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Tesla Will Sell Solar Panels, Powerwalls At Home Depot (bloomberg.com)
Tesla is bringing photovaltaic panels and Powerwall batteries to U.S. retail giant Home Depot. According to Bloomberg, "The tech pioneer is beginning to roll out Tesla-branded selling spaces at 800 of the retailer's locations. The areas, which will be outfitted during the first half of this year, are staffed by Tesla employees and can demonstrate its solar panels and Powerwall battery." From the report: Lowe's -- the second-largest U.S. home-improvement chain, after Home Depot -- has also been in discussions with Tesla about selling its solar products, said people familiar with the situation. At some point, Home Depot may also offer Tesla's much-anticipated solar roof, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. [The products] will be highlighted in high-profile displays, which are 12 feet tall and 7 feet wide. Some locations will be fitted with visual demonstrations that show how the products work.
The solar roofing products are more interesting to me because they're not a "retrofit" tacked onto a house that was never designed for said product. When you're building a home you have to put a roof on either way, so with a well-designed solar roofing product (similar installation labour and design constraints), it's pretty much a no-brainer to go with it. While the solar shingles won't beat asphalt on price, they're reportedly priced similar to clay tiles and the like - and they should have tile-like lifespans, if not better.
Combined with a Powerwall it gives you A) timeshifting (beneficial if you have time-of-use power rates), a grid-tied inverter (incl. selling back to the grid), and a home battery backup (simple grid-tied inverters go down when the grid goes down and you use your solar; with a battery backup and secondary signal to drive the grid-tied inverter, however, you can get full power in the day and keep a limited subset of your appliances on at night until the grid comes back up.
I'm in a place where there's no sun all winter and grid power is both cheap and clean, and the house I'm building is underground anyway... so it's not for me. But most people aren't in my situation.
It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.
have an opportunity to see what TESLA warranty and support is like. Side note, short tesla.
"Tesla’s Solar Roof, which is just now hitting the market, is about $52,000 for an average home."
I'm not sure where the affordability (i.e., volume market viability) threshold is for this type of solar roof, but I imagine that it's less than $52,000, probably way less.
Sounds like an apartment complex with a pool to me. The waste pickups every week day kind of gave it away, plus that's a lot of city noise.
Yeah, 52 grand is pretty expensive. And by investing in your house you are making your property taxes go up, so you will pay again. Elon Musk had this comment: "The economics are not yet compelling where housing and utility costs are low and property taxes are high."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sleasca/2017/05/16/tesla-solar-roof-cost/2/
Tesla is arguing that the roof defrays its own cost by generating electricity; and if you live in a sunny area and put in enough solar cells, the roof will pay for itself (and actually return a profit eventually). But with time value of money it's not a good investment at current prices.
So, right now, this is a roof for rich people who don't mind dropping a chunk of money that will take a long time to pay back. If you are building a mansion that will cost over a million bucks, why not throw a Tesla roof on it? It would be less than a 5% increase in cost, the roof is durable and looks nice, and you can feel that you are helping combat climate change. And if your neighborhood loses power, you can still have lights on in your house.
For people like me, and you I'm guessing, this is just too pricey right now.
Remember how Tesla's first car was a toy for rich people. Baby steps. If this roof product does well, they can ramp up production volume and bring costs down.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely