Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: MillCreek on May 11, 2017, 12:38:54 PM
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http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/11/527930243/tesla-begins-taking-orders-for-its-solar-energy-roof-tile-systems
I will be interested to watch this in the future. A solar roof connected to a Tesla powerwall to feed back into the system or go off the grid is an intriguing idea. The payback period sounds pretty long, though.
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http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/11/527930243/tesla-begins-taking-orders-for-its-solar-energy-roof-tile-systems
I will be interested to watch this in the future. A solar roof connected to a Tesla powerwall to feed back into the system or go off the grid is an intriguing idea. The payback period sounds pretty long, though.
I'm watching this, too. I like the idea of the Powerwall and not being grid-tied, but Tesla charges a premium for their brand.
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I'm watching this, too. I like the idea of the Powerwall and not being grid-tied, but Tesla charges a premium for their brand.
I've been talking about roof tile replacement solar panels for years. A much more efficient approach compared to stupid giant solar nodes that lose like 30% of their energy in distribution.
I'm definitely keeping my eye on the technology. From the fiscal side, it's a bit overpriced right now, but I'm guessing it will be a different story in five years, especially in new construction vs retrofitting.
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Imagine first hail storm.......
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Imagine first hail storm.......
I'm betting they'll hold up better than a bunch of current roofing options.
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The other thing I wondered about is getting up on the roof to clean gutters, retrieve Frisbees and what not. I wonder if the tiles can be walked on, and how slippery they would be.
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The other thing I wondered about is getting up on the roof to clean gutters, retrieve Frisbees and what not. I wonder if the tiles can be walked on, and how slippery they would be.
Interesting consideration. I think back when "solar roads" popped up, whatever material they used there was non-slip, which it would kind of have to be for a road.
Birdman needs to check in and give us a rundown on potential tile cell materials and their energy efficiencies (or lack thereof) related to surface roughness.
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Nice, but I could build a house for what they are asking for the whole shebang, I'm still planning on solar panels and a bunch of golf cart type batteries.
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Gonna wait on this one until the market provides me with an option to not give Musk money.
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I was wondering how these tiles would hold up to hurricanes or just tropical storm winds. I just had to re-roof my house last month. It did not cost anywhere near $40,000. I am sure they will find some people to buy it.
I am intrigued by the idea of an entire neighborhood of houses with solar roofs connected together in a grid, but that would be hideously expensive at that cost per house.
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I was wondering how these tiles would hold up to hurricanes or just tropical storm winds. I just had to re-roof my house last month. It did not cost anywhere near $40,000. I am sure they will find some people to buy it.
I am intrigued by the idea of an entire neighborhood of houses with solar roofs connected together in a grid, but that would be hideously expensive at that cost per house.
Obviously that's because you put a dumb roof on your dumb house.
Had you put a smart roof on your smart house?
That would have been smart.
And expensive.
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. . . Tesla charges a premium for their brand.
Isn't "Tesla" actually Serbian for "Apple?" ;)
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Birdman needs to check in and give us a rundown on potential tile cell materials and their energy efficiencies (or lack thereof) related to surface roughness.
If you get very rough, you end up bouncing a lot of the light off in less useful directions. Plus doing the whole roof adds in a lot of inefficiencies unless you have a single-pitch roof facing south with nothing shading any part of it.
ISTR Tesla actually saying at one point the PowerWall wasn't suitable for an off-grid type backup, and that it was designed simply to level out the high load of charging the car so you wouldn't need some insane service rating to handle a large transient drain when your overall usage was still fairly normal.
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Sorry, KD5 - I forgot that was your job. :)
I'm kinda curious what the true current cost of a whole roof setup would be vs what was quoted by NPR. Tesla is one of the biggest welfare queen companies in the country these days. I have to wonder how much taxpayer money went into development.
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I'm kinda curious what the true current cost of a whole roof setup would be vs what was quoted by NPR. Tesla is one of the biggest welfare queen companies in the country these days. I have to wonder how much taxpayer money went into development.
Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.
Figure usable surface, and roughly 40x55 inch modules for a normal install, and using 275W modules, we're around 2.85 a watt all in. That's a turnkey on grid system, including the paperwork. Off grid has a lot more variables in terms of instantaneous loads, daytime vs night loads, etc. Figure a bare minimum of $5k extra for full house backup, and more if you want a true off grid system.
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Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.
I actually meant what would the price per sq ft be if you factored out the taxpayer handouts to Tesla, e.g., would a $48K roof actually cost $90K in "non-subsidized" dollars?
Certainly there is always going to be some subsidizing of new technologies, and up to a point I don't have a big problem with it (e..g., the space program / Apollo program examples) but my understanding is that Tesla excels at getting government handouts.
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Well, obviously it depends mostly on the size of the roof.
Figure usable surface, and roughly 40x55 inch modules for a normal install, and using 275W modules, we're around 2.85 a watt all in. That's a turnkey on grid system, including the paperwork. Off grid has a lot more variables in terms of instantaneous loads, daytime vs night loads, etc. Figure a bare minimum of $5k extra for full house backup, and more if you want a true off grid system.
And electricity
here is $.0779 a KWH which gives one a 36 year ROI based on KDH's $2.85 per KWH. And that's assuming that you can go 100% off-grid and never have to use grid power. Also that the glass and batteries don't degrade over time (they do). I have skylights in my dining room and I can see the dust and dirt left on them by each subsequent rain. So unless you go up and "wash" your skylights after each rain, you are not going to get "100%" of the available power from them. And let's not forget about the batteries. Those have so long before the charging and discharging take their toll and need to be replaced. Look at you cell phone battery life over time. It get's shorter and shorter between charges as time goes on. Same with your car battery those are good for what, 4-7 years at the most??
And that's with the .gov subsidies. Sorry, but solar is not economically viable for the average resident consumer. In certain situations (areas that are closer to the equator, get less cloud cover/bad weather, and an uneconomical to connect to the grid, and/or small(ish) power demands), it makes sense. But overall, it's not there yet, and until they develop solar cells with a much higher output per cost, chances are it won't be.
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I actually meant what would the price per sq ft be if you factored out the taxpayer handouts to Tesla, e.g., would a $48K roof actually cost $90K in "non-subsidized" dollars?
Not sure what the costs on those tiles are, but to stay well under $3/watt, we're watching for container and larger deals on quality modules. A fair number of those are cases of solar distributors or large EPCs going under and the manufacturer needing to unload 500kW-8MW worth of modules they no longer have a full price buyer for, so we get them for less than the regular wholesale on junk we wouldn't touch because they want fast cash and nobody else is in a position to pay $2-3M on delivery. I can't see it being feasible without being pretty brand agnostic and/or buying substantially lower grade PV.
For a while, we were doing retail-level surplus, but since we've stopped marketing to residential (we will still do some, just not worth the effort to maintain a sales crew to sell 5-10kW jobs when it's only maybe 3-4 times as much effort to get a commercial or industrial site buying 10-400 times as much. When 90kW is a small job, getting a smoking deal on 2-3 pallets (15-30kW depending on how they're packed) isn't worth the hassle of trying to match sizes, frame styles, etc.
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In areas where you sell your excess power to the grid the payback is more like 10 years, even here in rainy/cloudy western WA. A) you don't have a "Powerwall" or other battery storage to pay for, and B) the power company is required in most places to pay you 25-100% more than the retail price of the electricity you consume from the grid for what you put back during the daytime.
That without the govt subsidies, especially the inflated rate paid for your solar power, the payback would be never doesn't occur even to the engineers I work with. They even try to claim the subsidies are nearly nothing sometimes. Which is laughable, but to keep the peace at work I bite my tongue.
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The problem with "green" subsidies (maybe intended feature) is that everyone is taxed to provide them, but only the rich cash them in. Only the rich buy Tesla and solar roofs that make no sense, but prices go up for everyone. This makes these a regressive tax which progressive left are ordinarily against but not intelligent enough to recognize in action.
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Necro update.
Looks like the price is out and a little cheaper than first thought. While nowhere near an asphalt roof, it looks to be competitive with some other common roof types. With a "life of the home" guarantee, I would certainly consider it in a new home. If the material is as strong as it's purported to be, I'd look at it if only a smaller percentage of the tiles were active solar.
I still haven't seen anything about the slickness of the material, so I'd still hire someone to do just about anything that involves walking on the roof. :laugh:
Actually, comedy aside, I wonder how you would mount stuff on the roof, or if you could. I assume you would, in those places, have to replace the solar tiles with some kind of "drillable" material? Something like AC, you could just remount at ground level, but, for instance, I have a microwave dish at the top of my roof. I'm not sure you could drill into the Tesla roof to bolt in the mount. I'm kinda thinking that while the material is as strong as they say when in one piece, once you do something like drill into it and then apply some shear force (like wind) you might crack the tiles.
https://www.inverse.com/article/31438-tesla-solar-roof-price?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=on_site&utm_campaign=mobile_article-footer
Edit: Digging in a bit, it looks like they factor a ~$10,000-$15,000 tax credit (depending on square footage) into their price, so without the tax credit, I think it's still higher than other roof types.
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Edit: Digging in a bit, it looks like they factor a ~$10,000-$15,000 tax credit (depending on square footage) into their price, so without the tax credit, I think it's still higher than other roof types.
Oh, yeah, much higher price. Tesla factors in the tax credits and the energy costs saved over 30 years to compare it to asphalt shingles.
Also, the solar ties don't get installed on the entire roof. You only get as much as you need to run the house, up to about 70% coverage. I think the remaining area gets similar looking, but non-functional, tile. Maybe those tiles can be drilled or nailed.
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Much Much higher price. I put my home info into the calculator.
Asphalt roof (Tesla's estimate): $17,400
Solar Roof(40% solar): $81,600
Tesla PowerWall(2 ea for AC): $12,500
They decide that my roof will make $79,100 in electricity over 30 years, and that I can get a $21,300 tax credit. Which makes break even something like 20ish years over a normal roof. Assuming the cost of electricity is right (and doesn't change) and the roof and batteries actually last for 30 years. FWIW, my ENTIRE electric bill for the next 30 years is $72,000. So Tesla thinks that this roof will make everything i could possibly use, and enough left over to sell.
Or they'll finance it for me for 4.5%APR and $369/month. I'm enrolled in Florida Power's averaging program (they average out a years usage, divide by 12 and charge me that amount per month for the next year) and my power bill has been within $10 of $200 since I moved in. So for not quite double my power bill I can get a roof that will not quite provide all the power I need.
And I can pay Tesla 4.5% for the next 30 years.
I figured out why Elon Musk is rich.
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I think the remaining area gets similar looking, but non-functional, tile. Maybe those tiles can be drilled or nailed.
From what I got out of the article, the non-active tiles were the identical material, just with no embedded photovolatics.
Well anyway, I'll be interested to see another price comparison five or so years down the road, maybe when the tax credits potentially end. Or somebody else does the same thing for cheaper.
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I'll pass... for now. No viable reason to throw that much at such a system out here in the hinterlands where electricity is $0.08-$0.10 per KwH. In places like Cali and NY where they pay upwards of half a buck per KwH and get yuuuuuuuge tax credits to boot, maybe.
I'd like to see them installed out here in Hail Alley to see just how durable they really are, and just how committed Tesla is to standing behind that "lifetime of the home" warranty. I'm betting there is an Acts of Nature get-out-of-jail-free clause in there somewhere.
Brad
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Asphalt roof (Tesla's estimate): $17,400
Solar Roof(40% solar): $81,600
Tesla PowerWall(2 ea for AC): $12,500
Huh. Tesla says I need
70% solar roof: $61,400
1 powerwall: 7,000
I wonder why our roof prices are so different.
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SQ Footage I imagine. I have a 2900 sqft single story house
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SQ Footage I imagine. I have a 2900 sqft single story house
I'm doing 3,000 sgft 2-story. And I'm all electric so I bumped up my average monthly bill.
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There's a lot more to it than just area. The Tesla tiles have to follow the architectural pitch (slope) of the roof, so the solar collector shingles may not be (and probably won't be) at the optimal angle for most efficient collection. Ideally the collector is at 90 degrees to the sun, and in an active system the collector panels move to track the sun.
Then they have to figure in the percentage of sunlight over the course of a year. Not just daylight hours, but how many days are rainy, how many days are heavily overcast, and how many days actually get bright sunlight.
Going back to the original article, I noticed that the payback period is actually more than 30 years -- but the system is only guaranteed to keep water out of your house for 30 years. Which means there's a good chance you'll be paying to replace it before it has even paid for itself. I'm probably not going to live to 104, so I don't see a Tesla solar roof in my future.
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Going back to the original article, I noticed that the payback period is actually more than 30 years -- but the system is only guaranteed to keep water out of your house for 30 years. Which means there's a good chance you'll be paying to replace it before it has even paid for itself. I'm probably not going to live to 104, so I don't see a Tesla solar roof in my future.
The follow-up article indicates they changed that to life of the house. Not helpful if you move the average number of times most Americans do, but if you were going to build or buy a place in your 30s and live there until your 80s, that could start to make it viable vs replacing an asphalt roof at least once in that time.
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Their estimated asphalt replacement cost was much too high. Tesla said it'd be $10,300... I just had mine done two years ago for $5300.
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Their estimated asphalt replacement cost was much too high. Tesla said it'd be $10,300... I just had mine done two years ago for $5300.
Definitely depends on where you live. Around here, $5300 might cover around 800-1000sqft with cheaper comp roofing and south of the border labor.
I'm guessing Tesla is using CA/NY/Etc Urban pricing, as I suspect that's where most of their business will come from. As others mentioned, if you have dirt cheap electricity, it doesn't make a lot of sense at current pricing. If you have high priced electricity and high costs for roofing material/labor, it begins to make more fiscal sense, at least with the tax credits.
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Isn't "Tesla" actually Serbian for "Apple?" ;)
No, it's actually a jumble for "Steal."
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With financing, loans, .gov handouts, roof pitch and orientation, seasonal and weather dependent sunlight duration, etc., a creative accountant can probably come up with ANY result the solar shingle seller wants him to - and justify it "mathematically."
Do any of the "payback times" which can extend to 30 years take into account the 30 years of compound returns on investment income you lose, especially if you make a big down payment?
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Do any of the "payback times" ... take into account the 30 years of compound returns on investment income you lose,
Of course not. That would make the buyer look foolish and Tesla look evil.
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In areas where you sell your excess power to the grid the payback is more like 10 years, even here in rainy/cloudy western WA. A) you don't have a "Powerwall" or other battery storage to pay for, and B) the power company is required in most places to pay you 25-100% more than the retail price of the electricity you consume from the grid for what you put back during the daytime.
Emphasis mine. That isn't the case in Michigan. We run a 150 kWh solar array at work and we pay $0.14/kWh we pull off the grid but only get back $0.10/kWh that we put on it.
We're probably looking at around a 6 year payback on the install. After that we'll earn $30 a year.
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Ex-wife just got the contract to replace the roof on my house in Tulsa, cost is $13,789.91.
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Ex-wife just got the contract to replace the roof on my house in Tulsa, cost is $13,789.91.
What material is it made of?
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Ex-wife just got the contract to replace the roof on my house in Tulsa, cost is $13,789.91.
Must be asphalt shingle. Or she got a hell of a deal on the Tesla roof.
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What material is it made of?
I'm assuming asphalt shingle. If I was actually there I would have inquired on the cost of replacing with a metal roof.
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I'm assuming asphalt shingle. If I was actually there I would have inquired on the cost of replacing with a metal roof.
Maybe the next question is how large the roof is. Mine was quite a bit cheaper. May be a much larger roof or multi-story.
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Maybe the next question is how large the roof is. Mine was quite a bit cheaper. May be a much larger roof or multi-story.
The house itself is 1800 plus square feet. The roof has multiple weird angles and isn't a straight A style pitch. It has multiple pitches.
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Does it include a tearoff and if so, how many layers ??
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Does it include a tearoff and if so, how many layers ??
I'm going to say yes and one.
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Normally, you can put a second layer on. You just pay more in 20-30 years when it's time to replace again.
Even with the weird angles. That sounds high. I hope they are getting at least two mores quotes...
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Insurance is paying, I only have to cover $3900 and this is one of their approved contractors.
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Ex-wife just got the contract to replace the roof on my house in Tulsa, cost is $13,789.91.
Sounds about right. 1800 sq ft with a high pitch and lots of odd angles would probably be around 36 squares. If it's asphalt shingle i'm guessing it's probably a 30-year dimensional, so about $350-400 per square ($12,600-$14,400).
Brad
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Sounds about right. 1800 sq ft with a high pitch and lots of odd angles would probably be around 36 squares. If it's asphalt shingle i'm guessing it's probably a 30-year dimensional, so about $350-400 per square ($12,600-$14,400).
Brad
I just reroofed my two story 1800 sq ft house with bunch of odd angles and steep angles (steep enough the hombres actually used harnesses and ropes).
25 squares...$8600 quoted through Home Depot's installation program...then they knocked off $700 for issues on their end of getting the crew out to do the work
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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And electricity
here is $.0779 a KWH which gives one a 36 year ROI based on KDH's $2.85 per KWH. And that's assuming that you can go 100% off-grid and never have to use grid power. Also that the glass and batteries don't degrade over time (they do). I have skylights in my dining room and I can see the dust and dirt left on them by each subsequent rain. So unless you go up and "wash" your skylights after each rain, you are not going to get "100%" of the available power from them. And let's not forget about the batteries. Those have so long before the charging and discharging take their toll and need to be replaced. Look at you cell phone battery life over time. It get's shorter and shorter between charges as time goes on. Same with your car battery those are good for what, 4-7 years at the most??
And that's with the .gov subsidies. Sorry, but solar is not economically viable for the average resident consumer. In certain situations (areas that are closer to the equator, get less cloud cover/bad weather, and an uneconomical to connect to the grid, and/or small(ish) power demands), it makes sense. But overall, it's not there yet, and until they develop solar cells with a much higher output per cost, chances are it won't be.
Just renewed by electricity plan with Constellation. $.0739 kWH. And keep in mind that neither Indiana nor Illinois have started Fracking yet, and the southern parts of both states were big in coal mining, so that means lots of trapped NG.
...the vast Illinois Basin, an underground treasure chest of oil, natural gas and coal that runs beneath most of the state but yields its most abundant riches in the far south.
The basin's coal is high in sulfur, and it burns hotter and generates electricity more efficiently than coal mined elsewhere. For decades that was a competitive advantage, but sulfur's role in creating acid rain led to provisions in the Clean Air Act that prompted utilities to install expensive scrubbers or switch to low-sulfur coal.
quoted from: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-coal-bust-illinois-met-20160918-story.html
Solar is just not economically viable. At $2.85kWh, the ROI at $.0739 is 38.5 years. And that's assuming you can go 100% without grid.