Tesla's Solar Roof Pricing Is Cheap Enough to Catch Fire
Tesla Inc. has begun taking $1,000 deposits for its remarkable solar roof tiles—to be delivered this summer at a price point that could expand the U.S. solar market.
Tesla will begin with production of two of the four styles it unveiled in October: a smooth glass and a textured glass tile. 1 Roofing a 2,000 square-foot home in New York state—with 40 percent coverage of active solar tiles and battery backup for night-time use—would cost about $50,000 after federal tax credits and generate $64,000 in energy over 30 years, according to Tesla's website calculator.
That's more expensive upfront than a typical roof, but less expensive than a typical roof with traditional solar and back-up batteries. The warranty is for the lifetime of your home.
"The pricing is better than I expected, better than everyone expected," said Hugh Bromley, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance who had been skeptical about the potential market impact of the new product. Tesla's cost for active solar tiles is about $42 per square foot, "significantly below" BNEF's prior estimate of $68 per square foot, Bromley said. Inactive tiles will cost $11 per square foot.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:19PM
The tiles are glass or similar ceramic material.
Slate roofs (common in UK and Europe) last for 100 years or more. Now, they are being replaced with color-matched fake-slate which is cast concrete (or similar). This also has a long life and is lighter, easier on the roof structure than heavy flagstones. These roofs are very expensive. Families that own old houses with these roofs plan ahead and slowly build up a fund (across generations) to pay for the re-work.
I read a story in one of the Whole Earth Catalogs about an even longer plan -- giant oak roof beams for a university building were weakened from beetle holes but no one could figure out where to get the giant oak beams to rebuild. [googles], ah yes, here's the story,
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford [atlasobscura.com]
Well worth a few minutes to see how things used to be done, in the good old days.