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Solar Roof

tesla.com

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Re: Solar Roof

#101

Post by gwern »

nsxwolf wrote: post #58
loco5niner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that is a pretty unlikely assumption. edit - just found out Musk pretty much said that. Still....

Yes, I was hoping he would come through when he said: “Would you like a roof that looks better than a normal roof, lasts twice as long, costs less, and, by the way, generates electricity? It's like, why would you get anything else?” I guess technically "generates electricity" is the part I got hung up on, it only needs to generate 1 milliwatt hour to be true. But much of the statement still isn't true - it's more exp…

The logic here might be that payback in the form of $1 of generated electricity is better than a regular $1 payback via, say, tax credit, because it comes with additional benefits like reduced carbon emissions (not priced into utility bills) or more reliability / having electricity during blackouts.

Re: Solar Roof

#102

Post by stanmancan »

taneq wrote: post #80
atourgates wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see the selling point, or value here. Tesla's calculator estimates $40,500 for a roof that generates half our power needs, and should provide $20,400 worth of energy over 30-years. Add in a PowerWall and federal tax credit, and I'm still losing $15,400 over 30-years. If I put that same $40,000 in an index fund that got the stock market's historical 7% average, and waited 30 years, I'd have $308,000. To…

Wait what, their estimated payback time is 60 YEARS? This is terrible. They've gotta be just trying to snipe rich early-adopter-for-the-status types.

And whats wrong with that? A bunch of rich early-adopter-for-the-status types will get a Telsa roof, Telsa will get better at developing the technology and the price will come down, meanwhile more people are moving to renewable energy sources to power their homes which is good for the environment. Whats the downside here?

Re: Solar Roof

#103

Post by canterburry »

aasarava wrote: post #9
blakesterz wrote: post #2

Yikes. I just signed a contract for a new roof here last month, it's going to cost about $12k. Just did the estimate for the Tesla Solar roof... $80,300, so $87k if I want the battery too. I can barely afford the $12 right now, the $80 is just so far over it's not even close, even with how much I save over the years in electricity. That being said, I love these things, so hoping it gets cheaper in the coming years.

You got a $12K quote for tile? How long is the warranty? Remember that the 80K quote includes solar, so you'd have to add a standard solar install of the same KW capacity to your initial quote to really compare apples to apples. You'll probably still pay a premium to go with Tesla, but the no-profile solar integration and lifetime warranty really look attractive. Some people are probably willing to pay for it, simila…

No, I just want a new roof. I wasn't planning on installing Solar. Solar was supposed to be a perk of buying the roof from Tesla...and all of this was supposed to cost as much as a roof alone.

Re: Solar Roof

#104

Post by stupidhn »

geekagirl wrote: post #56
azeirah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 21, thus I have no idea what roofs normally cost. I assume they're very very heavily below ~80k? For a "regular" house, what would a roof cost? 4k? 10k? 500?

I had my (very boxy and boring) 1800 sq ft house reroofed with 30 year asphalt shingles for ~$7k, including tearing off both previous layers of shingles. I looked at getting a metal roof, and standing seam was going to cost about $16k. Edited to add: The cost of living is cheap where I am.

>I looked at getting a metal roof, and standing seam was going to cost about $16k.

Same. There seems to be a subset of HackerNews who thinks that most homeowners can pay $50k for a roof and $35k for a car. It's cool high-end stuff, but certainly is not mainstream.

Re: Solar Roof

#105

Post by greglindahl »

blakesterz wrote: post #2

Yikes. I just signed a contract for a new roof here last month, it's going to cost about $12k. Just did the estimate for the Tesla Solar roof... $80,300, so $87k if I want the battery too. I can barely afford the $12 right now, the $80 is just so far over it's not even close, even with how much I save over the years in electricity. That being said, I love these things, so hoping it gets cheaper in the coming years.

This new roof has always been pitched as a product competing with new premium roofs. It doesn't sound like that's the kind of roof you're buying.

Every thread about Tesla cars has a subthread about how irrelevant they are because they cost too much for some car buyers. Now we can look forward to every thread about Tesla roofs having a subthread about the initial product not being price-competitive for low-end roof buyers.

Re: Solar Roof

#106

Post by semi-extrinsic »

palakchokshi wrote: post #47

2 self driving Teslas in the garage (making money when not used) $150,000 1 power wall battery pack $7,000 1 Solar Roof $80,000 Subtract $15,000 in Federal tax credits for both cars $5,000 in California tax credits for both cars 30% of 80,000 = $24,000 Solar Investment tax credit $237,000 - $44,000 Grand Total $193,000 Calculate savings $240 per month in gas $100-$300 per month in electricity $1000 - $2000 earned by…

I don't understand "income from cars" - do you mean as autonomous taxis? Pretty sure you need to then take into account increased insurance, maintenance costs as well as taxes on that income.

Also if this autonomous taxi thing becomes a highly profitable gig (as you suggest), you'll quickly run into a big supply/demand problem. There's only a finite number of people who need mid-day cab rides.

Re: Solar Roof

#107

Post by marcosdumay »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #87
marcosdumay wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because local photovoltaics can save a lot of infrastructure and can require nearly no labor. You don't buy cold air piped from across the city, you make it locally. Why?

Cold air cannot be transported over long distances. Electricity can.

Both can, with losses and infrastructure investment. The size of those are very different, and that's why you does currently create one locally and buy the other from far.

Photovoltaics can¹ change the other side of the equation² so that locally generating it would be better.

1 - But it's not certain by any means. The current biggest obstacle is battery storage and maintenance.

2 - losses and infrastructure costs vs. gains from scale.

Re: Solar Roof

#108

Post by vkou »

marcosdumay wrote: post #59
IvanK_net wrote: post #45

I have always been a huge fan of a quick transition to sustainable energy sources. There is just one little thing I don't understand. Why they expect people to make electricity at their homes? You can buy a little piece of land in a dessert, put solar panels there and distribute the electricity to other places. And you don't have to climb on any roof during the installation or the maintenance. It is not profitable to…

It's because local photovoltaics can save a lot of infrastructure and can require nearly no labor. You don't buy cold air piped from across the city, you make it locally. Why?

> It's because local photovoltaics can save a lot of infrastructure and can require nearly no labor.

No, they don't. You still need almost the entire national power grid to supply your home with night-time electricity... That infrastructure won't be going anywhere.

An even worse outcome will be every home having local power storage infrastructure. Tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a power wall, or a compressed air storage system is much more expensive then maintaining the grid.

Re: Solar Roof

#109

Post by stupidhn »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #106
palakchokshi wrote: post #47

2 self driving Teslas in the garage (making money when not used) $150,000 1 power wall battery pack $7,000 1 Solar Roof $80,000 Subtract $15,000 in Federal tax credits for both cars $5,000 in California tax credits for both cars 30% of 80,000 = $24,000 Solar Investment tax credit $237,000 - $44,000 Grand Total $193,000 Calculate savings $240 per month in gas $100-$300 per month in electricity $1000 - $2000 earned by…

I don't understand "income from cars" - do you mean as autonomous taxis? Pretty sure you need to then take into account increased insurance, maintenance costs as well as taxes on that income. Also if this autonomous taxi thing becomes a highly profitable gig (as you suggest), you'll quickly run into a big supply/demand problem. There's only a finite number of people who need mid-day cab rides.

>There's only a finite number of people who need mid-day cab rides.

Yeah, it's a contradiction in the business model. Everyone will be able to afford to own a Tesla because everyone will be able to make money from the cars driving everyone around?

Re: Solar Roof

#110

Post by schismsubv »

IvanK_net wrote: post #45

I have always been a huge fan of a quick transition to sustainable energy sources. There is just one little thing I don't understand. Why they expect people to make electricity at their homes? You can buy a little piece of land in a dessert, put solar panels there and distribute the electricity to other places. And you don't have to climb on any roof during the installation or the maintenance. It is not profitable to…

> it can be made much cheaper while keeping the good quality

I'll spare you the anecdata, but the choice of bread and vegetables are specifically poor support structures on which to build your argument for centralization. They can (in some cases) be made more cheaply, but the quality suffers substantially.

Electricity, while lacking the strongly subjective "quality" dimensions of food, still suffers from long-range distribution. Transmission and stepping losses (as well as transit costs) are a large portion of why we don't have just one enormous generation center for the world. There's obviously a balance, but for the cost of land and the added loss of converting solar's DC to AC, local generation gets a little more advantage.

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