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Tesla's Highly-Anticipated Solar Roofs Go Up For Pre-Order Today (inhabitat.com)
Kristine Lofgren writes: Get ready: Tesla's ground-breaking Solar Roof tiles are available for order in the U.S. starting today. In typical fashion, CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter that the anticipated tech would be available to order this afternoon with installation happening later this year. Tesla's tiles look like traditional roof tiles but they soak up all that delicious sunlight in order to power your home. According to the company, the tiles will be more affordable than typical roofing and can be paired with their Powerwall battery to power a home completely using solar energy.
that's not her real name, is it?
It doesn't matter one bit. Tesla is a fraud company with no viable business plan and that loses money with every car made.
Their stock price is poised to plummet and the company will be in bankruptcy any week now.
Get out now, while you can!
(Disclaimer: Isn't this what everyone says, when a Tesla article comes up?)
... would sink USD$70 for a roof ? He's mentioning that it wouldn't cost more than an asphalt roof, but that's only assuming very optimistic energy savings, and government subsidiary. Quote I got for my roof are in the $5k range, for a 20 years lifetime. The tiles are only warranty over 30 years, so an asphalt roof would cost $7.5k over the same period of time...
The comparison stands up for a comparison with high end 50 year tiled roofs.
Not your typical roof retiling with shingles.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In Colorado at least, there is a limit to the amount of solar energy you can produce. We discovered this when we put our panels up. It's something like 2xdaily maximum of use based on a couple of years of power bills. So you might not be able to do your whole roof in these things anyway. I like the idea, but some of the municipal restrictions get in the way.
The calculator just told me that I'll see a savings of $100 over 30 years. I think I'm going to wait for fusion to become a thing.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
EEVBlog #938
We have a pitch of 8 and a pretty large multilevel roof, this calculator tells me that a 50% coverage Tesla roof + battery will cost me $54K with the tax break, down to costing $20K after 30 years. That's still more than a shingled roof would cost today, and to be comparable to a fancy tiled roof I guess I'd have to wait until I'm very, very old.
Anticipated by his brother ?, Solar City was as good as dead without being bailed out by Elon, shame Tesla investors had to pay for his families business failures, its still doomed to fail, there is way too much competition from the people that actually make the panels for Elon (China), as for their "Powerwall" its just a metal box full of Panasonic tech with a Tesla sticker, the market would do better to skip the middlemen and buy direct from the manufacturers and not the sticker men.
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(no association, only a company I purchased from)
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Last year I replaced my roof with a conventional asphalt shingle roof. These were timberland lifetime warranty shingles (really a 25 year warranty). Quoted roof size was 21 square (2100 sq ft) at a cost of $12,600. This is on a single story hipped ranch with 4/12 pitch, ice and water up 2 rows, 2 layer tear off (old roof) cutting in a ridge vent, and adding a chimney cricket (use google).
Tesla quotes $68,700 for this same roof with a 30 year warranty. Run some numbers... (and I'm going to ignore government incentives)
Tesla claims a $18,600 savings in energy. If I was able to take out a solo mortgage at 3.92% for 30 years on $50k for this roof it'd cost me $85k in the end, well offsetting the $18k savings and putting me $17k in the hole.
Lets run the numbers the other way. Say I had the difference ($50k) laying around and I wanted to invest that at the rate I'd pay for the roof in the above example ($236/mo for 30 yrs) in a monthly compounded account you'd accrue $142k after 30 years.
I love the idea of widespread renewables, but I can never get the long term financials to play out in their favor.
Even without ANY solar panels, they're roughly costing 4x the price of a 'regular' roof, once you select 70% solar, you're looking at 10x the price of a 'regular' roof.
And for that I save about $1k/year, it's a very poor investment. Get a metal roof and 'regular' solar panels, the same amount of energy for less than a quarter of the cost and the same 30-100y lifespan.
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I believe Elon's most ground-breaking technology will be Boring.
$50k for a new roof is not remotely comparable to the ~$7K it cost a few years ago for a traditional roof (paid for by insurance, due to hail damage)
Even if it could completely eliminate my electric bill (which is unlikely)(and which would require the additional $7k battery) that only saves me $100/mo - which means it would take be 47 years to pay this off, and even then only if the financing rate was 0% (also unlikely)
As wonderful as an idea as solar roof is, at the prices so far, its completely infeasible for anyone in the middle-class.
As was said elsewhere, a neat toy for the super rich. One can only hope that if lots of said super-rich install these, and want to sell excess power back to the utility, that it might actually drive electric costs down for everyone else. But that's unlikely too, since the power utilities will have to upgrade facilities for bi-directional power, and will want to recoup that cost, and still make money.
Currently my house is covered in cedar shingles which have lasted 30 years and will probably make another 10 with a little encouragement. I got a quote for a replacement at $50k installed so if this is $70k for my house then it's only slightly more. Yes, I will gladly pay 50% more for something which will probably last longer plus it will give me free solar energy.
You're right, you can get a roof for $5k. I could replace the tiles with a tin roof tomorrow for a fraction of the price. Of course, it would destroy the look of the house... so I guess it comes down to how important that is for you.
I haven't done a proper survey, but I'd say most roof coverings in Europe are teracotta tiles, clay tiles etc. There are a few slate roofs, some thatch and a few other materials. There's no way these tiles would look any good on any of those except maybe the synthetic slate roofs. Then there's the cost... way more than a few flat panels (and probably still more than panels sunk into the roof line). I'm sure I don't need to point out that a lot of European roofs have been up for a hundred years and are still watertight, so we're going to need more than a 30 year warranty.
However, for an "i am rich" statement, these'll do great ;-)
According to the company, the tiles will be more affordable than typical roofing
I'm curious as to how they make solar panels cheaper than roofing tiles.
not wealthy enough to own a home with a roof I can solarize in Silicon Valley anyway.
I'm waiting to hear the Gigafactory is producing enough of the larger format battery cells so as to have available sales to hobbyists.
I see that lots of people here have played with the calculator, and here's what seems to be the upshot:
With subsidies and power generation taken into account, if you live in a sunny place, a conventional roof and a Tesla roof will cost you about the same. The Tesla roof is better looking and will stay tight for far longer than 30 years, even if the photovoltaic cells themselves start getting weaker. The big downside is that you have to invest lots of money upfront, but hey, at today's interest rates, it's not like leaving it in the bank will make you rich.
Realistically, it is a luxury item, and buyers should still expect to end up down a few bucks. But the point is that it's a few bucks, not some astronomical sum. Californians who remember the near-brownouts of a few years ago will also take comfort in the extra independence that this kind of roof+battery system provides. And for the few bucks you should expect to lose overall, you get to support the early efforts of a good US company that's really trying to do a good thing. The revenue that your roof generates for Tesla in these early years for the company will help them scale up faster, do more research, and bring down prices faster. You might not benefit from any of that directly, but it's clearly a good thing. Many will judge it to be worth the few extra bucks.