Sorry to get off topic, tesla (solar city) making solar roofs now that look pretty dame awesome!! https://youtu.be/dRqSkR4ENAg
Moved this post to its own thread.
That’s a really great idea but I wonder how long it will take to get the cost down.
Hopefully not long enough that someone else will be able to do it a lot cheaper.
I have been doing a lot with smartgrid stuff lately for work and its funny that one the ideas was use car batteries to run the house during peak hours then charge the cars during down times.
Most car manufactures hate this however because its shortens batterie life for cars. Tesla supports things like this because they offer complete home solutions it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
What’s more cost effective now? A home battery (like Tesla’s) or a generator? Granted a generator can run for days and the battery runs out, but I’ve never priced out a generator.
Natural gas generator is still going to eat up a tonnnnn of natural gas running none stop.
And how often do we have multi day electricity outages minus the October storm.
That’s kinda what I’m thinking. Not to mention maintenance on the generator, noise, etc. Maybe it’s starting to make sense to look into one of these whole house batteries.
It’s worth it to me for the couple of times a year or every other year the power goes out.
i love it.
I wonder what provisions they have for heating?
I see the merit, I just do not see the practicality from a roofing standpoint.
It still has to be installed by a roofer and they will damage many panels during installation as it looks like they have 2 spots for nails built in.
I have seen plenty of commercial solar roof panels damaged by snow. Those are easily replaced on the stands, but pulling out individual shingle tiles like these would be high cost.
Seems like another great idea for the West and South, but will lack results in the NE.
I was looking in the video and it looks like the demo roofs don’t have flashing or gutters.
Well, I think car manufacturers want their customers to be happy with the product. If electric range diminishes quickly due to increased throughput from use that isn’t increasing mileage, some might think battery life is much worse than the actual kWh throughout (driving + reserve use).
Unfortunately all batteries degrade with use and electric propulsion is an application where it can be glaringly apparent. 
On the flip side, keeping a lithium battery below 50 % state of charge helps shelf life…
Since there are so many places that off free charging, I was thinking about loading the bed of my 2500 ram with batteries and charging them all around town for free.
When I’m home I’ll plug my truck it and use the free power. Winner winner
I am sure you are aware of what I am about to talk about since you are working with smart grid stuff, but both Enphase and Tesal, are developing battery storage (not using your cars battery) for home use to do what you suggested. The reason for this is out west some electric companies charge different pricing for power consumption depending on the time of day. With Enphase the idea behind the batteries is to couple them with their micro invertiers for power generation with solar panels, but the bateries can be used as a stand alone unit within a home. In New York this is not something you would do because of the way NYSERDA has structured the power purchase agreement but in other states this can and will make sense.
I am very curious to look a a wiring layout of a solar roof, and to see how the system works, because although it looks fantastic from the street the wiring and operation is going to be interesting. Servicing a dead cell or panel down the line is a concern of mine. I chose to use Enphase micro inverters because of ease of install and panel level diagnostic, and also some other reasons, but I am assuming they are running high voltage DC down to a central inverter with the solar roof. There is nothing wrong with that other than it not being easy to service 100 individual cells on a circuit if you have a failed or damaged one.
if anyone has seen the video of the tesla on fire with the battery shooting flames all over, i can assure you within a couple of years these “whole house battery” systems are going to get regulated pretty hard by the fire code and building code. they aren’t going to allow a small bomb to just sit in some corner of the house where it could be exposed to a fire.
Probably true, but considering the fire codes have no problem with parking 2 cars in an attached garage with anywhere from 30-100 gallons of highly volatile gasoline in them I doubt the fire code will be that difficult to comply with.
I was talking with a coworker about how this would affect the insurance market. When we write a new policy, we’d need to know upfront if the house has a solar roof on it, otherwise at the time of loss, you might not get a check large enough to replace it with the solar roof again.
The likelihood of this happening is slim to none though, because most policies have provisions to put you back to where you were before the loss. It would really be up to them to ask the questions up front to rate for it properly.
http://insideevs.com/consumer-reports-crunches-the-numbers-on-teslas-solar-roof/
Those numbers are a joke.
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I just paid less than $10,000 for my barn roof. How big of a house would be $20,000?!?!?!?
I think the early adopters of the solar roof product will likely get help making it affordable via government subsidies/tax credits. Even as a fiscal conservative I’m fine with this because it’s a good investment as a country.
- You need early adopters to drive the technology and drive the price down for the average consumer.
- Each solar house is one less house drawing on our already overburdened grid.
- Each solar house is one less house drawing energy from dirty or non-renewable energy sources like coal or natural gas.
- The panels are being made here in the US at well paying factories.
Many areas where solar makes sense use different types of roofing. If you’re talking concrete and clay tiles $20k doesn’t go that far actually.