For years, both homeowners and solar installers have dreamed of solar panels that, well, didn’t look like solar panels.
Instead, the panels would just look like an ordinary roof. Or even better, a fancy roof with premium roof tiles.
Tesla is now claiming that they’ve made this dream a reality with their new Solar Roof product. This offering is basically attractive roof tiles, that come in half a dozen different colors and textures, and also serve as solar panels.
The tiles look great, as everybody agrees. And in a previous post, I talked about how well Tesla’s Solar Roof tiles stack up against traditional solar panels in terms of performance. My research showed that since the solar roof tiles are new and largely untested, lots of experts have questions about how well this new product will generate solar power after a few years of service on your roof. In the long run, solar roof tiles may not turn out to perform as promised.
I also took a guess at when Tesla’s solar tiles, which launched on a trial basis in California only during 2017, might be available in other parts of the country, including Virginia. The company says they’ll expand to other states in 2018, but of course, Tesla has a history of delays with rolling out new products. Combine that with questions about performance, and my guess was that it may take Tesla a while to work out the kinks.
So it could be five years or more before you can get Tesla’s solar roof tiles here — if you ever can. Yes, that’s right. If the product turns out to have too many problems or doesn’t sell well because it’s too expensive, then it’s possible that it could be cancelled before it ever reaches Virginia.
For more detail, you can read the article. For now, I’d like to deal with an issue I only touched on in the other piece, the price. Specifically, how expensive are solar roof tiles vs traditional solar panels?
Tesla’s Solar Roof is 3X More Expensive than Traditional Solar
So, how much do Tesla’s solar roof tiles cost vs conventional PV panels?
The quick answer is that it would cost more than three times as much to get enough solar roof tiles to power your home as it would to go with normal black or blue solar panels.
Industry expert Barry Cinnamon has put together a chart comparing the costs for a typical home with a 2,500 square foot roof and a $200 per month electric bill, located in the only state where the Tesla roof tiles are scheduled to available before 2018, California:
If the Solar Roof were available in Virginia, the costs might be a bit different — perhaps lower or perhaps higher. And, while Cinnamon predicts that Tesla tiles will get cheaper in the future, for now he says that “at these high prices it is clear to me that Tesla really has a product that only makes sense for new construction on high-end homes.”
Even When You Add in a New Roof, Tesla is Still More Expensive
OK, so Tesla Solar Roof tiles may cost three times as much as normal solar panels.
But keep in mind that Tesla’s tiles aren’t just solar generators. They’re also roof tiles. So, to be fair, you have to add up the cost of both solar panels and a new roof to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
In Cinnamon’s example of an average home with a 2,400 square foot roof, the cost for a new roof using composition shingle would be about $12,300. The total cost with solar panels, after subtracting the 30% federal tax credit, would be about $23,000. That works out to a 12-year payback for solar plus a roof, vs 26 years for Tesla.
So, solar + a new roof is still half the cost of Tesla.
Only in the rare case when a homeowner would want to get solar while upgrading their roof from standard shingle to expensive high-end tile, does Tesla look like a better deal. In that case, premium re-roofing plus the solar would cost about $47,000, which is closer to Tesla’s cost of $51,480 after the federal tax credit.
“Here’s where it makes sense,” Cinnamon explains. “If you’re going to be re-roofing with a tile or if you just really care about aesthetics, Tesla is good. If you’re just looking at saving money with solar, then you’re way, way, way better off just using ordinary solar panels.”
Of course, you could wait until Tesla’s tiles are cheaper (and until they come to Virginia, if they ever do). But in that case, every year you delay getting solar is another year you’ll be spending money on electricity from your local utility. That’s money you could be investing in a solar system. But if you pay it to the utility, then it becomes money that you’ll never see again.
Cinnamon concludes with good advice for homeowners:
For the average homeowner considering solar, by far the best choice is a traditional rooftop solar power system.
Most homeowners in Virginia who go solar don’t need a new roof at the same time. In that case, they can save 70% or more by going with traditional solar panels instead of Tesla.
Main Street Solar can look at your roof and tell you if it needs any work before you can go solar. Just ask us for a free quote and solar consultation. We’ll come by anyplace in southwestern Virginia. And if you do need a new roof, we can recommend some excellent roofing companies that provide high quality at a good price.
In any event, we can install solar panels that will make your roof look beautiful whether it’s new or not, while increasing the value of your home and helping you make your own solar power at home. And all for a price that’s surprisingly affordable.
— Andrew Brenner, Main Street Solar
