Buy your solar roof today!

[MillCreek]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/11/527930243/tesla-begins-taking-orders-for-its-solar-energy-roof-tile-systems

I will be interested to watch this in the future.  A solar roof connected to a Tesla powerwall to feed back into the system or go off the grid is an intriguing idea.  The payback period sounds pretty long, though.

[Fly320s]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/11/527930243/tesla-begins-taking-orders-for-its-solar-energy-roof-tile-systems

I will be interested to watch this in the future.  A solar roof connected to a Tesla powerwall to feed back into the system or go off the grid is an intriguing idea.  The payback period sounds pretty long, though.

I'm watching this, too.  I like the idea of the Powerwall and not being grid-tied, but Tesla charges a premium for their brand. 

[Ben]

I'm watching this, too.  I like the idea of the Powerwall and not being grid-tied, but Tesla charges a premium for their brand. 

I've been talking about roof tile replacement solar panels for years. A much more efficient approach compared to stupid giant solar nodes that lose like 30% of their energy in distribution.

I'm definitely keeping my eye on the technology. From the fiscal side, it's a bit overpriced right now, but I'm guessing it will be a different story in five years, especially in new construction vs retrofitting.

[wmenorr67]

Imagine first hail storm.......

[Ben]

Imagine first hail storm.......

I'm betting they'll hold up better than a bunch of current roofing options.

[MillCreek]

The other thing I wondered about is getting up on the roof to clean gutters, retrieve Frisbees and what not.  I wonder if the tiles can be walked on, and how slippery they would be.

[Ben]

The other thing I wondered about is getting up on the roof to clean gutters, retrieve Frisbees and what not.  I wonder if the tiles can be walked on, and how slippery they would be.

Interesting consideration. I think back when "solar roads" popped up, whatever material they used there was non-slip, which it would kind of have to be for a road.

Birdman needs to check in and give us a rundown on potential tile cell materials and their energy efficiencies (or lack thereof) related to surface roughness.

[dm1333]

Nice, but I could build a house for what they are asking for the whole shebang, I'm still planning on solar panels and a bunch of golf cart type batteries.

[Andiron]

Gonna wait on this one until the market provides me with an option to not give Musk money.

[MechAg94]

I was wondering how these tiles would hold up to hurricanes or just tropical storm winds.  I just had to re-roof my house last month.  It did not cost anywhere near $40,000.  I am sure they will find some people to buy it. 

I am intrigued by the idea of an entire neighborhood of houses with solar roofs connected together in a grid, but that would be hideously expensive at that cost per house. 

[K Frame]

I was wondering how these tiles would hold up to hurricanes or just tropical storm winds.  I just had to re-roof my house last month.  It did not cost anywhere near $40,000.  I am sure they will find some people to buy it. 

I am intrigued by the idea of an entire neighborhood of houses with solar roofs connected together in a grid, but that would be hideously expensive at that cost per house. 

Obviously that's because you put a dumb roof on your dumb house.

Had you put a smart roof on your smart house?

That would have been smart.

And expensive.

[HankB]

. . . Tesla charges a premium for their brand. 

Isn't "Tesla" actually Serbian for "Apple?"   

[KD5NRH]

Birdman needs to check in and give us a rundown on potential tile cell materials and their energy efficiencies (or lack thereof) related to surface roughness.

If you get very rough, you end up bouncing a lot of the light off in less useful directions.  Plus doing the whole roof adds in a lot of inefficiencies unless you have a single-pitch roof facing south with nothing shading any part of it.

ISTR Tesla actually saying at one point the PowerWall wasn't suitable for an off-grid type backup, and that it was designed simply to level out the high load of charging the car so you wouldn't need some insane service rating to handle a large transient drain when your overall usage was still fairly normal.

[Ben]

Sorry, KD5 - I forgot that was your job. :)

I'm kinda curious what the true current cost of a whole roof setup would be vs what was quoted by NPR. Tesla is one of the biggest welfare queen companies in the country these days. I have to wonder how much taxpayer money went into development.

[KD5NRH]

I'm kinda curious what the true current cost of a whole roof setup would be vs what was quoted by NPR. Tesla is one of the biggest welfare queen companies in the country these days. I have to wonder how much taxpayer money went into development.

Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.

Figure usable surface, and roughly 40x55 inch modules for a normal install, and using 275W modules, we're around 2.85 a watt all in. That's a turnkey on grid system, including the paperwork. Off grid has a lot more variables in terms of instantaneous loads, daytime vs night loads, etc. Figure a bare minimum of $5k extra for full house backup, and more if you want a true off grid system.

[Ben]

Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.

I actually meant what would the price per sq ft be if you factored out the taxpayer handouts to Tesla, e.g., would a $48K roof actually cost $90K in "non-subsidized" dollars?

Certainly there is always going to be some subsidizing of new technologies, and up to a point  I don't have a big problem with it (e..g., the space program / Apollo program examples) but my understanding is that Tesla excels at getting government handouts.

[Scout26]

Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.

Figure usable surface, and roughly 40x55 inch modules for a normal install, and using 275W modules, we're around 2.85 a watt all in. That's a turnkey on grid system, including the paperwork. Off grid has a lot more variables in terms of instantaneous loads, daytime vs night loads, etc. Figure a bare minimum of $5k extra for full house backup, and more if you want a true off grid system.

And electricity
 here is $.0779 a KWH which gives one a 36 year ROI based on KDH's $2.85 per KWH.   And that's assuming that you can go 100% off-grid and never have to use grid power.  Also that the glass and batteries don't degrade over time (they do).  I have skylights in my dining room and I can see the dust and dirt left on them by each subsequent rain.  So unless you go up and "wash" your skylights after each rain, you are not going to get "100%" of the available power from them.    And let's not forget about the batteries.  Those have so long before the charging and discharging take their toll and need to be replaced.  Look at you cell phone battery life over time.  It get's shorter and shorter between charges as time goes on.  Same with your car battery those are good for what, 4-7 years at the most??

And that's with the .gov subsidies.  Sorry, but solar is not economically viable for the average resident consumer.   In certain situations (areas that are closer to the equator, get less cloud cover/bad weather, and an uneconomical to connect to the grid, and/or small(ish) power demands), it makes sense.  But overall, it's not there yet, and until they develop solar cells with a much higher output per cost, chances are it won't be. 

[KD5NRH]

I actually meant what would the price per sq ft be if you factored out the taxpayer handouts to Tesla, e.g., would a $48K roof actually cost $90K in "non-subsidized" dollars?

Not sure what the costs on those tiles are, but to stay well under $3/watt, we're watching for container and larger deals on quality modules.  A fair number of those are cases of solar distributors or large EPCs going under and the manufacturer needing to unload 500kW-8MW worth of modules they no longer have a full price buyer for, so we get them for less than the regular wholesale on junk we wouldn't touch because they want fast cash and nobody else is in a position to pay $2-3M on delivery.  I can't see it being feasible without being pretty brand agnostic and/or buying substantially lower grade PV.
For a while, we were doing retail-level surplus, but since we've stopped marketing to residential (we will still do some, just not worth the effort to maintain a sales crew to sell 5-10kW jobs when it's only maybe 3-4 times as much effort to get a commercial or industrial site buying 10-400 times as much.  When 90kW is a small job, getting a smoking deal on 2-3 pallets (15-30kW depending on how they're packed) isn't worth the hassle of trying to match sizes, frame styles, etc.

[sumpnz]

In areas where you sell your excess power to the grid the payback is more like 10 years, even here in rainy/cloudy western WA.  A) you don't have a "Powerwall" or other battery storage to pay for, and B) the power company is required in most places to pay you 25-100% more than the retail price of the electricity you consume from the grid for what you put back during the daytime. 

That without the govt subsidies, especially the inflated rate paid for your solar power, the payback would be never doesn't occur even to the engineers I work with.  They even try to claim the subsidies are nearly nothing sometimes.  Which is laughable, but to keep the peace at work I bite my tongue. 

[zahc]

The problem with "green" subsidies (maybe intended feature) is that everyone is taxed to provide them, but only the rich cash them in. Only the rich buy Tesla and solar roofs that make no sense, but prices go up for everyone. This makes these a regressive tax which progressive left are ordinarily against but not intelligent enough to recognize in action.

[Ben]

Necro update.

Looks like the price is out and a little cheaper than first thought. While nowhere near an asphalt roof, it looks to be competitive with some other common roof types. With a "life of the home" guarantee, I would certainly consider it in a new home. If the material is as strong as it's purported to be, I'd look at it if only a smaller percentage of the tiles were active solar.

I still haven't seen anything about the slickness of the material, so I'd still hire someone to do just about anything that involves walking on the roof.  

Actually, comedy aside,  I wonder how you would mount stuff on the roof, or if you could.  I assume you would, in those places, have to replace the solar tiles with some kind of "drillable" material? Something like AC, you could just remount at ground level, but, for instance, I have a microwave dish at the top of my roof. I'm not sure you could drill into the Tesla roof to bolt in the mount. I'm kinda thinking that while the material is as strong as they say when in one piece, once you do something like drill into it and then apply some shear force (like wind) you might crack the tiles.

https://www.inverse.com/article/31438-tesla-solar-roof-price?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=on_site&utm_campaign=mobile_article-footer


Edit: Digging in a bit, it looks like they factor a ~$10,000-$15,000 tax credit (depending on square footage) into their price, so without the tax credit, I think it's still higher than other roof types.

[Fly320s]

Edit: Digging in a bit, it looks like they factor a ~$10,000-$15,000 tax credit (depending on square footage) into their price, so without the tax credit, I think it's still higher than other roof types.

Oh, yeah, much higher price.  Tesla factors in the tax credits and the energy costs saved over 30 years to compare it to asphalt shingles.

Also, the solar ties don't get installed on the entire roof.  You only get as much as you need to run the house, up to about 70% coverage.  I think the remaining area gets similar looking, but non-functional, tile.  Maybe those tiles can be drilled or nailed.

[dogmush]

Much Much higher price.  I put my home info into the calculator.

Asphalt roof (Tesla's estimate): $17,400

Solar Roof(40% solar): $81,600
Tesla PowerWall(2 ea for AC): $12,500

They decide that my roof will make $79,100 in electricity over 30 years, and that I can get a $21,300 tax credit.  Which makes break even something like 20ish years over a normal roof.  Assuming the cost of electricity is right (and doesn't change) and the roof and batteries actually last for 30 years.  FWIW, my ENTIRE electric bill for the next 30 years is $72,000.  So Tesla thinks that this roof will make everything i could possibly use, and enough left over to sell.

Or they'll finance it for me for 4.5%APR and $369/month.  I'm enrolled in Florida Power's averaging program (they average out a years usage, divide by 12 and charge me that amount per month for the next year) and my power bill has been within $10 of $200 since I moved in.  So for not quite double my power bill I can get a roof that will not quite provide all the power I need.

And I can pay Tesla 4.5% for the next 30 years.

I figured out why Elon Musk is rich.

[Ben]

I think the remaining area gets similar looking, but non-functional, tile.  Maybe those tiles can be drilled or nailed.

From what I got out of the article, the non-active tiles were the identical material, just with no embedded photovolatics.

Well anyway, I'll be interested to see another price comparison five or so years down the road, maybe when the tax credits potentially end. Or somebody else does the same thing for cheaper.

[Brad Johnson]

I'll pass... for now. No viable reason to throw that much at such a system out here in the hinterlands where electricity is $0.08-$0.10 per KwH. In places like Cali and NY where they pay upwards of half a buck per KwH and get yuuuuuuuge tax credits to boot, maybe.

I'd like to see them installed out here in Hail Alley to see just how durable they really are, and just how committed Tesla is to standing behind that "lifetime of the home" warranty. I'm betting there is an Acts of Nature get-out-of-jail-free clause in there somewhere.

Brad