111–120 of 341 posts
the cool thing is that they look good... they look like a normal roof at the angle you would see from the street in front of the house, but from above... from the angle of the sun they are transparent and you can see the solar cells. I know some rich people that want solar but their neighborhood associations won't allow it, but I don't think they would not have an objection to these roofs. they look really nice.... I…
In CA, it is illegal for HOA to block solar installations
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In CA, it is illegal for HOA to block solar installations
What is HOA?
Correct me if I am wrong, it estimates 12,000$ for a single day of energy backup of your home? For 12,000$ I dont mind staying one day without electricity.
If you generate more electricity than you use during the day, you all of a sudden don't have an electric bill... or a drastically reduced one. The funny thing about solar... it's not constant. Half the day is night... then clouds/rain/etc. 24/hours of electricity is for those dry periods.
The thing is cloud-connected, remote-controlled by Tesla. That presents a problem. Will the cloud service behind it last the life of the system? Most cloud services evaporate within five years.
"The thing is cloud-connected, remote-controlled by Tesla. " If your use-case is backup power in case of utility failure, how does that work ? If utilities fail, the network connection to the battery may also fail, right ?
Maybe? I'd like to see the quantitative argument here. Having a house pre-built with a fancy solar roof AND a powerpack seems like it would still be pretty much for rich people. Still, maybe the aim is for a similar trajectory as Tesla - start with a product for rich people, make it attractive, lower cost so everyone can have it and WANTS to have it.
Unrelated: gosh, I like the content of the video presentation but it would be nice if Musk was a slightly better presenter.
How long are the batteries going to last? With phones, we expect the battery to deteriorate after a couple of years. This is an investment. Will it need to be replaced in a few years' time?
These things are what kills battery life.
On the website[0] they put for sizing 10kWh/day/BR. Which means 14600kWh/year for a 4 bedroom house. Here in Germany, working from home with a 4BR+office house, we are using 2550kWh/year. So, I suppose the Tesla sizing is to support a "peak day" usage, but still, I am surprised by the calculations. This is why this totally informal and unscientific survey :)
Lets proceed with these calculations and say that you also want a good quality "grid-tie" "pure sine wave" inverter (to feed your stored energy back to your home grid) which will set you back any where from $100 - $1000. Your total cost for energy storage is still only going to be around $1180 (worse case.) Now consider that the life time for the Tesla batteries and standard AGM batteries seem to be very similar and I honestly have no idea what the customer is actually paying for.
Is the compact size and sleek appearance really worth the extra cost to the customer? Maybe it is. Maybe people don’t want to have a nerdy battery bank in their homes but to me the benefits all seem a little petty. (Granted, I definitely do see the benefit for tech like this in electric cars though, don’t get me wrong.)
How long are the batteries going to last? With phones, we expect the battery to deteriorate after a couple of years. This is an investment. Will it need to be replaced in a few years' time?