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My home's roof has another 20 years on it. So I'll be tossing half of it's lifetime if I replaced it now. That's partly why I mentioned new home construction wo
by 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
My home's roof has another 20 years on it. So I'll be tossing half of it's lifetime if I replaced it now. That's partly why I mentioned new home construction would likely be an easier market. Moreover, it's a 3000 sq ft ranch, with larger than the average roof area. The Tesla roof is likely going to start at $50,000, (I said "$50,000+") so I'm thinking $65,000 for my house. Batteries are probably in the range of $10,000 for enough to hold charge for the cars and run the house.
- hwillis 9y agoThey have a calculator. Check it out instead of guessing wildly
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoFWIW, I have some colleagues who are researching how to reduce energy usage in buildings. It's a lot harder than you would assume just based on pure math, since you have to take Jevon's paradox [1] and other "psychological" effects into account. I.e. when energy gets cheaper, you use more of it. In my area (same latitude as Anchorage, ~ 65% of the incoming solar energy as in San Francisco), they calculated that solar roof panels on a typical house doesn't break even over a 25 year period, you're still thousands of dollars in the red. Only the "cheap" air-to-air heat pumps (AC in reverse) and solar heating of your hot water give good ROI. What both these have in common is that the purchase and installation cost is much lower than e.g. rooftop solar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- FeepingCreature 9y agoWhy would you take those into account? Using more energy doesn't mean it "takes longer to recoup", because now you're getting value in the form of additional energy to use.
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoAre you really getting value? Or are you just not bothering anymore to conserve a resource when it's less expensive to waste it?
- FeepingCreature 9y agoWell, you could argue the same if I double your income, but you spend the increase. Like it or not, demand through consumption is the root source of value in capitalism.
- dogruck 9y agoReminds me of this 2010 New Yorker story about Saul Griffith: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/17/the-inventors-dilemma http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/17/the-inventors-d...
- seltzered_ 9y agoSaul did a more recent long now talk on some of the rough numbers for homes: http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/sep/21/infrastructure-and-climate-change/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/sep/21/infrastructure-and-...
- dogruck 9y agoAh, thanks -- hadn't seen that before.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoI did the calculation back in May when this article [0] came out and recalled the rough numbers correctly for my home (they changed the calculator on their web site, now only talks about the value of electricity the roof would produce). The quote from the article is: "The average home in the United States is 2,467 square feet. According to Tesla’s handy solar calculator, the new system will set an average homeowner back $51,200 for a 70% solar roof. The company also recommends purchasing the additional, but optional, Powerwall battery to store all that new energy at $7,000, bringing the grand total of installation to $58,200." My roof is much larger than the average (2,750 livable + roof over garage) because mine is a ranch and the average includes 2-story homes which will have much smaller roof area for the same home square footage. So it's quite reasonable to get from an average cost of $58,200 to $75,000 for my specific home. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sleasca/2017/05/16/tesla-solar-roof-cost/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sleasca/2017/05/16/tesla-solar-...
- brianwawok 9y agoI doubt you would need all 3000 sq ft of roof to be solar.