Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 363 posts

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#261

Post by Xiol »

pjc50 wrote: post #254
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rooftop solar should be more heavily incentivized. From a disaster situation/civil defense perspective, it provides offgrid durability to communities, and it could be life or death in cold waves or heat waves. For all the utility companies complaining about EV and alt energy infrastructure adaptation... well, fine, then let consumer PV do a large part of the work. Oh wait, did someone say consumer choice? The utility…

> it provides offgrid durability to communities This needs a small asterisk that many systems are deliberately not "islanding" capable. Mine isn't, but in the ten years I've had my panels I've only ever had a couple of power cuts, one of which was at night.

I'm having solar installed next month and I specifically had to ask for islanding capability. This added about £1500 to the cost of the system, which I can see many people not opting for.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#262

Post by thelastgallon »

t1234s wrote: post #113
t1234s wrote: post #112

Shame.. I've seen one of these in person on a high-end home and its a very nice looking product. I assume the lifespan would be similar to a metal roof.

Regular solar panels work well but are an eyesore on a nice home.

When it comes to eyesores, there is nothing worse than garage door(s). The front of the house is mostly a massive ugly garage door. I don't see people ever not having a garage because its an eyesore and it is right in front of you, can't avoid looking at it. Roof stays out of sight unless you want to look at the roof.

Americans come up will all kinds of ridiculous reasons for not using clean energy.

1) Nuclear is dangerous, even though it has the safest profile of all energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

2) Also, we are now bird lovers! Wind turbines killed 2 dozen birds (but cats kill billions of birds). Wind is also an eyesore. Ruins the views from $_.

3) Solar is an eyesore.

4) Electric cars don't work in the cold. (lets ignore Norway, a tropical island)

5) Range anxiety, because I might drive from Florida to Wyoming.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#263

Post by cjrp »

mschuster91 wrote: post #250
throwaway2037 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my panels are returning 16% on capital spent Can you share your calculations?

Not OP but I'll run what I plan on doing. In Germany you can get a plug-in ready kit with 2.2 kWh battery and 920W panels for less than 600€ [1]. The panels are about 1.8 m² each (=3.6 m² total), so with on average 1.200 kWh/m² solar radiation and 25% efficiency I'm looking at up to 1080 kWh in energy I'll get out of the system per year. Electricity here in Germany is expensive at an average 30 ct/kWh, so the panels…

Are these the kind you could DIY-install on a balcony for example?

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#264

Post by namibj »

pzmarzly wrote: post #244
RataNova wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is probably the core issue. Solar Roof was trying to be a roofing product, an energy product, and a design product all at once

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, Building-Integrated Photovoltaics are its own market of products. But you have many much cheaper options there, at least in Europe. For example https://solroof.eu/en/discover-solroof/what-is-solroof/ or https://metsolar.eu/products/bipv-roof/

Do you have any pointers like that solroof that don't bother trying to be inactive anymore?

My benchmark there is a ventilated attic with insulation between attic and house, using traditional glass roof structure filled with frameless glass-glass panels instead of human-below rated laminated safety glass.

Like, it can't be that hard to do better when you're not trying to be substantially fancier than a classic gable roof, it's just that the panels need to not be shear-loaded much, and the structure doesn't have to be so pretty from underneath as traditional glass roofs.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#266

Post by thelastgallon »

HerbManic wrote: post #176
HerbManic wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It think they under estimate the 'Green bling' factor. For many people if they are going to get solar, they want the neighbours to know. Got to get that virtue signalling in. Not saying it is a huge factor but it is there.

Sorry I see I am being down voted. Understandable, I do come off a little like a jerk there. I am not anti solar in the least, I just kind it really fascinating how some folks who are very well meaning, also tend to love that they can show off their goodies. I wish it wasn't the case but alas this is how some folks are.

Your observation may not be true. People do what they've done before, or what other people do. Putting solar on roof is going against both of those.

There are definitely a few people who want to show off their bling/goodies, but all 326 of them already bought cybertrucks to show off. Solar panels are not something to show off and brag about, its not macho. It would be looked at as feminine technology. If its not making a loud noise, looks big and inspiring (pick up truck), billeting smoke, it has no macho power to show off.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#267

Post by panick21_ »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #60
habitue wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Musk fanboy but I think this kind of maximally cynical take is tiresome. They thought it would work, they expended significant engineering effort and money making it real and producing it and selling it to customers. The simplest explanation is that they did all that and the market didn't want it. The economics of traditional panels outweighed the aesthetic advantages of tiles and they're pivoting. No conspira…

But fraud was involved. Financially it was part of SolarCity bailout (Musk's cousin). It heavily heavily penalized Tesla shareholders and smelled of a family bailout. Solar Roof was announced so hastily in October 2016 justify the merger and stave off massive shareholder lawsuits. There was little effort in the roof development after bailout was a success, minus the bait-and-switch lawsuits. There was genuine concept…

What evidence do you have that little effort was put in development? As far as I can tell that not at all the case. The early version was bad and it took multiple generations for it to become a real product.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#268

Post by panick21_ »

oliwarner wrote: post #54
habitue wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Musk fanboy but I think this kind of maximally cynical take is tiresome. They thought it would work, they expended significant engineering effort and money making it real and producing it and selling it to customers. The simplest explanation is that they did all that and the market didn't want it. The economics of traditional panels outweighed the aesthetic advantages of tiles and they're pivoting. No conspira…

> They thought it would work That's the problem though. Thinking your product will get by on looks when it's clearly outcompeted on performance, price, availability and longevity. That's not just optimism, it's delusion.

I don't think it was clear that it would be out compete on price or performance. If you compare roof + solor to solar roof, the idea was that eventually it would compete with doing both separately.

I'm also not sure if its actually worse on longevity.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#269

Post by panick21_ »

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #86
SXX wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both self driving craze and car tunnel madness is only possible at all because how car centric US mindset is. If you even try to suggest that people could instead use good public transport and pedestrian infrastructure they would look at you like you are some sort of crazy. Musk just takes car centric society pipe dreams and sell it back to them. Like OMG you transiting to work and can safely stay in your phone 99% o…

But transit only solves your problem in cities like London. Some people - for some reason I’m still not entirely clear on - seem to like this. But other people - so far the majority - don’t. And for those, self-driving cars solve the transit problem. That’s valuable. And you only need to beat unit economics of taxis. So there is a significant margin to capture

People use public transport in villages of 20 people where I live. The idea that you need some mega city for public transport to be viable is an American fantasy. Even if its not for everybody, it still makes sense.

Also most people live plenty urban to make public transit perfectly viable.

Self driving cars means even more cars on the road, and reduce the avg occupation even more. Even in a same rural environment this isn't great. And in an urban environment is insanely fucking stupid.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#270

Post by panick21_ »

hvb2 wrote: post #84
SXX wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both self driving craze and car tunnel madness is only possible at all because how car centric US mindset is. If you even try to suggest that people could instead use good public transport and pedestrian infrastructure they would look at you like you are some sort of crazy. Musk just takes car centric society pipe dreams and sell it back to them. Like OMG you transiting to work and can safely stay in your phone 99% o…

While i kinda agree with you, it doesn't fly for most US cities. Most US cities aren't dense at all. A lot of them were built with transportation in mind. London and European cities in general are so much older that their city centers have no real way to accommodate that. So what do you do? You provide non car options. Technically they exist in US cities too, but especially on the west coast they're just not a viable…

Most US cities centers were not built to late, instead they were bulldozed for the car, those are 2 different things. The US used to have beautiful city centers and nice urban fabric around those centers.

> A lot of them were built with transportation in mind.

Complete nonsense, the Post-1945 push for suberbia had nothing to with 'transportation in mind', the reason they wanted it was totally different.

The reality is more that they pushed suberiba and only then realized the transportation problem it caused, and then they reacted with every increasing highway and stroad building.

> Technically they exist in US cities too, but especially on the west coast they're just not a viable alternative.

Its not an alternative because its either not funded or badly organized.

Its bad because the government doesn't care that its bad, its not actually a fundamental problem.

Post reply on HN