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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.
Also: Elon Musk has discovered a new passion in life — and it could be Tesla's best product yet
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Weasley on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:59PM (3 children)
A single technology wouldn't be used for power generations with or without solar. We'd be maintaining coal and gas power plants anyway.
Something that has deeply affected my opinion of this is my friend in San Jose. He has a typical solar array on his roof. His house runs on it, and his Tesla charges off of it, and the remaining power is sold back to the power company. He has not purchased gas/petrol or paid an electric bill in years. In fact, he makes money back from the power company.
Can we get governments out of the market? Absolutely not. Corporations have no interest in being clean. They are only interested in making money, and they will cut every shortcut to do it. And we all suffer when the results of their short cuts cause calamity.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday May 14 2017, @04:46PM (2 children)
While that's a good point, it ignores that when energy production shifts over to solar, the costs for storage escalate. There are alternatives, but not for house roof systems (because of scaling costs). One alternative might be molten salt storage. Or there's a convenient mountain range that you can pump water up to store energy. Iin your case there is...but it's not that conveniently close, so you need the utility to handle the storage. Your friend might want to use Mt. Hamilton, but PG&E would probably prefer to use the Sierra Nevadas. (Actually, PG&E looks like it prefers molten salt in the Mojave desert, but, IIUC, that plant is experimental.)
It's not clear what the best approach is, and it probably differs with location. But storage is a substantial cost for all "green" energy sources. And, unfortunately, NONE of the energy sources pay for all their externalities, and none are unsubsidized. This makes comparing costs quite difficult.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @05:28PM (1 child)
Maybe the electric car can be the energy storage?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @10:38AM
Riiiight...
So when you're commuting to/from work every day, your electric car is also somehow storing the energy coming off your solar panels.
And at night, when the panels are dead, you're sucking power out of your car. And then the next morning, the car somehow has power to handle the aforementioned commute?