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SolarCity has unveiled a line of solar roof tiles:
[Elon] Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity, showcased a line of high-design solar roof tiles that would replace clunky solar panels and tie into an upgraded version of the Tesla wall-mounted battery for those times when the sun doesn't shine. The glass solar shingles resemble French slate, Tuscan barrel tile or more conventional roofing materials with a textured or smooth surface. "The key is to make solar look good," Musk said during the product introduction staged on the old set of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" series, where he had re-roofed four of the Wisteria Lane houses. "If this is done right, all roofs will have solar."
[...] Price and styling will likely prove critical for the industry in attracting customers as current solar power owners have seen some of the benefits of self-generating electricity erode. Utility companies have complained that solar owners haven't been paying their share of the cost to maintain the network of power lines, substations, transformers and power plants that make up the electric grid. Regulators across the country have added costs to solar power owners such as higher rate tiers and mandatory fees that have increased per-household costs by as much as $10 to $20 a month in California, Del Chiaro said.
[...] A 2014 survey by home-solar power provider Lumeta found that slightly under a third of respondents considered appearance very or extremely important, while slightly over a third said the look was slightly important or not important at all. "People spend a lot of time trying to create an attractive home," said Andy Ogden, chairman of the industrial design graduate program at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. "They don't want funny glass boxes stuck on one side of their roof." Making solar roofs more attractive, he said, "increases the number of people who will install solar."
The quartz glass tiles supposedly have 2-3 times the longevity of asphalt tiles. A Powerwall 2 battery with 14 kWh capacity was also unveiled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 31 2016, @05:05PM
I notice that all exterior photos of The Elms show one side, perfectly centered and aligned. This suggests that I am correct regarding The Elms: from any other angle it is unattractive.
McMansions are designed based on the worst-case viewing angle.
BTW, normally one would compare mansions and McMansions of similar building size. Mansion design doesn't consider the view from 10 feet off of the left rear corner because the lot is large enough that this doesn't matter. Given a lot that isn't multi-acre huge, the McMansion style is better-looking from randomish up-close viewing angles.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 31 2016, @06:12PM
Having actually been there, no, there isn't an angle where you'd look at that building and think "Oh, that's ugly". That's the kind of precision you get when you are paying the kind of money that the coal baron who paid the bills had on hand. There have been all sorts of photos [google.com] of the place: Please tell me which one you find ugly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.