I had serious misgivings when Tesla/SolarCity announced a switch of focus to building-integrated PV. Historically, BIPV is where a PV technology goes to die after it's failed to compete against incumbent module designs.
But these have far better aesthetics than previous BIPV efforts. They look better individually and they aren't clumped in one odd shiny patch on the roof like past BIPV. Search for images of solar shingles and you'll see what I mean about previous attempts.
On Friday's thread someone here mentioned the 30% tax credit for solar installations. That made the financial proposition click for me. If the whole roof qualifies as a solar system, that's probably how they can make it financially attractive. Unlike past module-atop-roof or even patch-of-roof-BIPV offerings, you'd be able to get a tax credit for the whole shebang. Add the usual solar motivation of reducing retail electricity purchases, plus getting a roof that's more durable and attractive than the typical asphalt or wood shingles of American roofs, and it looks like Tesla/SC may have a better offering than competitors for new home builds in areas with lots of sun and expensive electricity. It wouldn't take a whole lot of builds per year to soak up all the capacity of their Buffalo factory.
Just a few days ago I was saying that I couldn't see how any of the solar installation or manufacturing companies were going to build decent, defensible profit margins because panels and installation services are so commoditized. This could be the advantage that was missing: assuming decent patent coverage, SC will be able to have a monopoly on these modules and their installation for a long time to come.
I think this is exactly right. There is some fudging with the cost (this seems to be a common theme with Elon) by pre-including savings and rebates Etc, but the fact is this makes a solar roof something different than a set of panels across an existing roof. The durability question, and the weight per sq foot will be interesting.
That said, the combination of the PowerWall and the roof might actually make it more amenable for power companies since you could grid tie "for emergencies" but lower your total overall power budget and help avoid the evening surge (max grid usage in the Bay Area is about 5:30PM, solar is off-line and people are coming home from work, firing up appliances (like cooking dinner, getting a beer from the fridge which turns on the converter) environment systems (heating/cooling) are activating to bring the house to the 'occupied' temperature, Etc.
If your house uses its PowerWall for all that energy you'll appear as a much smoother non-load on the grid.
Tar shingles are pretty damned heavy. If you've never experienced it, try picking some up at your hardware store, they have a bit of a weigh budget to work with. And then if you want some sympathy for your roofers, imagine slinging a box of those while standing on a diagonal surface 20 feet in the air in the afternoon sun. Yikes.
I'd almost worry more about about the size of the panels making installation problematic in a light to moderate wind, and having them sail off the roof into the neighbor's car.
Relevantly, building a solar roof once, rather than adding solar to a standard roof, would eliminate these deaths (assuming building a solar roof is no more dangerous than building a standard roof) and if the roof tiles are genuinely more durable as Musk claims, they could end up with negative fatalities.
I would like to see the original inputs that went into the calculation myself. I've searched quite a bit without being able to locate them. As far as I can tell, it's calculated by dividing the (very low) number of acute fatalities from civilian nuclear accidents by the (very high) number of terawatt hours generated by civilian nuclear power plants. If I'm correct that would kind-of be cheating because they're not counting "mundane" fatal accidents (forklift crushing, arc flash, falls from high places, etc.) that also happen on nuclear sites. The spirit of the comparison that fossil combustion is far more dangerous to human health than nuclear power is correct, but the exact number given for nuclear may be a bit too low.
Additionally, I'd like to see fatality numbers for solar overall, not just rooftop solar. In the US at least more solar capacity is installed at ground-mount plants than on rooftops. The rooftop number itself could probably use an update; increasing module efficiency, if nothing else, is going to reduce the number of rooftop trips required for a given capacity, hence the number of accidents per terawatt hour.
Yes, though both nuclear and solar require significantly less primary materials extraction than fossil generation. The highest impact from coal is actually air pollution affecting the general population rather than on-the-job deaths of miners.
Let's remind the whole picture here: We want to come back to global greenhouse gases emissions on 1990, because they were balanced by nature's absorption. It often happens that the cost of building solar panels, transporting them to the location, disposing them before their estimated time-to-live and getting rid of all their chemicals emit more carbon than we save by using electricity from the solar panels.
Another bias is: By making energy cheaper, does it encourage the use of said energy, thereby offsetting the gains? "I've saved 20% of carbon emissions compared to having a petrol-based SUV" tells another story than "I don't have an SUV".
Greenhouse gas ecology is hard. The only way to avoid doing those analysis would be to tax carbon emissions for the side effects they produce. Then we would be able to just by the cheapest, which would also be the most energy-efficient.
1) Anthropogenic CO2 emission rates in 1990 were greater than natural sinks could offset.
2) Under any reasonable set of assumptions, rooftop solar PV has significantly lower emissions per kWh than the cleanest fossil sources. In 2014 the IPCC estimated a median value of 41 gCO2-e/kWh for rooftop PV generation vs. 490 for combined cycle natural gas generation.
3) Perhaps some of the CO2 avoidance will be squandered eventually as solar becomes cheaper, thereby encouraging use of more electricity, but so far total electricity use is uncorrelated or even anti-correlated with the presence of rooftop solar generation. "Rooftop solar" and "energy-thrifty building construction/operation" cluster together, so far, rather than displacing each other.
Perhaps, although i'm quite skeptical about a difference in distribution and installation. And even in the case of manufacturing, one must only consider the delta between them rather than full cost of manufacturing solar.
You are missing the point. Super long term sustainable energy is very hard. 100% of focus needs to be on just getting the mass market this much closer.
Carbon neutral isn't even in the ballpark of highest priorities given ALONE how difficult this first step is. Carbon neutral will be the obvious next goal in ~1 decade when EV cars, home batteries, and solar panels are more commonplace.
Going for carbon neutral now is equivalent to over investing in solar panels 2-3 decades ago.
As far as I know consumer electricity usage has been on a downward trend for a long time.
Computers, TVs, washing machines etc are increasingly using less power. I think there are limits to how much we can waste. E.g. when food prices drops to half we don't buy twice as much food.
There was a good New Yorker article within the past 2 years that talks about the increase in consumption. One example it used was refrigerators. Back in the 60s, something happened where they got cheaper/more power efficient. Instead of a gradual reduction in power, it increased because people just put the old one in the basement to freeze more stuff. Same is true (I think) with traffic. If we were to make, say, traffic signals more efficient by synchronizing them, or somehow increase capacity on freeways, people would just drive more. Not saying all resources are like this, however.
This is called induced demand, whereby something that is plentiful will be utilized since it was built. Commonly, people say "Build it and they will come!" which is all the more true for roads.
Building a freeway or expanding it actually creates more traffic, since it lowers the cost of driving (time & gas) and when building a new freeway you actually create new traffic flows in unexpected ways. Building extra lanes actually causes more cars than those lanes could ever conceivably handle to pour onto the roadway due to the latent demand [1], and the most viable path forward is to create other avenues for said latent demand for transport to be serviced.
Ideally, you will build better mass transit infrastructure, with a sizable light rail network and feeder bus lines in the suburbs. Traffic will not get better due to this in any way, shape or form, but it will lessen the number of additional cars that end up traversing the streets every year, and prevent some additional load.
What this will do though is prevent your local economy from strangling itself in its own traffic, since your community is now providing more than one transport option. The only enemy of transit is density in the US, where we require massive swaths of land be set aside for unused parking that ultimately severely disadvantages every mode of transport, since it forces cities to be more spread out and dense construction to be very costly (underground parking construction costs are insane vs building above ground sqft).
> If we were to make, say, traffic signals more efficient by synchronizing them, or somehow increase capacity on freeways, people would just drive more.
That will just clog roads more, doesn't matter how much you mechanize it. Self driving cars will induce massive amounts of demand piled atop the latent demand that already exists for driving on nearly every arterial and freeway in cities, and even if everything was perfect, with cars driving at an optimal 45mph with minimal stopping distance, you can only move 2200 cars an hour per lane [1] and that scales non-linearly, as you add lanes to highways and arterial streets, throughput drops exponentially due to lane switching.
Now, self driving cars could get us closer to that 2200 cars an hour figure, but there is so much pent up demand for a magical faster option (latent demand) that when those marginal efficiency gains occur, there will be a flood of new vehicular traffic on the roads that will fully negate said efficiency gains, and likely exacerbate said issues since the tolerance for time spent in traffic will significantly increase for autonomous vehicle owners due to being able to do another task while your car drives for you.
Indeed, that's the point I was hinting at: self-driving cars have the potential to increase carbon emissions, even the electric ones, due to increased usage and congestion.
Has Elon Musk publicly addressed this issue at all?
Self-driving cars are inevitable, so they may as well be electric. But if Tesla pulls the industry into the self-driving age before the majority of cars are electric they could actually be doing more harm than good. Perhaps self-driving cars should be required to be electric.
If we'll use them as "self-driving taxis" more than personal cars — if you're not attached to a specific "your" car — some nice things might start happening:
(1) multi-modal mass transit/car mixing becomes more attractive.
(2) transit can optimize for high-frequency mini/microbus formats rather than least-number-of-employed-drivers. this is less optimal from road-occupation POV but can be a win if it makes more people actually use transit?
(3) required parking space drastically decreases. Reaping the benefits will take a LONG time, but we'll be able to go back to denser cities?
I'm not sure if that's the point you are making, but I'm 100% certain that self-driving cars will increase the number of cars on the road, not decrease it.
From personal experience, I can tell you that I wasn't as anal about turning off lights in unoccupied rooms after switching to lower wattage bulbs. If someone left a light on in the basement, I'd figure it wasn't worth the extra trip down the stairs to turn it off -- especially if that light burning 24x7 only cost me a buck a month.
Although as a counterpoint, after getting a hybrid car, I'm not really making extra trips, even though it is saving me about $150 a month in gas. But that is more due to time budget than anything else.
It often happens that the cost of building solar panels, transporting them to the location, disposing them before their estimated time-to-live and getting rid of all their chemicals emit more carbon than we save by using electricity from the solar panels.
You think this happens with modern panels? Even low estimates put the EROI at something more like 4, with other people figuring 15-20 (of course it depends on where they are installed. EROI is better in Phoenix than Seattle).
There's another factor as well: for older houses, most building codes require that the roof be reinforced in order to hold the weight of a solar array on top of the shingles. But if the shingles themselves are solar panels, this issue goes away.
>Search for images of solar shingles and you'll see what I mean about previous attempts.
The first 9 images Google returned in the top 2 rows for "solar shingles" have 2 pictures from Tesla/SC's presentation. (~22%). The 3 top rows (13 images) contain 3 images from the presentation (~23%). It looks like you're right about the change to come.
I just made the same search, and indeed several of the top images are from the Tesla presentation.
However, what have surprised me more is discovering that"solar shingles" have been a thing for so much time, and there are already some quite decent looking models, even curved ones. Of course, I have never heard about it. Tesla marketing is really far ahead of everyone else.
I've been interested in solar since I saw a solar powered Casio watch as a kid but haven't kept up with the technology.
The panels are ugly and having to add a panel to get solar energy is clunky. I want to believe, looking at all the devices a smartphone has replaced, that one day this won't be the case.. Then I look at trees, devices that had millions of years to improve solar energy conversion but still rely on solar panels and it calms my passions. But maybe, we could evolve and plug the Calvin cycle into the Krebs cycle! Our skin has a surface of about 2m². We could go solar (would have to walk naked) or cover up and eat food. Maybe will come a time where people who rely on food are the pariahs of society. The "Covered Ones".
I suppose one great revolution would be finding a way to add the photovoltaic effect to materials (paints, fabrics, plastics, etc) or make these materials with the effect embedded. I think there are flexible panels that are being made, but even those look weird. I want it to be a materials property, similar to the antimicrobial property of copper alloys.
The irritating thing with microelectronics is that the die is minuscule and beautiful, but then you have to add pins and pads and a package. Dust is also a problem. It's amazing that a thin film of dust you couldn't even notice without a finger swipe could have such an impact. And then there's the connection between transistors that has to be a certain way.
What would be great would be for the transistor to become a molecule or be packaged in a molecule. Water is water and no matter the phase, the molecules adapt to find their place with respect to each other. The layout needs to be independent of humans' will and answer only to the laws of nature (you don't worry about each molecule when you apply a coat of paint).
Under a rare bipartisan deal at the end of last year, the solar investment tax credit remains at 30% through the end of 2019, then declines to 26% and 22% in 2020 and 2021 respectively. After that, there's no investment tax credit for residential solar.
Its a dodgy business though converting your entire roof to this technology (in its first iteration too). What if a tile breaks? Whats the lifetime on each tile?
Thick glass tends to be fairly resilient so anything that's going to damage these would likely destroy normal tiles anyway. Depending on how modular these things are they should be able to deal with breaks without significant problem just run in parallel like the good Christmas lights which still work when one goes out.
Here in NZ most roofs are corrugated iron, and people love the sound of rain on them. Different cultures...
There is another good reason for our love affair with iron - we get a lot of earthquakes. An iron roof provides a lot of structural bracing, and it's negligible weight provides much less moment than slate or tile alternatives.
Corrugated is only one type. Lots of places around here (Seattle) have metal shingles, and I've never noticed noise when in them in the rain. Perhaps it has to do with how they are mounted and, of course, it rarely rains hard here. It mostly just drips.
Metal roofs are light, long lasting, do not support insects, and don't burn.
This is true, but I've found that there is nothing quite like sleeping under the oddly soothing sound of heavy rain slamming against corrugated iron roofs.
If you factor in a couple thicknesses of plywood, insulation between your rafters and/or roof stringers, and the sheetrock on the ceilings of your rooms, that deadens out most of the noise.
This won't allow a monopoly on the solar market as a whole or even the rooftop solar market, but it could carve out a protected niche with decent margins so the company can actually turn a profit. It's great for consumers that competition in solar manufacturing and installation is so intense, but that also has some downsides in terms of companies being able to afford R&D, plan for the long term, or even remain solvent three quarters from now. The time limited monopoly granted by patents seems like a reasonable compromise between rewarding invention and promoting competition.
Maybe, but one important factor is that having a patent-protected lock-in on a market that has a great deal of potential will certainly make his investors happier.
Yeah people seem to disagree but I find it weird to see Silicon Valley seems to dislike monopolies but constantly builds them. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, really just name any big tech companies and they probably have a monpoly or something very close to one on something. There's no problem with it and the only real way to get the returns that people expect is to create a monopoly somewhere.
I'm sure i'm not the only one who feels like this is possibly the iphone moment of Solarcity/Tesla: an old-ish idea, made sexy and tasty to consumers, together with technology reaching a tipping point(and also Musk again finding a way to maximally exploit government subsidies for clean tech.)
The tesla car itself could count as well, but felt less "design driven" imo. If this fails, everyone will call it obviously due to bad tech. If it succeeds, I'd say it was because the tech was barely sufficient to keep up with the excellent luster.
On a side note, I wonder whether or not the heavy government subsidies will be forgotten in the lore of clean tech, just like silicon valley seems to have forgotten the complete and utter reliance on government funding in it's infancy(or possibly even today)
Another side note: it always annoys me when people insinuate that Musk using government funds is a bad thing.
The government is literally just US....it's our money and a collection of individuals from among us who we've appointed to handle the general administration of us and the space we take up.
Why should American entrepreneurs, particularly ones doing such an outstanding job of moving technology in a positive direction, not get our financial support (a.k.a. the government's support)?
Who exactly is losing out when we support our own business initiatives with our own money?
I imagine those loud objectors would take issue with the idea that the government is "literally just US" - it's much more literally a small minority of us who are deciding on behalf of us what we are to do with our resources. There's nothing inherently wrong with that - the US was always intended to be exactly that - but it certainly leaves room for the represented to debate about the way they should be represented. "Us" consists of people with different ideas about what is worth spending money on, both in terms of goals and effective ways of pursuing those goals, and using the government to allocate funding ignores all that.
It's easy to look at Tesla and SpaceX and see a couple winning tickets in the "give money for technology" lottery, but they are not the only tickets our government has purchased. Consider all the other entrepreneurs who are doing an outstanding job of not so much moving technology in any direction at all but rather lining their pockets while cratering their industry's reputation, or those that make reasonable attempts with interesting but ultimately impractical innovations.
The people who object are generally objecting to the playing of the lottery itself. The most commonly proposed alternative is that these companies should earn the money by providing value in the market or convince investors (who have powerful financial incentives to get it right) that they can do so, rather than by convincing a relatively few laypeople with no real skin in the game to risk other people's money on them.
Pre-emptive disclaimer: yes, I know I've not mentioned any of the opposing arguments here. My purpose in writing this is solely to explain some of the key points (including some of the emotional appeals) in this particular side of this particular debate.
North Dakota pipeline is nice example of an operation receiving a good dose of government funding that arguably goes against the best intentions of the future population
Hey now, we need to get that oil out of the US and into a higher priced market ASAP, hence the need for a new pipeline and the removal of restrictions on the exportation of domestically produced oil.
That way, these large foreign oil companies like BP (owned by Britan's public employee retirement funds) and Royal Dutch Shell can make a ton more dough while also raising prices by a few bucks in the domestic gas & natural gas market.
The government is not literally just 'us.' It's a contentious idea: "government is just the word for the things we choose to do together" was oft-repeated by Rep. Barney Frank. He was repeating it because not everyone agrees.
I think the primary problem of government funding is waste and the potential for corruption. Waste because the government is more immune to profit motive and thus can throw good money after bad for a long time. Corruption because you need to convince some bureaucrats v. all your customers (or whoever the market needs). The flip side is that, done well, you can get things done that no business could get done on its own.
So, if Tesla/cleantech succeeds, nobody will remember government funding as some sort of attenuation or 'asterisk' on the win: it was getting the industry over a hump, but into self-sustaining success. Win all around. The problem is if the government support ends up propping up business models that have no hope of actually being viable when that support goes away.
If cleantech ends up failing, then the government backing that which couldn't succeed in the free market will be remembered. But it's all a tradeoff: we're not going to be perfect every time and should be prepared to accept some misses if we think bootstrap government funding of promising but currently non-viable products is a worthy allocation of taxpayer money.
EDIT: sibling comment has great additional point about market distortion being a problem too.
Perhaps more even-handed libertarian dig is that it's "the things we force ourselves to do together." In that view it's a solution to market failures around externalities and bad game-theoretic outcomes in collective action/decision-making. Free-riders, the tragedy of the commons, that sort of thing.
Go live where there is no government, its great to act so infringed upon by the government in the place in which you currently reside, but you do have choices.
Not saying its a rosy picture to live in an area with no publicly owned infrastructure, or any baseline public services like water, sewer, trash, education, courts, etc, but there are places in Latin America which have legal carveouts for a non-governmentally controlled area to exist, without taxes, laws or infrastructure.
Unless you are willing to live & fight for your beliefs, they are absolutely worthless, Martin Luther King & Cesar Chavez didn't accomplish anything sitting at home, they took to the streets and organized like minded people to stand with them and fight for the way things ought to be, regardless what businesses or government tried to do.
It doesn't necessarily follow from what perilunar or fennecfoxen said that they think 'no government' is the right answer: even if you think the government policy-making wields force, that can just mean the bar for what government should be doing is higher, not that nothing at all ever clears that bar.
Example: one could characterize investment in cleantech as hedge fund-like speculation (other example: US monetary policy), albeit with the dividends paid to the American economy (and some larger proportion to Tesla etc shareholders). I think reasonable people can disagree over whether that is an appopriate action for a government to take (i.e. whether it is in their purview/mandate) separate from whether other issues are (utilities, defense, welfare, etc). A rejection of one is not a rejection of all, and similarly support for one is not support for all.
(Speaking generally: I don't know the specific views of perilunar or fennecfoxen)
More than contentious, tendentious. It's a choice about how to organize your ideology and world-view, but it's presented as an inarguable fact of existence.
It's also what a small left-leaning majority says to defend themselves and shut up their detractors while they inflict their will on the minority over an issue that's contentious (e.g. our recent health care reform).
And you'll notice that when legislation they don't like appears, you'll hear remarks to the effect of "that is not who we are!" (the standard obviously being relaxed when a government does something the speaker disagrees with).
Dude, grow up. You do not have to live under govt rule, if you choose to follow an ideology that would rather see government not exist, you can and should fully adhere to your ideology and move to such an area. They do exist in Latin America and other places, and you are not living your ideology or helping it in any way if you won't support it in the most basic of ways.
I hope it came through in my comment that I dislike the denial of government aid in the creation of a "bootstraps" narrative when people want to argue against taxes, not the making use of government aid per se(otherwise now it's clear).
One valid argument against government aid is market distortion. One example of abuse is farming, where subsidies create a system(as far as I understand at least) where those that have enough land to tick of all subsidies have an edge over smaller farms (in addition to scaling), leading to consolidation and effectively paying land magnates with tax money.
A different aspect(more specific) is that maybe solar is just not ready and should fail, and only the subsidies make it viable, meaning people will have "junk" on their roofs without Solarcity to maintain it if the subsidies fade. However, that argument is only valid to me if coal/oil does not get subsidies currently, which I doubt
A big part is how gov't money is doled out. It forces the gov't to pick winners and losers. And since politics always seems to permeate everything the gov't does, people start to question the decisions.
Even if it's something as straightforward as "green credits", the process can always be perverted to advantage one business over another.
It's a tough balance. Often we (in the US) don't invest, then complain when jobs shift to other countries. We've seen so much bashing of $0.54 billion for Solyndra (a tiny gamble); but now most solar panels are made in China. Need to gamble, but wisely.
Spot on. I'm all for subsidizing industries to incentivize the behaviour we want, but I'm not sure the people who can afford these homes, or $100,000 cars, need it.
They may not need it, but it is worth for the rest of us. Technology becomes much cheaper when it becomes commonplace. If we all pay a bit of that 30% subsidy to rich people, what's the matter? That will allow us to eventually buy it with more than 30% reduction of price without subsidies.
Some people construe foreign military adventures such as Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003 as oil subsidies. Without those, oil markets would be less stable, and consequently oil would be much less attractive as a fuel.
> I'm sure i'm not the only one who feels like this is possibly the iphone moment of Solarcity/Tesla: an old-ish idea, made sexy and tasty to consumers, together with technology reaching a tipping point
Except one ingredient is missing: most people cannot afford one, even if they tried really hard.
He's pitching it as being basically break even, when electricity costs are factored in. My guess is an awful lot of people can afford this, especially for new construction. Certainly enough to keep up with ability to ramp up manufacturing and training of installers.
And then the economies of scale (and hopefully competition) will kick in and it should reach a point where nearly every new house, and nearly every replacement roof, will be solar by default. At least in climates friendly to solar.
IPhone got a lot of attention when it was released, but it was a while before they became common with more than just the early adopter crowd. This might take a while longer for various reasons, but still, this is a big deal.
This has an interesting twist. While it is subtle, people can tell you have it. People like to impress their neighbors. But this one isn't just "look how much money I have" but "look how I am using my money to be a responsible citizen of the planet." If you are going to try to enter the "keep up with the Jones's" race, this isn't a bad way to go about it.
He's pitching it as being basically break even, when electricity costs are factored in. My guess is an awful lot of people can afford this, especially for new construction.
I think this is key - often the pitch that "sure, it's expensive up front but will save you money in the long run" falls on deaf ears when people don't have the disposable income to immediately absorb that large up front cost, but when you're buying a house in most cases you're already taking out a large loan to finance a big up-front cost.
You're aware, of course, that SolarCity's entire business model is leasing solar panels back to consumers with no up-front costs, and a net savings, right?
Okay, so what they do is install the panels on your house for "free" (or some rough approximation thereof). They claim the Federal (and perhaps state?) tax credits on your behalf, and then "lease" the panels back to you. I believe you pay a set monthly fee and are also responsible for your electric bill, though of course the system is sized so as to minimize the bill that you pay the utility. They also maintain the system (cleaning, repairing broken parts, etc).
The advantage, of course, is the 0/low upfront costs.
Whether or not this model works for the roof tile system is another question entirely. Of course, the bill would be much larger, but the tax credit might be larger as well.
I'm not sure how they handle a circumstance in which your income causes your tax credit to be phased out. Likely there's fine print where you have to pony up extra money.
BTW this is now being shifted. They are allocating less and less to outright leasing. Musk said he expects in two years that all of their sales will be either loans by banks or outright full purchases and the leasing business going away.
The way I remember the first iPhone, it was hilariously expensive, yet lacked appeal to business users who at the time were the key demographic for such expensive widgets.
Relative to the benchmark of "People who can afford to buy a home in the US," perhaps a solar roof is not so unattainable. It just has to look great, convey social status, and be durable.
Most US home owners don't pay for their house (or car) outright. The putative purchase price of photovoltaic panels may not be prohibitive even for plebs.
Like any new technology early adopters pay way more, because economies of scale have yet to be achieved. Musk knows this, same with Tesla, he is marketing to a high-income target market first, because they are the ideal early adopters and it's easier to scale down rather than scale up features in a product.
And factoring in subsidies, electricity cost savings over a period 5-10 years, it might be more affordable than you think.
High end models few can afford at first, then slowly moving into the "regular guy" market once the R&D is done and mass production bottlenecks are solved.
"That kind of reminds me of Ballmer's "FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS?" moment."
$500 is not that much more expensive than a Nokia device at the time, and well within the surplus that a good chunk of people have to pay - especially when subsidized by carriers.
$30 000 - $100 000 - is another ballpark entirely in terms of cost. And it has to work out economically or it won't get anywhere, many ingredients are needed to make it work right.
Rolled up into a 30 year loan that turn into a few hundred a month. Much less if you can subtract your electricity and gas bills from that. I remember the biggest turn off for me on the original iPhone was the $70 a month data plan contract. But people bought it.
The timing may be calculated but that's about it. If a product isn't going to work out, that's one thing, but Musk doesn't waste time on vaporware. Notice that Tesla never put a silly will-never-be-an-actual-product car for display at auto shows.
It sounded like this was condensedware/liquidware (what's the opposite of vaporware?), namely that the event had actual houses with actual manufactured, installed solar roofs in the form of traditional roofs. Presumably there were at least four of them, the four tiles pictured. There is a picture of what appears to be an actual house, presumably with a solar roof.
I do feel the same. Musk has its own Jobs recipe. Jobs took bad consumerism, propped up features, slick user interface (material and logical). And peeled plastic. Musk swaps carbon for electric, makes it as stylish as the rest if not more, plus way more sturdier than the rest.
I guess what confuses me is that most people with enough money to drive a Tesla keep it in a garage. I guess most offices probably don't have parking garages in suburbia, but I was surprised to hit control F "garage" on these comments and not see a single mention...
There are lots of upsides for future research and gained efficiency in the future though. Especially as electric moves toward big trucks down the road. (a semi full of solar panels could probably help propel the truck and save fuel etc.)
Your comment is what confuses me. Can you explain how keeping a Tesla car in a garage is related to the parent comment about Elon's product design/marketing/business strategies?
The main source of your confusion stems from misinterpretation of the phrase "Tesla's solar roof" which is solar roofing material produced by Tesla for buildings rather than a solar roof for a Tesla automobile.
I'm a 'comments first' reader myself but TFAs are generally a must read for context and disambiguation before actually wading in.
From a popular perspective - you are maybe right - they 'sexified' something not quite so sexy.
However - I suggest this won't work out like the iPhone.
Why?
Because --> 'new roofs' are not built that often, by that I mean new homes and roofing replacements. And the construction industry has totally different dynamics.
Putting on a 'regular' new roof is expensive. Most people won't consider this tech unless their home is up for a new roof. The other market would be new homes.
So there's a growth/market limit.
Second is price. This kind of technology exists already in many forms. It hasn't been adopted because it's very expensive, and requires some other ugly equipment that has put a drag on PV installation like the conversion technology required to connect to the grid.
The choice to purchase an iPhone is mostly emotional.
The choice in roofing is not. It's definitely mostly a calculation. They are very expensive, and people will look into the long-term conversion value etc.
I'll wager that this new Tesla roof will not be price competitive for current solar/roofing situations, moreover, even if it were - it still might not make sense from a dollars perspective, as the current solar/roof installations basically don't work out economically. It's for wealthier types and/or those with 'green aspirations'.
Finally - these are not things you can buy from wallmart and install yourself. You can't even get your local roofer to do it. Typically, roofers have to be trained on the materials, installation etc.. There is the issue of warranty and distribution for 'new tech' in building - which is slow to adoption. Builders etc. are not 'magpies' like techies. They are averse to new gear, and typically wait for others to figure it out before buying in. Also - they simply tend not to be ver progressive.
Go and ask your local builder if he wants to send his crew to California for 'Training on Tesla's new roof' and his mental calculation will be 'how many of my current customers are asking for it'? And of course the answer will be none.
The fundamental issue with all of this solar tech is that it simply does not generate enough electricity to quite warrant the cost unless all the conditions are right.
+ If it's really sunny a lot
+ Major government subsidies
+ A new subdivision was created with 'all solar roofing' thereby keeping the costs down to economies of scale
+ High electricity prices in the region
+ The grid is fundamentally designed for renewables
Interesting points, thank you. EEVblog agrees with some of them and did the numbers on others, I might link it if I remember(it's bed time here soon)
One thing where I don't agree:roofs being an unemotional decision. Everything is influenced by emotions. All Solarcity has to do isb make it at least feasible for everyone price wise, then having the combination of the (apparently very fancy) French something style+the feeling you are a part of the solution for the planet+the tesla allure will do the rest for a suitable percentage of the market. That is iff the numbers work out enough to not make it an unreasonable choice.
The iphone would have failed at 1500 say. But 500 was barely cheap enough for what people got and felt they got to be worth it.
I'll second that from personal experience, roofs are definitely an emotional decision. They can look great, be artsy, and even cover your house in the most visible of manners.
Source? Roofs last 20-30 years. 125 million homes in the U.S., with roofs being replaced every 25 years means 5 million roofs per year. Triple that for Europe, China, and the rest and you've got 15 million a year. It's a big ticket item so you don't have to capture that much of the market to start hitting pretty serious revenue numbers.
In Europe (or at least the parts I've been in) roofs last much more than that. At least twice as long. Esp in countries like mine (Spain) where climate is much less aggressive with rooftops. And we don't use tar shingles.
iPhone was a platform. As more people bought the iphone,
- the phone became more attractive to 3rd party accessory makers (protective cases, cables, etc) and apps makers.
- the phone itself became more valuable to owners, as more complementary products became available.
- the phone became more valuable to Apple, who could get feedback and make the phone better.
The hockey stick on the analogous factors for Tesla is much shallower. The "complementary products" for owners of cars will be primarily recharge stations. Still few and far between.
There is no benefit to 3rd parties, that I see. No benefit to other stakeholders like utilities. And Tesla itself does not enjoy a growing, self-reinforcing cycle of value, as sales increase. It's really just economies of scale.
An entire charging industry akin to gas/petrol stations is another side benefit. These businesses could be located in "unusual" areas such as multi storey car parks because there isn't the same danger posed by large amounts of liquid fuel. This alone will be an enormous industry.
I'm curious if anyone has stats on what percentage of houses have an unobstructed southern roof (for those in the Northern hemisphere)? My house has seasonally adjusted nanotechnology self-replicating shade "panels" that block considerable sunlight in the spring and summer months (MTBF: 100+ years). The big downside is cleaning up the unused panels in the autumn.
This made me think of something William McDonough said.
"Imagine this design assignment: design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons, and self replicates.
I installed them on my walls. It's great, they automatically install themself on the wall with built in glue, while picking the sunniest spots, and automatically drop the shade panels in the winter to increase solar heating on the house.
I have to remove them from the windows, but otherwise they are mostly maintenance free.
But my MBTF was only 10 years, the first set stopped working in the middle of the summer for no reason after almost completely covering the house, and I had to install a second one (this time with 2 spares, just in case). Luckily the first set delivered the new ones to me for free.
Those numbers sound way off. My house in Redwood City, CA:
1873 hours of usable sunlight
1561 sqft available for panels (ain't no Cave Creek mansion!)
$9000 savings.
I left my electric bill at the default $100 estimate, which is close enough. They only defaulted to 3.5kw system for me, I assume based on my electric costs. 247 sqft. Maybe your costs were too low. There's no way an electric bill on a cave creek mansion is $100/mo. Their rates are lower, but the A/C will kill you. Once I moved the slider to $500/mo it estimates $89,000 savings, for example.
I'm not sure an all-day sun facing roof (here in Australia it's North-ish :-) is as important as you might think. My house is very narrow running North-South so I have two sets of panels facing East and West instead.
Does that mean I get a perfect peak output during the middle of the day? No. But my generation comes on earlier and off later than friends with perfectly aligned systems - which without a powerwall (sadly don't have one yet) that is a benefit expanding the amount of time that I am generating usable power and saving A$0.25c/kWh instead of earning $0.06/kWh for exporting it at peak generation. (fair that in this context we're looking at potentially having a power wall too, but never the less - you lose round-trip efficiency on batteries - about 10% - it's likely to end up fully charged anyway depending on your daytime usage and thus extending your generation time might still be good).
I have 3.5kW of panels (3kW inverter, the max I can get on a single phase supply) and hit about 2.75kW peak generation . I wouldn't mind adding another panel or two per string (on my particular inverter and due to having two parallel strings, it works out fine for the voltages.. but this can vary a lot depending on your system specifications)
</end of not totally scientific ranting>
But also - seriously, the aesthetics. My suburb (Baldivis, Western Australia) has one of the top solar penetrations in the entire country at 57% of all houses (you can see here, it's 5th on the list: http://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-top-solar-states-and-s...) -- and while they're not exactly drop dead UGLY - it sure would be prettier with roofs like this everywhere. Particularly here we have a lot of smaller houses in orientations which mean often they end up being street facing instead of not. So yeah. Not sure how much of a greenhouse effect your roof is going to end up with though, that will be interesting. (here, we have predominantly tile or tin roofing - this shingle like stuff is much less common here than other parts of the world from what I've gathered)
Solar 'Sorb(TM) -- The revolutionary shade technology which keeps you cooler in the summer and warmer in winter. Innovative "cell" technology is at the heart of the Solar 'Sorb system. Proprietary nanotechnology utilizes clean solar energy, water and air to fill your yard with beautiful fractal-inspired spires, that not only look great, but save you money. And there is no complicated setup or programming. The Solar 'Sorb keeps track of the seasons by monitoring the length of day, and adjusts it shade profile to match. Some of the features included in each base model :
The Solar 'Sorb comes in an exciting array of styles, each specifically adapted to your particular environment. And if you have a sweet tooth, you may be interested in our food bearing models which produce tasty and nutritious food packets for you and your family.
You can purchase fully functioning Solar 'Sorb units at one of our many worldwide distributors, or the do-it-yourselfer can order our starter kit pods direct from the factory. StarterPods(R) unfold gradually after installation and provide shade generation precisely where you need it.
Solar 'Sorb is a strong advocates for the environment, and that's why all of our products are certified "Green", and carbon neutral.
I think it's interesting looking at it from the other end - as a homeowner, I can tell you that roofing is an expensive proposition.
If this can be competitive with traditional roofing and have a longer life expectancy, I'd buy in a heartbeat.
It has the potential to displace thousands of tons of asphalt shingles per year with the equivalent of recyclable glass, which is pretty fantastic. The embodied energy of production for the tar hydrocarbons in current roofing materials are pretty nasty, and they don't just disappear when they wear out.
In the launch presentation they were saying that their pricing is competitive with standard roofing, plus the cost of electricity over the lifetime of the roof. And they're also talking about the increased durability, so that's a lot of electricity bills. the initial installation is definitely not going to be under $25k
From my experience, the price of installing solar on 1/4th of your roof is more expensive than installing a full, brand new roof. Beyond that, not all parts of the roof are created equal for solar - some will generated much less energy than others. E.g. a neighbor's tree blocks a fair portion of our roof from the sun.
You can already get a $0 electricity bill without having full roof solar.
I can't see it being anything but a waste of money for the practical consumer.
It's already obvious this isn't targeted at your garden variety practical consumer. As the article points out, the demo'd roofing styles are all luxury roofing.
Maybe they'll have solar and non-solar shingles that look the same, so you can have the solar shingles facing South, but the whole roof looks the same.
Don't forget that rooftop solar panels reduce HVAC cooling needs in summer, and I would bet they also slash blackbody radiation, reducing the greenhouse problem. Absorbing the light ought to be as good as reflecting it.
a 93-square-metre (1,000 sq ft) white roof will offset 10 tons of carbon dioxide over its 20-year lifetime.
Except, unless you are powering a laser pointed offworld, most of that energy is going to end up in your local environment as heat. Or, you meant just your house's greenhouse problem? Running a heat pump or AC would do that.
Yes, but the energy that gets converted into heat is replacing energy that would have come from some other source (fossil or not) that now doesn't have to be consumed.
I'm not enough of an environmental physicist type to know for sure, but I think warm air (produced by various electronics) is preferable to a hot roof emitting blackbody radiation (which radiates at the wavelength that greenhouse gasses absorb).
Roof replacement is quite a dirty business, in more than one sense of the term, and there are regions where whole roofs are replaced by the majority of insured homeowners every 10 years or less. Any dent that can be made in this problem is a good thing, and this looks to be quite a large dent indeed.
> roofs are replaced by the majority of insured homeowners every 10 years or less
Well I was going to be astonished, but Google and Wikipedia seem to tell me US roofs are a consumable and usually asphalt!
Most UK roofs are tile, slate if older, and asphalt shingles reserved for sheds, garden structures etc. Tile lifespan should be 60+ years.
As much as I like the improved aesthetics I don't see the tiles making much dent in the UK apart from new builds. For exising build the UK approach to solar has been to slap panels on a frame over the existing roof. Sadly there are no planning restrictions on bad taste.
I cannot fathom why anybody would build a new house and put asphalt shingles on it. Steel is far superior, and not much more expensive up-front, and likely cheaper over its lifetime. Most asphalt shingles only have a lifetime of 20-30 years, while steel will last double that easily.
Also, I grew up in the Northeast. Snow slides right off steel roofing. It sticks to shingles, especially if you have any ice build-up. Unless you have a relatively steep roof pitch, you have to get up on the roof in the winter and clear the snow off. With steel, you wait for a warmer day, and it slides on its own.
that's bananas, in Australia replacing a roof is really uncommon. much like the poster above in the UK it's usually either corrugated "tin" (actual metal varies) or Terracotta/concrete tiles.
We don't really have any of the "shingle" type stuff. The "Tuscan" glass tile from the Tesla event is the closest looks to the most common tiles here.
You normally don't replace a tile roof unless you get hit by a big hail storm. If these glass tiles hold up to hail better than tile then they would be good fit here.
Corrugated iron rusts out, but it has a pretty long lifespan.
The bigger issue is in many areas you are restricted in what roof material you can use - lots of locations limit you to tiles only.
> Most UK roofs are tile, slate if older, and asphalt shingles reserved for sheds, garden structures etc. Tile lifespan should be 60+ years.
Asphalt for the better quality sheds, corrugated iron for the lower quality sheds:-) Typical UK roof lifespan I've been quoted is around 50 years (I know because our roof is starting to need replacing and was last replaced in the 1970s).
> As much as I like the improved aesthetics I don't see the tiles making much dent in the UK
Actually there is one area in the UK where they may make an impact - conservation areas. The stricter ones prohibit solar panels on street-facing roofs, but may conceivably allow the solar tiles. Plus I suspect that those who live in conservation areas are more likely to be Tesla customers already.
Could be 50. It's mostly a working minimum for the clay deteriorating I think. Even when you see a 20s estate it's uncommon to see replacements, and half of those are rot in the timber or some such. Blocking up ventilation is a great way to cause that rot as some find the hard way. 60s and 70s houses may need earlier - quality wasn't great with some of those buildings.
Great point about conservation areas, never occured to me. The slate looking one is convincing enough for the national parks. The unique pattern printing should appeal to the most fussy NIMBY. Shame they won't last 150 yrs like slate.
They last 30 years, but you replace them every 10 years because the home insurance company demands it. In some areas, roofs older than 10 years are uninsurable.
An expensive roof would be a mistake, even if it can last 1000 years, because you will still need to replace it within 10 years.
In coastal regions of the PNW it is not uncommon to see moss and algae growth start within 3 years of a roof being installed. Replacement can be necessary within 10 years if the problem isn't dealt with.
Yep. That's where I am. Currently getting a HELOC for when the inevitable happens, planning on getting a metal roof instead of this asphalt claptrap. Figure it'll cost 3x as much but last 5x as long.
I've been contemplating the remaining lifespan of this multilayer roof that's been failing some of the carpentry on my mother's roof and wondering about going solar with the next roofing. I wonder how robust these things are for standing on and how they cut around the gas flues and plumbing ventilation pipes and what not. Maybe they deliver blank tiles with no cells on them to cut into odd shapes and what not. If the price difference is close I'd go this route easily.
It seems they'll almost have to have non-solar tiles that match. Currently, most people don't cover their entire roof with solar panels if they have sections that don't get enough sun to make panels there worth the extra cost.
Solar shingles, also called photovoltaic shingles, are solar panels or solar modules designed to look like and function as conventional roofing materials, such as asphalt shingle or slate, while also producing electricity. Solar shingles are a type of solar energy solution known as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).
There are several varieties of solar shingles, including shingle-sized solid panels that take the place of a number of conventional shingles in a strip, semi-rigid designs containing several silicon solar cells that are sized more like conventional shingles, and newer systems using various thin-film solar cell technologies that match conventional shingles both in size and flexibility. There are also products using a more traditional number of silicon solar cells per panel reaching as much as 100 watts DC rating per shingle.[1]
Solar shingles are manufactured by several companies[2] but the two main manufacturers of solar roof shingles are Dow and CertainTeed.[3] Other active companies in the US include SunTegra Solar Roof Systems,[4] and Atlantis Energy Systems (asphalt and slate systems),[5]
There is no claim that "solar shingles" are new, just that it wasn't what people expected Tesla to be announcing. From the article... "Like previous attempts at solar shingles..."
I am not debating this, but this feels eerily like some feature PC/Windows has but when it is introduced by Apple say, tablets becomes the rage. No it does not have to be original, originality is over-rated. Tesla has packaged it well, and to say the least in a non-intrusive and colorful way, just like what Apple (used to do?) does with its products. I looked at DOW solar shingles, there were talk about how unmitigated disaster they were on forums, may be it is just hear-say. Tesla has the power to persuade than DOW, at least for now. Without taking Credit from DOW and others, may be this is the time of Solar Shingles.
Firstly, they look taped on. We clearly see that there are normal tiles underneath, giving the same impression that a piece of cloth would have if a hole in it had been fixed by stitching a completely different piece of cloth on it.
Secondly, they are not properly aligned at the edge. It might be a bit OCD, but I wouldn't expect my wooden parquetry to stop before reaching the wall.
Thirdly, they are reflective. Reflection is great for things you don't want people to look at, like the toilet door (put a mirror on it) or the Oracle HQ. Nobody wants their home to be a huge mirror, if only because the sun gets painfully reflected to you.
> I figure two could just be quality of installation
I think it's more about using the places where the sun shines the most (look at the third before/after photo in that page). Tesla roofs on the other side will have non-solar shingles that look exactly the same.
The shingles themselves look great. The installation is terrible, right over the top of old shingles and not even fully covering the old shingles. It's not edge-to-edge.
Either it was a dumb install, or those "shingles" aren't really roofing material.
Roof top solar is critical for electrification of transportation since more demands would be placed on grid. SolarPV and EV go hand in hand. This product addresses many of the objections about aesthetics of Solar. TSLA has solid vision, hopefully they execute it and execute it well.
Home PV and EV doesn't go hand in hand for everyone that uses their EV to commute to work, though. I guess that represents a significant fraction of the vehicle park.
It might be better to say that home PV and EV and battery storage go hand-in-hand (since that allows you to dump your surplus battery into your car at night), which appears to be Tesla's strategy. It would help if the battery storage were big enough to fully recharge an EV, but that's not strictly necessary unless you do a lot of driving.
Solar panels on cars are another option. I used to think that was a bad idea, considering that an electric vehicle uses vastly more power than solar panels could ever hope to generate. Then I thought about my own driving patterns; On a typical work day, I drive about three miles to work, park in the sun for 8 hours, and then drive three miles home. With an electric vehicle and a solar panel on the roof, I might not even have to plug it in except on long trips. Even if that wasn't true, if a solar panel could save me, say, 10 full charges per year, it's probably worth a little extra weight and cost.
I ran calculations recently on solar panels on electric cars. Taking Tesla's numbers, I figure it about .3 kwh per mile. A car is 5 feet wide, there are about 5 feet on the hood, 3 feet on the roof, and 2 feet on the trunk. So 50 sq feet, at 10 watts per sq foot, is 500 watts total. So 4 kwh per 8 hours, gives you 13 miles range. Or more likely, about 10 miles, once you count charging efficiencies.
My wife and I purchased a house in 2015 and remodel it. The roof is 25 years old and needs to be replaced. We have patched it up and have been holding off because I knew this was coming. Everything in the house is LED and Engerystar, etc. The 2 big power items are the hot tub and the heated floor in the bathroom. My power bill in my area has 3 levels and the 1st level is not enough for any reasonable usage. With the fully efficient house, removing the hot tub and heat floor I am still pushed to the 3 level of pricing which make my bill $300 per month. This as my new roof + the power wall is a no brainer for me. Where do I sign up ;)
This appears to be a great implementation of an idea that's been kicking around a while. I love the detail of engineering that's gone into this and I really hope the numbers stack up to make it viable.
It's the first Tesla product where I've thought to myself "wow, I really want that" and I hope that I'll have a roof like this at some point. However I remain skeptical that the efficiency when taking into account to the manufacturing inputs and compared to a standard roof solar install will make sense.
I do think it's incredibly important to make technologies superficially acceptable to gain mass adoption. That's where I believe this stands above the alternatives, let's hope it pans out.
Disclaimer: I'm super excited about SpaceX (well, space in general), I'm not all that bothered about the Tesla car range, though I hope they release something I like at some point.
I'm curious - I still haven't seen any details on how these are installed. How are things wired - does the wiring run under the shingles themselves? Also, how does it work with odd sized/shaped roofs - e.g.: something that isn't exactly a multiple of 1/2 a shingle?
There are probably electrified tracks which are screwed down onto the rafters, similar to the way wooden risers* are put down for clay tiles to attach to. The tiles attach using metal clips or nails. SolarCity acquired Zep Solar a while back, who designed quick installation solar mounting systems. I assume they're using that team to design something fully integrated and fast to install. You'll probably just snap the tiles onto the rails after they are screwed (bolted?) down. The tracks would just plug into each other like Christmas lights.
They said they're producing plain tiles without panels inside for edge pieces and north/east/west roof faces.
I expect for the odd sized they would have border shingles that match and are easily cut. Wiring seems like one of the hardest things to get right with these, especially given the environmental conditions!
When adding traditional PV panels to my house a few years ago, I talked to the designer about PV shingles. He said the problem is that PVs are black and get hot in the sun. Traditional panels are raised a few inches above the roof with a gap that allows air flow (stack effect) to cool the panel. Also, the panel shades the roof, keeping the attic cooler (less A/C). With shingles, when they get hot, the attic gets hot (more A/C).
That's brilliant. It fixes that huge objection we all have to solar on our houses - and it is not the product itself but that it is a innovative solution to a problem "everyone" has looked at and said "nah I don't want that rubbish on my roof" and nearly turned it on its head
It's just one more example of why discounting Elon might be a bad idea.
I literally haven't seen my panels since the last time I went up on the roof. Granted, this depends a lot on how steep your roof is, but the appearance of the panels did really not go into our decision to install them.
I agree with you completely, but there are people who aren't okay with big black rectangles on their roof (or are married to someone who isn't okay with big black rectangles on their roof). People tend to be emotionally attached to and have strong opinions about the appearance of their house, which is perfectly understandable. Rather than expect everyone to hold the same opinion about the attractiveness of solar panels, Tesla has made a product for those who think solar panels are ugly. If that means some people will install solar who otherwise wouldn't, I think that's great.
The one downside I can see is that HOAs may require the new kind of solar roof, even for those homeowners who would have preferred the old black rectangles (which would presumably be cheaper). Rules about what an HOA can and can't demand will of course vary by jurisdiction.
Classic panels are a little bit dorky. Just a little bit. I actually commented on that when I was watching the video. The shingle panels are much more esthetically pleasing.
Side topic, but I wonder if there's a pivot point coming where household appliances could be offered in DC versions. It would be great to avoid the inverter efficiency loss / point of failure. Could there be a standard DC interior wiring system with line voltage for the fridge / dishwasher / laundry machines and let's say LED lights, phone chargers, etc? The need for AC power is just an artifact of long transmission distances, right?
High-voltage DC is actually more efficient for long-distance transport, and makes it easier to interconnect grids. Efficiency is not why we use AC. Installation cost and history is, because you need converters everywhere you connect it to an AC grid.
Up until recently a lot of standard pieces of equipment weren't practical for HVDC lines. Electrical breakers, for instance: They existed, but tended to have short lifespans. That's because DC lines never go to zero power, whereas AC lines do so a hundred times per second.
Modern technology has changed that. The equipment is still more expensive, but that would be made up for by the reduced transmission losses... if we were starting from scratch. We're not.
DC is definitely better for charging batteries but most of those other appliances don't require inverters. Converting AC into heat, light, or rotation is pretty simple.
Many solar cell installations use maximum power point trackers with an internal high voltage DC bus - you could presumably tap that and distribute it directly throughout the house (often it's also directly attached to lead-acid battery banks, if used). In fact, you can often take ~170VDC and directly power many passive PFC power supplies with it. You still need inverters for AC motors though, which are a big portion of the load (compressors, fans).
I believe the biggest issue right now with internal DC wiring is you need much higher gauge wire, which translates to more expensive cabling throughout the house. You also still need a way to step the voltage for each device, so it's not clear what the savings are. It may be beneficial for lights where a clear standard for voltage can be determined, but everything else will still have it's own requirements.
You can use the same gauge wire if the voltage stays the same. The downside is that all of the switches and circuit breakers need to be replaced with ones rated for DC as arcs are harder to break.
Most DC installations are <50v to take advantage of existing DC powered gear and circuits under ~50v don't need a licensed electrician to do the work (in most locations).
Hope it is insured against golf ball sized hail. If so people in Texas will buy this in droves just for the durability. In not it will never sell in Texas.
So this technology is useless because years of wear and tear will make you need to replace the roof eventually? Isn't that pretty normal for any house?
Texas resident here. There's a guy who's been riding a Segway around my neighborhood looking for weather damage from recent storms, and his pitch to homeowners is that they don't need to replace the entire roof, just the section where things are--or will soon be--leaking.
It's probably more efficient to replace the entire roof at once, and insurers would almost certainly prefer the entire roof to be the same age, but asphalt does have some advantages for situations in which nearly every storm tears up just a few shingles.
Metal roofs are pretty hardy, but sound like a paint can full of ball-bearings even in light hail or heavy rain.
Asphalt roofs are inexpensive. Given that hail-damaged asphalt roofs keep getting replaced with asphalt roofs, I have to think it's some kind of market/regulation/short-term-profit thing.
This is really nice to see an innovation on something "old but new again" like a roof. Roofs are not exactly the industry/product space we see a lot of innovation in lately. The typical asphalt/cedar/steel/terracotta roofs we know of today have mostly been serving the needs of homeowners reasonably well for a very long time.
Tying to beat those materials out on functionality, cost, reliability, and longevity is a tall order, to be sure. Mixing in the ability to grab the sun's energy and use it to power your home and mechanicals and devices is a compelling option. But because electricity is electricity is electricity (To most people) the economics of this are going to be absolutely key.
Whereas the iPhone really did bring significant usability innovations to people's lives, as in the ability to do new and useful things that were previously harder or more annoying in the past, this type of roof doesn't necessarily provide more functionality. Though the heated roof certainly could be useful in cold climates. But again, I think that the economics are going to be very critical to seeing wider adoption for this.
Pet peeve: meaningless projections into the far future. The "battery prices keep tumbling" chart is a complete fiction. They took two data points and extrapolated a smooth e^-x function, which portrays a untruthful appearance of accuracy. Two points fit whatever curve you want to fit. Including this graph is worse than having nothing.
Question: how would I complain to Bloomberg about this?
There's some new houses being built near me that were designed from the start to have solar panels built into the roof. The panels are inset so they roughly along with the tiles around them and the panels themselves appear black so blend in color-wise too.
You can see the panels but they're not actively ugly, which seems a good compromise. This seems like more a Tesla level solution, where you're paying a premium but it's better than a normal roof. The ones near me are the GM Bolt solution, where it's about as aesthetically pleasing as any other generic home and are priced accordingly. It's probably good to have solutions at multiple price points though.
What I find most clever about these roof panels is that is will likely silence a lot of HOA critics. While more and more states are considering "solar rights" laws, it is still better for all involved not to have to fight that battle.
I live in a historic preservation district, with a south-sloping roof. I'm not permitted to put up solar panels because they'd be visible from the street, but these have a chance of getting past the historic preservation authorities. That would be fantastic.
Assuming that everyone uses asphalt shingles, which is definitely not the case. For example, the German Wikipedia article for asphalt shingles describes them as "a typical GDR roofing". Germans tend to prefer clay/ceramic tiles on their homes, which can easily last 50 years and more.
The asphalt shingles are very popular in the USA, which is what I assumed their first market would be, since contractors apparently have to be trained in their installation.
I'm curious. From a global warming + CO2 perspective (and total costs, maybe), are we better off:
- by making mirror roofs that bounce as much light as possible back towards the sky (therefore not trapping heat, and reducing the need for A/C in the summer);
- or by using heat-trapping solar roofs that produce electricity but act as heat-sinks and require more A/C usage in the summer?
And what about shingles that go from mirror to black from summer to winter, to decrease the need of winter heating as well as summer A/C?
What if we take in account the amount of CO2 needed to manufacture the solar roof?
Is there a solution where you just use existing panels as giant tiles instead of putting them on top of an existing roof? I can imagine say a carport, which is tilted so that you don't really see what it's made from (though I've seen relatively cool looking solar panels anyway). Might work on modern new builds too. Seems like there would be a market for that a well as these "fake" tiles that seem sized based on the traditional materials.
It will be interesting to see how it competes against more traditional solar systems. Right now I can get a 10KW system, with an inverter and installation, all for AUD$9000. If Tesla could be competitive at that price point, both in terms of raw cost and the capacity of the system installed, then I'd be all over it. Otherwise I might just go the regular route as not many people look at my roof.
This is an awesome product and a big disruptor. Has anyone done the math on the revenues and profitability for Tesla? On the one hand it will sell for more than the typical 10-20K roof job. But then it is supposed to last 50years. What are the chances that Tesla will even be around in 50years?
The way SolarCity works, you don't own the panels SolarCity does. So ostensibly you would finance the roof and then pay a locked in price per kWh which would be recurring revenue for Tesla even after the roof is paid off.
I would really like something like this, however the roof of my house has a really shallow pitch which makes it unsuitable for tiled roofs, be it glass (solar), ceramic, or asphalt.
I guess panels are still an option, though it would be nice to never worry about the roof again :)
A well made flat roof (for your low pitch) should last close to 50 years. They're commonly more expensive but much more durable than pitched roofing.
I'd probably consult with the solar folks before getting your roof redone though. You'll probably save money if you make sure the roofers and the solar installers are coordinating correctly before either goes to work.
If the solar shingles last far longer than my current shingles (which actually need to be replaced soon), what about the degradation of the solar cells themselves? Traditional PV panels degrade and have to be replaced sooner than many roofing materials.
Most typical failures are thermomechanical fatigue and chemical breakdown of encapsulant and backsheet materials. Musk said that these are made of quartz (vitreous silica?) which has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion and should reduce thermomechanical fatigue on connections. By all appearances these are glass on both sides, no backsheet polymer layer, hence no backsheet breakdown possible. These small modules are going to be more robust against mechanical damage than modules with larger surface areas.
Both Silevo and Panasonic* base their cell technology on n-type monocrystalline silicon, which exhibits negligible light induced degradation over time (an optoelectronic effect which can gradually reduce efficiency of more common p-type cells). The glass-all-around design also eliminates the chances of potential induced degradation. The median degradation rate for crystalline silicon PV modules as a group is only 0.5% per year (meaning 86% of original rated output after 30 years) and these modules look like they can achieve significantly lower degradation rates than that. Poor execution can ruin any concept, of course, but these really look like they could work for several decades.
*SolarCity acquired PV startup Silevo and originally intended to ramp the technology up to gigawatt manufacturing scale in a new factory in Buffalo, NY. More recently they've stated that Panasonic will run the Buffalo factory and the cell tech will be some kind of blend between Panasonic and Silevo; both companies' cell technology are based on heterojunction cell designs on n-type monocrystalline silicon substrates.
Thanks for the informative comment. Tesla/SolarCity and Panasonic seem to be increasingly joined at the hip, don't they? That's be some merger. Who'd swallow who?
To me, the solar roof is the most interesting project coming out of Tesla so far... and of course it combines nicely with their other products. But when will it be available and for how much? I need to replace my roof soon.
Huh? Solar shingles have been around since 2005. Dow and CertainTeed Products are the big makers. Here's a nice example of a house with a solar shingle roof.[1]
There's been an aesthetic problem with mixing solar and non-solar shingles, because the colors didn't quite match. But that was mostly because solar shingles were a retrofit, not original equipment, and not an entire roof replacement.
I think you're missing the point. There is no claim that "solar shingles" are a new concept, just that no one was expecting it to be what Tesla was about to announce.
In fact the article even states "Like previous attempts at solar shingles..."
Everyone knew it was going to be a solar roof. Musk said so. What no one predicted was that what they actually introduced, which is roof tiles indistinguishable from slate or terracotta.
The headline is about the specific Tesla Solar Roof, not the general idea of a Tesla solar roof.
You look to have been downvoted probably one time. I suggest you delete this comment while you still can. The other comment has only been up for 15 minutes. There is still plenty of time for someone else to decide to upvote it for some reason.
Sorry, I should have added that Musk bit as an addendum to my first comment - and it's a reflection from previous experience, not from any activity on the comment I made on this thread.
I could care less about my 'HN karma' -> it's meaningless to me. I made the comment purely in jest.
"Purely in jest" is probably not the right phrasing if it is based on long experience, thus a sincere prediction of the likely outcome.
I get what you are going for, but, my experiences suggest that if you want to take a position that opposes that of the majority view of the group in question, this sort of commentary is extremely counterproductive.
Not that you need to care. I am just someone who likes talking with people and you made the mistake of talking to me, so I am now talking to you. (shrugs)
But these have far better aesthetics than previous BIPV efforts. They look better individually and they aren't clumped in one odd shiny patch on the roof like past BIPV. Search for images of solar shingles and you'll see what I mean about previous attempts.
On Friday's thread someone here mentioned the 30% tax credit for solar installations. That made the financial proposition click for me. If the whole roof qualifies as a solar system, that's probably how they can make it financially attractive. Unlike past module-atop-roof or even patch-of-roof-BIPV offerings, you'd be able to get a tax credit for the whole shebang. Add the usual solar motivation of reducing retail electricity purchases, plus getting a roof that's more durable and attractive than the typical asphalt or wood shingles of American roofs, and it looks like Tesla/SC may have a better offering than competitors for new home builds in areas with lots of sun and expensive electricity. It wouldn't take a whole lot of builds per year to soak up all the capacity of their Buffalo factory.
Just a few days ago I was saying that I couldn't see how any of the solar installation or manufacturing companies were going to build decent, defensible profit margins because panels and installation services are so commoditized. This could be the advantage that was missing: assuming decent patent coverage, SC will be able to have a monopoly on these modules and their installation for a long time to come.