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Why Tesla's New Solar Roof Tiles and Home Battery Are Such a Big Deal (techcrunch.com)
On October 28th, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk unveiled the residential "solar roof," consisting of glass roof tiles with integrated solar panels. Not only are they more durable than traditional roof panels, but they offer efficiency that is 98 percent as good as traditional, photovoltaic panels. The company also announced the Powerwall 2, a home battery that can store 14 kWh of energy, with a 5 kW continuous power draw, and 7 kW peak. It's designed to store the energy from the solar roof during day to power your home at night. Darrell Etherington via TechCrunch explains why these solar roof tiles are such a big deal: It's easy to dismiss the aesthetic import of how Tesla's tiles look, but it's actually important, and a real consideration for homeowners looking to build new homes or revamp their existing ones. The appearance of the tiles, which come in four distinct flavors (Textured Glass, Slate Glass, Tuscan Glass and Smooth Glass) is going to be a core consideration for prospective buyers, especially those at the top end of the addressable market with the disposable income available to do everything they can to ensure their home looks as good as it possibly can. As with other kinds of technologies that are looking to make the leap from outlier oddity to mainstream mainstay, solar has a hurdle to leap in terms of customer perception. Existing solar designs, and even so-called attempts to make them more consistent with traditional offerings like the above-mentioned Dow Chemical project, leave a lot to be desired in terms of creating something that can be broadly described as good-looking. Tesla has been referred to as the Apple of the automotive world by more than a few analysts and members of the media, and if there's one thing Apple does well, it's capitalize on the so-called -- halo effect. This is the phenomenon whereby customers of one of its lines of business are likely to become customers of some of the others; iPhone buyers tend to often go on to own a Mac, for instance. For Tesla, this represents an opportunity to jump-start its home solar business (which it'll take on in earnest provided its planned acquisition of SolarCity goes through) through the knock-on effects of its brisk Tesla EV sales, including the tremendous pre-order interest for the Model 3. Tesla's solar tiles claim to be able to power a standard home, and provide spare power via the new Powerwall 2 battery in case of inclement weather or other outages. Musk says that the overall cost will still be less than installing a regular old roof and paying the electric company for power from conventional sources. But Musk's claims about the new benefits of the new solutions don't end there. Tesla's tiles will actually be more resilient than traditional roofing materials, including terra-cotta, clay and slate tiles. Solar roofing, Powerwall and Tesla cars taken together represent a new kind of ecosystem in consumer tech, one that carries a promise of self-sufficiency in addition to ecological benefits. Tesla has already tipped its hand with respect to how it intends to make vehicle ownership a revenue generator for its drivers, rather than a cost center.
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What's up with that? Is Musk creating a new line of solar cash machines? Funny acronym.
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I saw the announcement, and sure, the roofing tiles LOOKED nice, but there was absolutely no mention of their efficiency, or how they would connect to each other. Elon however did go out of his way to demonstrate that there was some kind of "micro-louvre" layer that hides the solar cell from view unless you're looking at it straight on. The people in the crowd clapped, and I just shook my head, because that would actually REDUCE the amount of sunlight it can be exposed to.
Another demonstration was where they dropped a 10lb weight on each of the classic roofing tiles and then a solar tile. While the solar tile didn't shatter into shards like the other tiles did, I bet the underlying pv cell was no longer operational after that. Then you would have to either manually bypass it in the circuit, or replace it. Either way, if you're climbing up on the roof to do that, you might just as well replace it.
My last concern is (as always) how would this system perform in a northern area. I live in Minnesota, where 1/3rd of the year is dark, and roofs are covered with feet of snow. We don't see a whole lot of Tesla automobiles here either. How does the new Powerwall 2 in your garage hold up to -20f degree winters?
>> it intends to make vehicle ownership a revenue generator for its drivers, rather than a cost center
Why wallow in the ditch with money - I'm sure the power will so abundant that we'll all find it too cheap to meter.
>> For Tesla, this represents an opportunity to jump-start its home solar business
Seriously, I know you need it to keep the Fed money flowing, but please dump the home solar BS and just concentrate on the one thing you do do well: build electric cars. Otherwise Telsa could easily become the next DeLorean.
In a way that is largely irrelevant (impact of a heavy dense object), and entirely ignores the most common roofing material - asphalt shingles.
Asphalt or fiberglass shingles aren't all that tough. In general, the higher the pitch of the roof, the longer they last. On a low pitch roof such as mine, 25 year shingles last 10-15 years. Just how it is. I've had branches come down and damage them. Get enough damage, and you better hope they still make the same color after a few years - uness you don't mind a trashy looking roof. Even the replacements you should buy - I have several bundles sitting in my shed, will look different for a few years. And having replaced my roof shingles twice since I bought my place - they aren't cheap.
Quasi-permanent sounds damn good to me.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah. There's no _real_ reason why you can't have an EM-quiet, physically small inverter... they'll just be more expensive than shitty small ones, or one large one. If I have to pay more for a system that'll perform better in the case of partial failure and won't also shit RF everywhere, I'll do it.
By making solar a competitive solution, the US has encouraged a competitive market for solar manufacturers, who are coming up with innovative products. Mass adoption can be trusted to drive down costs due to economies of scale. If you think that solar will eventually be viable, what is the problem with investing in it now?
In the longest term, solar power seems like an inevitable necessity. The Sun supplies too much energy for it not to be a major component of our energy production. From that perspective, insisting on this technology spending another few decades as a laboratory curiosity (like fusion) seems a little shortsighted. Development is going to come faster if there's money to be made doing so. If that's the future we want, and we can afford the subsidy, we should continue to subsidize solar power.
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