Anyone putting a deposit down for Tesla's solar roof?

are these the new solar shingles? when will they be available? i love the idea, but i don't stay in one place very long. shingles might have less resale impact than panels though.

 

if they offered incentives to try early, i might consider it. are they coming through solar city? looks like all the beta testers will be in cali anyway.
this really is a brilliant idea, i didn't believe it would arrive so soon.

 

Various solar roofing materials have been around for some time. When I re-roofed and went solar four years ago, there were several choices available for shingles, and for the standing seam steel roof that I was installing.

But the product selection then was not comprehensive, nor compelling compared to standard PV panels, especially for a DIY project. I'm quite happy to see the field progressing, because there is a huge potential for energy harvest from roofs. Go after these existing artificial surfaces first before paying much attention to solarizing roads, and before covering over the remaining biological fields.

 

I'm frequently shocked by how companies can drone up excitement for mundane things. It's a roof people! You're putting $1000 deposit for a roof!

And because I am a sheeple, I will dutifully empty my wallet for Musk's roof and his Boring company. But while I am one of the sheeple, I will not be putting a deposit down for something sight unseen. My next roof will be these solar shingles as the cost makes sense. You don't need 30 years for payback. My calculations are in the the decade range and that's not taking into account resale value.

I can't say for the rest of the country but in CA, solar panels have little to sometimes negative effects on the value of the home due to its unsightly aesthetics. Solar shingles that is nearly indistinguishable from a regular roof... well, we'll see what kind of impact it has.

 

we've seen a huge solar push around here the last few years, but i've never talked to a salesperson who mentioned shingles. i just think we're way behind the west coast.

 

Early adopters.....
I love em!

I have a Moto G4 in my pocket that I'm probably going to replace with a G5 pretty soon.
G4 cost <$200 and so will the G5.....and it's (opinions vary) about 90-percent as good as the front-line phones that people pay insurance for.
It's orders of magnitude better than the original i-phone which seems old enough to have been carried by sailors on the Mayflower....even though it's only been a very short decade since most people used phones only for talking and texting......

Solar roofing tiles?
YOU BET!!!!

I will have them on my house one day in all likelihood - skipping over the quaint, old fashioned solar panels that people are using today........thanks to early adopters!

So....keep those checks coming in!

 

After wanting home PV for more than two decades, I finally realized that if I wanted to make use of it before my expiration date, it was time to start doing something about it, even if still in the early adoption phase. The available 'some day' for me was starting to run short, especially from the DIY installation perspective.

 

Would be great to see this technology succeed!

I did note, however, that their calculator doesn't even ask about the orientation (N,S,E,W) of your roof!

 

The above is my quote. I need a new roof within the next 5 years so I added the estimated cost to my payback period. I welcome discussion to this accounting.

($41,700 Cost of Solar roof - $15000 cost of slate roof) = $26,700

I know electricity generation isn't linear and Tesla cites their calculations to NASA on irradiance data which is too much for me to research at this point and there are too few significant digits in this back of the envelope calculation anyway. I'll go into more detail when I actually put a deposit down.

$59,300 / 3 decades = $20k per decade electricity generation
$26700 / $19766 = 1.4 decades
Then I waved my hand and said Tesla's solar roof is warrantied for a lifetime versus the 10-15 years I get for my roof so we're in the decade range here.

 

Actually, wouldn't the cost basis of the roof would seem to be $41,700 - $9,900 tax credit = $31,800? Of course, you need to check that credit carefully and make sure that your tax situation qualifies.

10-15 yr is way short for the life of a properly installed slate roof (just as 15K sounds too low for the same). That said, if you take the $15,000 for a new roof off the 31,800 basis (since you need a roof anyway) then you seem to be within a decade for payback of the difference. That would seem pretty favorable.

 

You could run your sq. ft. numbers through their estimator with different zip codes to see if/how the calculation changes. It is not clear what even some of their basic assumptions are. Electricity costs will vary by region; maybe roof delivery and installation does too.

 

You're right. I've never replaced a roof more than once. I may have been fed shill. Like I said, there is so many unknowns right now that I don't think there is any point to go much deeper right now in the calculations. It's time to see actually installations and whether those installation costs are accurate.

The information comes from the Google solar project. Which takes into account which direction your roof faces and whether it is pitched. Perhaps my roof is pitched more ideally than yours?

 

Tesla's calculator doesn't seem to take much into account, except your deposit!

I wasn't aware of the Google calculator until now (Project Sunroof) - that seems much more detailed!

 

I started going solar with a DIY starter PV system project four years ago, distinct from but coordinated with reroofing. After two subsequent PV expansions (and additional conservation projects), I reached Net Zero Energy two years ago, with a system rating of 7.1kW. It actually has a bit more capacity than needed, allowing for some system aging, neighboring tree growth, and/or below-average weather conditions.

Before now, the only solar calculator I'd ever used was an older version of NREL's PVWatts. Throwing in my own adjustment factor for tree interference, I am happy with its predictions. An updated version is at PVWatts Calculator.

Checking my own house on the Google Project Sunroof calculator, I generally approve of its results. It suggests a 6.75kW system, defaulting to believing that will produce 71% of our energy. Putting in my approximate final pre-solar annual energy bill (converted to monthly) changes that suggestion to a 6.5kW system producing 98% of my energy. The color-coding pattern on my roof, "Based on 3D modeling of your roof and nearby trees", is a very good reflection of reality. Due to those nearby trees, none of my roof exposure is great for PV. Certain neighbors have significantly better exposures on certain pitches, certain others have awful conditions everywhere, and Google's relative color coding of them looks quite realistic.

Google puts the estimated installation cost at $27.7k upfront before incentives, $19k after incentives. Estimated 20-year savings is essentially nada (negative by a couple hundred dollars). My actual cost (DIY and retired, so no labor component) was $17k before incentives, or $12k after federal tax incentive but before state production incentives.

As an engineer, Tesla's solar calculator simply doesn't give me adequate technical detail. It suggests 50% PV coverage, at a cost of $51.2k (whole roof including non-PV portion) before incentives. Deleting the Powerwall, subtracting $12.2k of incentives and $25.5k of energy value over 30 years, leaves my cost balance at a negative $13.5k (i.e. in the hole) at 30 years.

That Tesla ending cost balance is somewhat less than I put into the steel reroofing project itself, so it wouldn't have been so bad if I still needed a new roof. But the old one was already on borrowed time, necessitating some sheathing repair and reinforcement to modern standards (a couple grand together), and could not have waited until now. Those reinforcement costs, and even more repair by now, would have been added to the Tesla estimate.

In short, I'm happy with my DIY project. It is working very well, and at lower cost than having anyone else install it. But with an electrical engineering background, and the ability to be my own electrician (which is not an actual subset of common electrical engineering), I had a big jump start compared to average homeowners.