Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

Post by aidos » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #47

Someone1234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK roofs are made and ceramic and slate. US roofs are made of asphalt. Mostly because asphalt is inexpensive (particularly due to economies of scale/lack of them on ceramic). Ceramic lasts a lifetime, asphalt can be taken out by one bad hail storm. UK homes are made of brick. US homes are made of fiberboard and inexpensive woods. There's a reason why UK homes have lasted over one hundred years, and most US homes won'…

"UK homes are made of brick" I've lived in 11 properties in the UK (owning 4 of them) and most of them were made of stone and were 150+ years old - only the first one (a 1950s council house) was brick.

Post by mrep » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #248

gibolt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage costs are dropping rapidly. New batteries are nearly there for cost competitiveness. As the first generation of BEV batteries become 'spent', they will be reused in grid-scale applications. Space and weight are not a concern, and most will have ~70% of their original capacity. That accelerates quickly once Gen 2 batteries have hit end of life.

>Storage costs are dropping rapidly Read around, nobody actually believes Li-ion batteries can bridge the intermittency gaps of solar and wind. The production capacity may never be there and cost aren't there today and may never get there (cost for US to store 10-15% of excess summer energy to use in winter with Li-ion batteries would run tens of trillions of dollars). Li-ion batteries leak energy if you want to use…

Post by jcims » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #90

I live in tornado valley. How do these hold up to hail?

Post by cure » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

deelowe wrote: post #27

bArray wrote: post #22

I think a major challenge that is yet to be addressed is the fact that solar panels lose their efficiency over time [1] [2]. Seems like you're looking at 80% of rated efficiency after 20 years - and I'm unsure this includes failures. In the UK a 50+ year old roof is very common - most people expect a house to outlast them without anything but minor repairs. If I were building a house I would want something where it's…

In the US roofs last more like 25 to 30 years for shingles.

Post by dmckeon » Sat, Oct 26, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

ravedave5 wrote: post #252

dmckeon wrote: post #229

> And we’re actually going to have […] ‘installathons,’ ” Musk said, which will pit two teams against each other to see who can roof one of two similar-sized/designed roofs faster. Musk reiterated later that there’s “quite a bit of R&D just in the installation process itself.” Not a short seller, but that sounds a lot like: “We don’t yet know how to do this well, but in the meantime we are going to optimize for speed…

Have you ever seen roofers work? They move like there's a storm coming all day. Total hustle, it's why existing roof installs are relatively cheap. It makes sense that they need to ptiomize for near same amount of time.