and the current plan is to sell/install for about $15k USD per unit.
There are at least 3 ‘battery wall’ products to consider if you are looking for either daily use to manage peak/off-peak electric cost, or as grid outage ‘generator’. Tesla, Sonnen, and Panasonic.
For PV, my opinion is that most of the ‘front-sheet collection’, or commodity panel, technology is pretty much the same; yielding the same performance, degradation, and warranty. Choosing between local installers one should look at both price, and local referrals/testimonials to determine how well the installs go. The only outlyer in the PV module market is Sunpower; with significantly different physical design yielding higher efficiency, less degradation and less failures over time enabling a 25 year parts and labor warranty that is unmatched in the industry. Initial cost for Sunpower is usually a little higher because the modules themselves are almost 2x expensive as the cheap ones from China/India/S.Korea… but the long-term value always pencils out higher. Sunpower is not available ‘everywhere’ as they are sold only thru authorized Dealers.