Your roof has a massive surface area that’s exposed to the sun and Australians cop bucket loads of that sunshine. That’s potential energy not being captured and not being used by your house, instead you buy expensive electricity from the grid. Elon Musk wants to change that with his bold plan to own your roof.
A Solar Roof is now available for pre-order on the Tesla website and while it’ll be installed in the US first, other countries like Australia can still pre-order now and have it installed in 2018.
Home builders are absolutely crazy if they don’t start to offer this as an option for new homes, something that would be an incremental cost difference to a mortgage, yet see dramatically lower energy bills, especially if paired with a Powerwall battery storage solution.
Tesla Australia have published a blog post detailing the benefits users can expect from a solar roof, most notable the ability to turn sunlight into power without an electricity company.
Consumer Reports estimates that a Solar Roof for an average size U.S. home would need to cost less than $24.50 per square foot to be cost competitive with a regular roof. The cost of Solar Roof is less. The typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for Solar Roof, and benefit from a beautiful new roof that also increases the value of their home.
There’s 4 types of tile available Textured, Smooth, Tuscan and Slate. Personally I like the modern look of the Smooth the best. All are rated for hail and hilariously warrantied for ‘Infinity, or the lifetime of your house, whichever comes first’. They have a Class 4 (the best) hail rating and will survive where traditional roof tiles would be smashed to pieces.
You can bank your pre-order now for A$1,310, with the actual cost of your setup dependent on the size of your roof, and energy needs. Its a fundamentally different way of thinking about solar, typically they’re sold in 12, 16, 20 panels, but an entire roof of solar is a very different thing indeed.
