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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.
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.
Totally not a press release. The marketing department at Tesla is truly top-tier.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
OK but can you at least learn to spell "atheist" correctly?
Mostly random stuff.
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.
If Tesla is making the panels in USA, it will benefit by the tariff on low cost panels from China. But I don't know where Tesla makes its panels.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
what happened to direct sales? i mean if you can sell a car direct and fight for that right...why not this?!!
Okay if you put up a partition in your mom's basement its not "building a house underground" Agree with the rest
I know when I see the A/C install corner I walk right by. I pretty much walk by all these "displays". But much like email phishing, somebody must stop and buy, otherwise it would stop.
How do you know they were shooting for "doing"? Could have been "How you do all those sexy drunken games when your roommates aren't in". Those apostrophes can be surprisingly stretchy.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
will be highlighted in high-profile displays, which are 12 feet tall and 7 feet wide
high profile
At any rate it will be nice to actually see what the product looks like up close and touchable - they will have the actual product, or at least a small version of it, on display and not a poster, won't they?
Meanwhile, people who paid the $1,000 to pre-order a solar roof from Tesla 9 months ago are being told it will be another 5 to 8 months.
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
I'm going to buy some to power My Tesla coil.
If you live in a place with hail, high winds, fires, etc and would use a clay tile, then those roofs have similar costs to this. As such, Tesla is by far the much better deal.
OTOH, if you live in a place where you have simple shingle or even cedar shakes, then chances are this roof is a bit much for you, for now.
I live south of Denver and we are one of the hail capitals in the world. When next hail storm hits and destroys our hail resistant shingled roof, we will switch to this so as to drop our 5000/year insurance, with 2000 deductible and bring it back to 400/year with 500 deductible.
Windbourne (moderating).
Why the fuck are we allowing ACs?
A simple solution would be to drop ACs to -1 right from the gitgo, and then moderators (like me currently), would then have to decide if they are worth taking our of the trash. In General, I am forced to waste too many points on so much trash here.
And when I am not moderating, the last thing I want to do is deal with ANY AC unless they had something intelligent to say. I would even like to be able to set a level for ACs vs all named. For named, let me view them at 0. For ACs, 2.
Sad.
Its value is in new construction hence why they are getting an end aisle demo in the home improvement stores. In comparison to a brand new roof on a brand new house, the price is comparable to standard construction. It's not cost-effective in a retrofit because it replaces the decking, underlayments and several other features of a conventional roofing system which you'd have to remove and throw away on a retrofit. Those system changes are what bring its cost into line with conventional roofing systems. Though not as cheap as asphalt it's cheaper than clay or concrete tile and near the price of a metal roof and it's got similar durability to cement tile or clay.
It's a competitive product if you are building a new house and want solar, it saves the cost of all the racking and other costs in a solar installation by placing the solar cells under the roof while being essentially cost competitive with a conventional roofing system. This combined system ends up being signficantly cheaper than a conventional roof and external solar panels because the racking and heavy protection systems on a conventional panel aren't needed.
Because idiots like you never have anything intelligent to say.
The apostrophe is being used to indicate a slight pause that is not large enough to split "doing" into two separate words. This comes from the stereotypical accent in which the words "How you do'in?" are usually spoken. For the full effect "you" should have been emphasised somehow as well.
have you got any research that shows that?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
1. Will the products be physically in stock for you to buy, load in your truck and take home? Or will it just be some sort of display where you have to order them and then wait?
2. Will they be anywhere near in a price range that someone could buy without taking out the equivalent of a 2nd mortgage?
I think you need to try reading better. Nowhere did I say that asphalt and clay tiles are equivalent; I said precisely the opposite. And nowhere did I say that clay tile and asphalt roofs have similar labour. I said that solar shingles and clay tiles should have similar labour with a well-designed solar roofing project, which is absolutely true.
It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.
You're correct in saying that clay tiles are not equal to asphalt. They are typically 25% to 35% more costly in materials, but only about 5% more in terms of labour. However, the advantage is in lifespan and durability. Clay tiles are fireproof, roofs built with clay or concrete tile in mind have stronger joists (the most commonly overlooked extra cost) so while they shed snow better, they also stand up better to the weight of snow from big storms. Typically, clay or concrete tile has twice the lifespan of asphalt.
However; the parents point wasn't that asphalt and clay are comparable. It was that PV shingle systems are comparable to clay roofs and even then, he was only claiming they were comparable in upfront cost. (and I don't know if he is including the subsidies many areas offer in that comparison) With the PV shingle systems available now, a integrated PV system is about the same in labour and joist costs as asphalt shingle. PV shingles are about the same weight as 35 yr asphalt per m^2, but come in larger sections, much like some metal roof systems. The big catch is, although they cost roughly the same as clay or concrete tile, I am not completely convinced they offer the same durability and longevity. Current PV panels only have roughly a 20 to 25 year lifespan before the output drops too far. And all the systems I know of use a clear plastic layer, not glass as you see in the bigger stand alone systems. Because of that, I expect their fire resistance to be lower and for the plastic to yellow over time, accelerating the drop in output.
In order to do a proper comparison, you really need to sit down with a local professional installer and look at construction costs (with labour and material listed separately), applicable subsidies and tax breaks, expected PV output at your latitude and so on. It's my professional opinion that a PV shingle system makes good economic sense in far more builds than their are actually being used for.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
How Much?
Is there any cost-effective use for these sorts of things in climates like mine (northeast Ohio, on the edge of the primary Lake Erie snow belt) with significant cloud cover almost year-round? Not trolling. I really am curious. The answer was a definite no in the past, but perhaps that has changed?
Nonaggression works!
The market is the same people who can buy a Tesla, pay cash, get the rebate. They can afford tile roofs, so they can get solar instead. Government pays, Elon reaps.