Slashdot Mirror
Tesla's New York Gigafactory Kicks Off Solar Roof Production (bloomberg.com)
In an email Tuesday, Tesla said that its manufacturing of the long-awaited electricity-producing shingles began last month at a factory in Buffalo built with backing from New York State. It comes more than a year after Tesla unveiled the shingles to a mix of fanfare and skepticism. Bloomberg reports: The appeal: a sleek, clean solar product, especially for homeowners seeking to replace aging roofs. The tiles -- from most angles -- look like ordinary shingles. They allow light to pass from above and onto a standard flat solar cell. Tesla, the biggest U.S. installer of rooftop-solar systems, piloted the product on the homes of several employees. The company expects to begin installing roofs for customers within the next few months.
Tesla started production of solar cells and panels about four months ago at its Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. New York committed $750 million to help build the 1.2 million-square-foot factory, which currently employs about 500 people. The plant will eventually create nearly 3,000 jobs in Western New York and nearly 5,000 statewide, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in 2015.
Tesla started production of solar cells and panels about four months ago at its Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. New York committed $750 million to help build the 1.2 million-square-foot factory, which currently employs about 500 people. The plant will eventually create nearly 3,000 jobs in Western New York and nearly 5,000 statewide, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in 2015.
Yeah, the glass solar roof will do great against golf and baseball size hail.
You know "glass" is a very wide category that refers to any non-crystaline, amorphous solid, and that not all glass is same as the stuff your windows are made of, right?
I have no problem imagining glass tiles resisting hail. Some windshields can resist these, and they are much larger and thinner than tiles. They also hold together after being broken.
It is not really an engineering problem. It's more about economics and aesthetics, as well as how much of a penalty there is compared to regular panels of the same size.
The Lord of the Rings movies cost my neighbours and I $50 million for instance.
And combined with a pittance of advertising from the tourism office the increase in tourism has injected several times that back into the New Zealand economy. But sure, focus only on the "cost" to the taxpayer without looking at what investment you bought.
Sure not everything works out as well as LOTR did for NZ but using that as an example of something bad is incredibly daft.