Tesla Solar Roof

Tesla Solar Roof: Cost Estimate with Powerwall 2 and Electricity Costs Included

Concerns of The New Tesla Solar Roof

The publisher of this video Ben Sullins Data Geek, brought up some great points:

But from strictly a roofers stand point lets examine another angle to the roof cost estimate.  Solar, Tesla, Roof, Cost, Estimate

Tesla solar tile

I see many other pertinent questions that should be addressed before even talking about the final cost of the roofing.

Here is a brief list of things that most people may not understand or possibly take for granted concerning roofing.

  1. How does anybody really know the roofing product will last 30 years +let alone the solar functioning parts of the integrated product?
  2. Who will literally do the installs? A roofing contractor, a group of Solar City employees or perhaps other third party affiliates?
  3. Who will service the “panels”? A roofing contractor? Or perhaps both a roofer and a solar tech?

Tesla Solar Roof

Financing

  1. I  disagree with Ben’s opinion on Tesla possibly having exclusive tax breaks, only because I believe they already may be in effect.  Ben mentioned of the Tesla solar roof being a combined system which could possibly allow for a 30% government discount on their complete system compared to another solar contractor who would only get a discount on his solar system without roofing included.
  2. But from my understanding the PACE financing programs already offer to include  roofing with a combined solar system to get the 30% maximum  (give or take) on a government allowed discount if the roofing system itself meets the requirement for a title 21 compliant roof.
  3. This would be hard to market speedily into the retail market for a few more reasons:

Lawsuits

  1. I don’t know of many roofing contractors that would be willing to take a chance on installing new roofing products such as tesla solar roof without knowing for certainty the terms of the warranty as to protect them in case of a lawsuit caused by a product failure. And really who knows for certain if this will last, especially since it hasn’t been time tested.
  2. Over the last 25 years I’ve witnessed several so called “50 year warranted” roofing products fail miserably and ended up in class-action lawsuits.
  3. Who will ultimately be responsible for failures that may occur due to material malfunction or perhaps a workmanship issue?

Installation

  1. Another small caveat to pushing out sales is the availability of qualified labor installers.
  2. Since this product, tesla solar roof is a slate style product it puts limits on who can install this product. Slate roofers make only a minute slice of the roofing labor industry.
  3. I could be wrong but I’m really wondering how long it might take to properly train installers to put these roofs on. It takes years to learn how to properly roof correctly.
  4. Slate is also one the hardest and most time-consuming roofs to install.

In closing:

I think the textured glass with the aesthetic look as one sees it from various angles is a neat idea.

Tesla solar roof

The fact that this unique type of glass can produce solar is what makes  it a possible diamond in the rough.

But in all practicality, I’m not seeing or imagining how it could be user friendly enough to be marketable now.

It seems like the glass could be used for other applications as well and may offer advances with it into the roofing/solar roofing field in years to come.

I’m intrigued to see what the Tesla solar roof/Solarcity team will to have offer.

Kudos to Mr. Musk for having the ingenuity and spunk to give this peculiar solar roofing project a spectacular launch.

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