Attention Early Adopters - Tesla Roof Going Up in My Neighborhood!

[Another Reader]

A few weeks ago I noticed what appeared to be a perfectly serviceable concrete tile being removed from a house several blocks away. There have been a few houses in the subdivision where the underlayment failed in spots, so I was curious why this roof was being completely replaced.

About two weeks ago, I saw new and different looking underlayment and some unusual looking shingles being installed on the roof. I thought the shingles were an ugly type of composition shingle at first, which would have been out of character in a neighborhood of tile roofs. As the roof progressed, the shingles were obviously quite different. Metal? An odd form of imitation slate? Finally it dawned on me - a solar roof!

Yesterday I saw the owner out dressing up his landscaping. Turns out he is a Tesla employee and the roof is a "pre-release installation." I suspect he is not an engineer, as he could not tell me the anticipated output of the roof or how Tesla solved the problem of firefighter access to the attic space. He said the Tesla people would be out to go over the roof with him once it is finished and the City has signed off the permit.

I looked at the Tesla website. Didn't see power production numbers, but the roof and solar features have some type of 30 year warranty.

Will be interesting to talk to him once the roof is up and running.

 

[48Fire]

Yeah, keep us posted. My wife is obsessed with Tesla roof, but doesn't look cause effective at the moment.

 

[jazz4cash]

Any updates? So are these designed to look like asphalt shingles or clay tile, slate, or what?

 

[Another Reader]

The installers hurried to get it done before the first rain. Had a few wires of some kind on the roof, but weather tight. Finished a couple of days later.

The tiles are glass or something similar and are designed to look like asphalt shingles. They are black. A couple of more designs are in the works, including tiles that will emulate the clay S tiles of Spanish architecture and also ones that will look like slate.

https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

ETA: The estimate to replace my roof is a little over $100k for a 2500 SF single level house with 40 percent solar tiles. Maximum solar is 50 percent to meet setbacks and other code requirements.

 

[brett]

I read an article that researchers are working on something similar for glass in high rise condos/office towers.

Amazing if they can get this to fruition and production in a cost effective manner.

Our city has placed solar panels on the entire roof of a large community centre. We live in the snow belt but have a very high number of sunny days. It is a one year trial. If it proves cost effective it will be rolled out to all public buildings. Comments to date indicate that it is a very successful program.

These new technologies and the new economy is fascinating. Almost wish I could start my working career over again.

 

[ERD50]

...

Our city has placed solar panels on the entire roof of a large community centre. We live in the snow belt but have a very high number of sunny days. It is a one year trial. If it proves cost effective it will be rolled out to all public buildings. Comments to date indicate that it is a very successful program.

....

I'd be interested to see the math on this. There is enough experience with solar that a prediction/estimate of annual output ought to be very close to actual annual output. Unless there is something wrong with the installation, the variable would the weather (cloud cover, and near zero output after a snow, and can stay zero for weeks until the snow melts or blows off).

How are they measuring 'success'? From what I've seen, unless you are in a very high $/kWh area, payback is questionable.

If subsidies are figured into the payback period, I find that an odd definition of "success". Would the people who contributed to the subsidy, but got no economic benefit consider it a "success"?

-ERD50

 

[IBWino]

This type of roof seems very expensive relative to other solar options.

One of the more interesting Tesla solar products is the "Powerwall" battery storage product. It's not much bigger than a card table, and apparently two of these can power a small home for up to seven days.

 

[brett]

Solar is becoming more and more common where we live. That is not to say that it is yet a commonly used technology but it is gaining speed exponentially. Part of it is that the duty of solar panel imports was eliminated. Our local technical institute has a waiting list for their solar technology programs. Employers are apparently having a challenge to hire qualified people.

My understanding is that the City is looking for a break even. I have read that the current break even for solar is about 14 years, for geothermal it is 18 years. But these time frames change with technology advances and with fluctuation energy prices. What is interesting is that we have several new home projects that are advertising the use of these technologies as a sales attribute.

Approx. 45 pecent of our electricity is generated by coal. The balance natural gas. The goal...to eliminate the coal fired generation plants in five years. This is attainable, and is in fact underway, through the move to natural gas fired and to solar.

 

[ERD50]

...

My understanding is that the City is looking for a break even. I have read that the current break even for solar is about 14 years, ...

OK, I think a 14 year payback could be achievable, depends on lots of things, but it a reasonable ballpark. I'd still like to see their math, I find these numbers often don't include opportunity cost, or interest on the bonds if money was raised that way.

Approx. 45 pecent of our electricity is generated by coal. The balance natural gas. The goal...to eliminate the coal fired generation plants in five years. This is attainable, and is in fact underway, through the move to natural gas fired and to solar.

Solar is unlikely to do much to eliminate the coal. Solar is producing during the hours of higher demand (good in many ways), but that means the utilities have their coal plants going to meet that demand, and they fill in the rest of that high demand with NG (more expensive fuel, but can also be ramped up/down faster to meet demand changes). So if slar knocks down the peak a bit during the day, it is the NG plants that will be throttled back.

It would take a LOT of solar to knock out the NG and get down to the coal baseline. If it got there, they could throttle back the coal a little, but coal can only be moved slowly, and not a lot, so they still need to keep a good % of NG going as a buffer to demand changes.

Near me, they put in two very large solar arrays, covering the large, flat roofs of two large schools. And the combined peak output is around 800 KW. To put that in perspective, a typical coal plant is rated at ~ 800MW (24 hours a day if needed). So it would take 2000 school rooftops like that, to match the output of just one coal plant. And of course, that's only around noon on a clear day, less in the earlier AM/PM, and less over the seasons, depending on latitude.

And of course, there is no viable storage system, so when you get a few cloudy days, what are you going to do without the coal plants? They would need to install a lot of new NG plants to fill that space.

Solar is great in many ways, I just find people overestimate what it can do for us on a larger scale.

-ERD50

 

[Midpack]

https://www.tesla.com/support/solar-roof-faqs

(Superficially) answers a few of the questions in the thread?

I read about them a few months ago, sounded interesting until I saw the prices. I’ll have to let the ecochic community prove them out...

 

[brett]

What surprised me this summer, while driving through farming areas, was the increasing number of solar farm panel farms that we saw in farm yards.

One Hutterite community near us has switched their large chicken/egg barns to solar. Not certain if this is exclusive however they claim that there is a payback. They are very smart business people and I have little doubt that if this is the case other producers will be following their lead.

Coal generation is being phased out where we live. It will be replaced primarily by natural gas generation. We have a huge excess of natural gas. This has been underway for some time but the timing of replacement has been moved up significantly.

 

[brett]

What surprised me this summer, while driving through farming areas, was the increasing number of solar farm panel farms that we saw in farm yards.

One Hutterite community near us has switched their large chicken/egg barns to solar. Not certain if this is exclusive however they claim that there is a payback. They are very smart business people and I have little doubt that if this is the case other producers will be following their lead.

A colleague of mine built a home with geothermal. He claims a payback of 18 years. I really don't know anything about this but we see increasing signs of it's acceptance so I would assume that the payback period is getting shorter.

 

[brett]

What surprised me this summer, while driving through farming areas, was the increasing number of solar farm panel farms that we saw in farm yards. We have a very high percentage of sunny days...300 plus

One Hutterite community near us has switched their large chicken/egg barns to solar. Not certain if this is exclusive however they claim that there is a payback. They are very smart business people and I have little doubt that if this is the case other producers will be following their lead.

A colleague of mine built a home with geothermal. He claims a payback of 18 years. I really don't know anything about this but we see increasing signs of it's acceptance so I would assume that the payback period is getting shorter.

 

[travelover]

What surprised me this summer,.......

What surprised me this summer, .........

What surprised me this summer,........

Whoa! Bumpstocks are illegal on the post button.

 

[ERD50]

https://www.tesla.com/support/solar-roof-faqs

(Superficially) answers a few of the questions in the thread?

I read about them a few months ago, sounded interesting until I saw the prices. I’ll have to let the ecochic community prove them out...

It's a little hard to tell, but it sounds like this sort of gets other people to pay for some of your roof.

They mention that the tax credit applies to the cost of the solar tiles (some tiles that would be shaded will be non-solar). So assuming that a solar roof tile is more $ than just putting a solar panel on an existing roof, in effect it seems that the tax subsidy is applied to that part of the roof as well.

It reminds me of an article I read, stating that even if you are OK with these solar subsidies, they should be based on the estimated annual output - not on the cost of the system. That makes good sense to me. Why should we care about the cost? It's actually a bit of a disincentive to drive solar costs down.

-ERD50

 

[Aerides]

OP can you post a pic of your friend's house/roof? We've all seen the pretty ones on the Tesla site, but seeing a "real life" one would be nice too. Obscure angle if needed for privacy, etc.