[Future of housing] Check out Tesla's four different [camouflaged] glass solar roofs

[Gomig-21]

yeesh! These panels (basically a hack) look sooooo terrible. I (and plenty of other people) can't bring myself to do this to my home. Electricity isn't THAT expensive to push me in this direction.

Absolutely. Those panels completely ruin the look of a house.

However the new Tesla roof opens many more doors...assuming it doesn't cost $1M.

We were just asked about these for a project coming up. Probably will be the cost of a new roof plus roughly 30% additional for the cost of the solar shingles (for the asphalt-looking ones) and the connections to the panel.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Absolutely. Those panels completely ruin the look of a house.



We were just asked about these for a project coming up. Probably will be the cost of a new roof plus roughly 30% additional for the cost of the solar shingles (for the asphalt-looking ones) and the connections to the panel.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/tesla-says-solar-roof-production-has-started-in-buffalo.html

Tesla says solar roof production has started in Buffalo

Tesla said on Tuesday it began manufacturing its premium solar roof tiles at the company's Buffalo, New York factory last month and has started surveying the homes of customers who made a deposit of $1,000 to reserve the product last year.

The solar roof, which generates electricity without the need for traditional rooftop panels, is a cornerstone of the electric vehicle maker's strategy to sell a fossil-fuel-free lifestyle under the luxury Tesla brand. Tesla unveiled the product in October 2016 as it sought to acquire solar installer SolarCity.

At that time, Tesla said the product could be rolled out as soon as the summer of 2017. In November, Tesla founder Elon Musk said the product was going through a six-month testing process, saying "it just takes a little while to get this behemoth rolling."


More than a dozen Tesla employees, including Musk and Chief Technical Officer JB Straubel, had the solar roofs installed on their homes last year as part of an initial pilot program.

Tesla started taking orders for the solar roof tiles in May by asking homeowners to put down a $1,000 deposit via its web site. Tesla would not disclose how many reservations it had received for the solar roof. The product will be installed on some customer rooftops in the coming months.

The company has said its solar roofs would cost between 10 and 15 percent less than an ordinary new roof plus traditional solar panels.

Tesla is collaborating with its longstanding battery partner, Japan's Panasonic, to manufacture solar products at the Buffalo factory. There are about 500 employees working at the site currently, Tesla said.

The companies began production of traditional solar panels at the site last year, but they have not yet been installed on rooftops. The company said it will achieve more than 1 gigawatt of cell and module production in Buffalo, and possibly as much as double that, but gave no timeline for meeting the target.

Tesla said its primary focus is increasing production of its Model 3 sedan. The company said last week it would likely build about 2,500 Model 3s a week by the end of the first quarter, half the number it had earlier promised.

 

[Gomig-21]

If I'm not mistaken, Tesla is not the first to come up with these and they've actually been out for a while through other roofing manufacturing companies, only they haven't been as diverse or as authentically roofing-looking-like products like these ones Tesla is making. The terracotta ones are amazing. Then you have the asphalt shingles and they all look just like regular roofing shingles.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://www.geek.com/tech/homeowners-get-a-real-charge-out-of-their-new-tesla-solar-roof-1736507/

Homeowners Get A Real Charge Out Of Their New Tesla Solar Roof

“This Sunday, the roof produced an impressive 44kWh, 29 of which got pumped back into the grid”

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://electrek.co/2018/05/26/tesla-solar-roof-tiles-up-close-look/

First up-close look at Tesla solar roof tiles

Tesla is slowly ramping up installations of its solar roof tiles and we got to see a few final product from customer installations in the last few months, but never a close look at the actual tiles and their connection system – until now.

Home Solar Power
After unveiling the solar tiles, CEO Elon Musk said that making the connectors robust involved “a shocking amount of technology”:

“This is a connector that has to last for more than 30 years. It has to be weatherproof, heavy rain, snow, slush, salt, water leaking – it’s like connector hell.”

Tesla CTO JB Straubel then added that the automaker managed to leverage its experience manufacturing connectors for electric vehicles:

“A lot of the challenges here leveraged some great learning from the Tesla team on validating automotive connectors and volume production processes. Tesla is building all these tiles ourselves – we are not outsourcing it. We have been able to solve those more complexed design problems and hit those price points that you see.”

We never had a good look at those connectors or the back of the tiles in general, but a Tesla Energy installer shared a rare up-close look at the tiles on Instagram (hat tip to Broke3):

Electrek’s Take

It looks like Tesla’s ‘textured’ solar tiles, and interestingly we might be able to see the difference between Tesla’s solar and non-solar tiles.

The first one doesn’t appear to feature any solar cell or connector, which leads me to believe it’s one of Tesla’s non-solar tiles.

But we get to see the sort of mounting system to lock the tiles together

As for the other tile underneath the first one, we get to see the connector, which appears to link the solar cells between the tiles:

As we previously reported, Tesla says that the “typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for a Solar Roof” with a mix of regular tiles and solar tiles.

It’s a fairly expensive product, but it comes with a lifetime of the house warranty and 30-year power generation guaranteed. After the electricity production, Tesla estimates that its solar roof will be cheaper than a non-solar tile roof of similar style or virtually pay for itself through electricity savings.

Tesla claims that they can guarantee the product due to a new glass that they developed for the tiles and is reportedly much more durable than any roofing product to date.

From the little information and images that we have so far, it looks like a fairly well-built product, but I’m curious to see the reviews from owners in the next few years.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]