I’m pretty sure solar roof was introduced as a way to pump stock when Tesla was doing poor financially
When they rolled out the product with tiny tiles I always thought musk was being to ambitious. The smaller the tiles the harder a solar roof gets.
Surely there’s a middle ground where a roof is made of something big and panel-sized, rather than a conventional roof with panels as another layer on top?
The middle ground is integrated solar panels, where you have normal sized panels but they are flush with the rest of the roof and there are no tiles underneath them. There are normal tiles surrounding the panels. This is the style I tend to see now for new builds, but it’s more expensive than just layering on the panels if your roof is already in good shape.
Did any other manufacturers build their own version? It seems like the right long term idea but the lack of other players seems to indicate there's some underlying issue that isn't solved yet.
There are a few companies, I remember Invisible Solar which produces modules which look like traditional clay tiles.<p>The market pitch is different tho, they are aimed at providing less effective solar for places where you have a hard need to keep the old look, old churches, monumental buildings and such.
GAF did. There are two issues: 1) too expensive 2) not modular. I like that I can separate my solar decision from my roof decision. Panels make that possible.
I did consider but there are 2 issues.
1. Efficiency. Not all roof parts can be exposed to sun. You overpay
2. You need to time it with roof change
Yep. Fred Lambert, the usual suspect.
Tesla's inability to produce solar panels is why I'm most skeptical of the whole terafab datacentre in space stuff.<p>Everyone gets caught up in the thermal management stuff and the power density stuff and whatever but to me that's a red herring.<p>The real issue is that Tesla has never known the ability to produce solar panels at scale and Musk said in that recent interview with Dwarkesh that he intends to do all the solar production in house.<p>So where's he getting the sand from? How are they going to purify it at scale? How are they going to turn it into ingots and then wafers and then cells and panels when they haven't even been able to produce a slim fraction of panels without all those extra steps over the past decade for their roofs?<p>And if the goal is to have the industrial capacity to do all this in a few years and produce solar panels on the scale that he's talking about -- why doesn't he just lay those bad boys down en masse on Earth and solve the impending climate crisis and our current energy shortages?<p>It just doesn't make sense.
Sad. A great idea ruined by poor business practices.
As someone who owns a Solar Roof, this news is disappointing. Many of my friends have said it's the best roof they've ever seen, and I even sometimes get compliments from people who drive past.
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