Not sure why all the negative energy. They are going after the portion of the market that would replace their roof with a high end material, and are interested in solar. If you are a home owner in this situation, you could consider investing into your home. The roof will pay dividends over the next 30 years, and is attractive and durable. I think it will do extremely well. Perhaps the best opportunity is in new const…
yeah there is little economic incentive for anyone outside of California will to retrofit these onto an existing house. Take Texas for example a large house in Dallas is $500k I used the provided calculator on the Tesla site and the roof install will cost $211k! that is not justifiable on a house this expensive.
Solar Roof
231–240 of 455 posts
Re: Solar Roof
#232People are thinking way too much about how much this saves them at a personal level. I think people should instead be thinking about how we can save the existence of the entire species, and all other higher order forms of life on earth, rather than focusing on their individual tax breaks, savings, or other trivial concerns. Yes, your cash flow is rendered quite trivial if life on Earth ends. Invest in the Life Econom…
First off, we are not at existential risk from climate change. Most reasonable estimates suggest on the order of single-digit percent productivity losses for society over the next several decades. Substantial and unfortunate, but not existence-threatening, and in fact not even enough to outweigh reasonably expectable productivity gains from technological development. There are much more serious existential risks to humanity than climate change.
Second off, no one has enough information about the global state of the world that "just think about the big picture" is actually good, actionable advice. People only have enough information and processing power to do local maximization, and this actually works exceptionally well. If you want whatever arbitrary "big picture" stuff you're into to factor into people's decision-making process, the best way to do that is things like tax incentives. How well this works is up for debate, but it's certainly better than vague appeals to "save the environment".
I'm not sure what you're calling the "death economy". Could you explain that further?
Re: Solar Roof
#2332 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…
$50 for Prius, $100 for descent Audi
> $100-$300 per month in electricity
let's settle at $120, unless you run a server farm at home, for which you will need more solar panels anyway
Take away highly speculated income from cars $193,000/240 = ~800 months = ~65 years to recover costs
More realistic
Re: Solar Roof
#234I 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…
Not an expert here but a couple things come to mind. From an environmental perspective, it is better to use surface area which is already built up than pristine natural desert land. The house itself already imposes an ecological cost. A solar roof adds around zero to that cost. I've heard the stat thrown about that 50% of energy generated is lost to transmission. If that's true then there's efficiency to generation a…
Re: Solar Roof
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really a lifetime warranty though. If you click through to the Tesla purchasing page, there is (only) a 30 years Power Warranty and Weatherization Warranty... which in my mind renders calling it a lifetime warranty sort of silly, as the purpose of the shingles (power generation) is not covered by the lifetime portion of the warranty. 30 years still seems like a significant warranty for a product like this th…
The odds that Tesla will be around and willing to honor their warranty 25 years from now are also nowhere near 100%. Also, if you read the fine print, you will notice that the warranty will not cover the most frequent cause of roof problems - leaks in the seams. The same can be said for your local fly-by-night roofer, but it sounds like you can buy two roofs for the price of a SolarRoof. Also, another thing to be con…
Re: Solar Roof
#236People are thinking way too much about how much this saves them at a personal level. I think people should instead be thinking about how we can save the existence of the entire species, and all other higher order forms of life on earth, rather than focusing on their individual tax breaks, savings, or other trivial concerns. Yes, your cash flow is rendered quite trivial if life on Earth ends. Invest in the Life Econom…
("Honey, if we get a solar roof it will help the planet, but we'll have to put junior in the cheaper preschool to pay for it. Whatya think?")
Re: Solar Roof
#237I 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…
Re: Solar Roof
#238I 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…
Re: Solar Roof
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. Are you doing the math all in present dollars? Because the return is 7% after inflation but >10% before. So you'd have >500.000 in 2047 dollars. In this case it's important to do that adjustment because you're doing an investment upfront for payoffs over 30 years so the value of mone…
The case can be made even stronger if the consumer's efficiency gap is taken into account. For example from "Market failures and barriers as a basis for clean energy policies by Marilyn A. Brown" we read: "Meier and Whittier (1983) studied a case in which consumers were given a choice in stores throughout the United States of two refrigerators that were identical in all respects except two: energy efficiency and pric…