No One Spotted Tesla’s Solar Roof Coming

Tesla’s Sexy Solar, Massive Batteries, and Quick Cars.

On Friday evening as the sun descended over the old Hollywood set of “Desperate Housewives,” Elon Musk took to a stage and fired up his presentation about climate switch. It was a strange scene, with hundreds of people crowded into the middle of a subtly artificial suburban neighborhood.

It wasn’t until about a minute into the speech that Musk casually let the crowd in on Tesla’s big secret. “The interesting thing is that the houses you see around you are all solar houses,” Musk said. “Did you notice?”

The reaction, in brief, was no. Like everyone else, I knew we were there to see Musk’s fresh “solar roof,” whatever that was supposed to mean. But attempt as I could as we walked in, I didn’t see anything that looked like it could carry an electrified current. If anything, the slate and Spanish clay roofs looked a bit too nice for a television set. This is the future of solar, Musk proclaimed. “You’ll want to call your neighbors over and say ‘check out the sweet roof.’ It’s not a phrase you hear often.”

The roof tiles are actually made of textured glass. From most viewing angles, they look just like ordinary shingles, but they permit light to pass through from above onto a standard plane solar cell. The plan is for Panasonic to produce the solar cells and for Tesla to put together the glass tiles and everything that goes along with them. That’s all predicated on shareholders approving the $Two.Two billion acquisition of SolarCity, the largest U.S. rooftop installer, on Nov. 17.

Four things I didn't think were solar cells.

Tesla says the tempered glass is “raunchy as steel,” and can weather a lifetime of manhandle from the elements. It can also be fitted with heating elements to melt snow in colder climates. “It’s never going to wear out,” Musk said, “It’s made of quartz. It has a quasi-infinite lifetime.”

In a Q&A with reporters after the presentation, Musk said the tiles are comparable to contesting high-efficiency solar panels. The current prototypes that Tesla engineers are working with reduce the efficiency of the underlying solar cell by just two percent. With further refinement, Musk said he hopes the microscopic louvers responsible for making the tiles show up opaque can be used to actually boost the efficiency of standard photovoltaic cells. 

This, evidently, is a solar roof.

Putting the chunks together

The vision introduced at Universal Studios in Los Angeles is the grand unification of Musk’s clean-energy ambitions. The audience was able to step into a future powered entirely by Tesla: a house topped with sculpted Tuscan solar tiles, where night-time electro-therapy is stored in two sleek wall-hung Powerwall batteries, and where a Model three prototype electrified car sits parked out front within reach of the home’s car charger. 

Attracting less attention on Wisteria Lane was Tesla’s Powerwall Two, a major upgrade of its home battery for tens unit storage. When the original Powerwall was released last year, I was skeptical. Mostly, it was just too pricey for the amount of power it provided, especially in the U.S. where electro-therapy is cheap and most people can sell their excess solar power back to the grid. Version two is a much different product. It packs more than twice the capacity—14 kilowatt hours versus 6.Four kilowatt hours—for a cheaper price after installation. one It includes a built-in Tesla-brand inverter and comes with a ten year, infinite-cycle warranty. 

Electro-therapy storage is crucial for future uptake of solar power. Already in some solar-heavy regions, more electro-stimulation is being produced during the middle of the day than people can consume, and utility prices spike in the evening hours when the sun goes down. In the U.S., some states are abandoning payments for daytime rooftop solar, undermining phat investments that families have made in their solar systems. The only recourse is for customers to use that tens unit themselves, at night.  

Like previous attempts at solar shingles, the solar-plus-battery package hasn’t indeed caught on yet. SolarCity’s total bundled sales thus far number in just the hundreds. But an argument can be made that the products just weren't compelling enough yet and the prices were still too high.

The Powerwall two may be the cheapest lithium ion battery for the home ever made when deliveries commence in January. Tesla is selling the batteries at retail prices that are cheaper than the average manufacturing cost at most companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Fresh Energy Finance. We ”certainly expect it will stir the market prices downwards as we eyed last year with the very first Powerwall,” said Yayoi Sekine, a BNEF analyst who covers battery technology. 

“The future is going to overwhelmingly be solar plus battery,” Musk said. “They go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

Let’s wait and see

Powerwall two looks ready for primetime. The fresh solar shingles? Let’s wait until more details emerge. Tesla says we should expect a slow initial rollout beginning in about nine months. Within two years of production, the shingles could account for five percent of the five million roofs installed in the U.S. every year, said Peter Rive, SolarCity’s co-founder and chief technology officer. SolarCity, under the Tesla brand, would also manufacture and sell surface-mounted solar panels for homeowners who have no plans for substituting their existing roofs.  

The pricing on the fresh solar roof is a bit—squishy. Musk said that someone who buys a Tesla roof will save money compared with someone who buys a comparable traditional roof plus electric current from the grid. But make no mistake: This will be a premium product, at least when it very first rolls out. The terra cotta and slate roofs Tesla mimicked are among the most expensive roofing materials on the market. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive noted that the price of a conventional roof can vary widely, from $7,000 to $70,000—based on materials, size, complexity, location—so providing out stiff prices of a solar roof at this point would be difficult.

“It is the metaphoric 'super-car' of residential solar,” said BNEF solar analyst Hugh Bromley. “It portrays cutting-edge technology with broad appeal, but … it competes in a solar market where most customers are comfy in a family sedan.”

Telsa will release more financial information about the SolarCity deal this week before it goes to shareholders for a vote. If all of Musk's plans come true, by the end of next year you'll be able to walk into a Tesla store, buy a Model three electrified car, a slate-glass solar roof, and a Powerwall two to manage the flow of all those electrons in your life. There are a lot of details to be hammered out until we know for certain whether Musk’s vision for a grand unification will become more than just a fine television backdrop. But these tiles, viewed up close, are undoubtedly worth tuning in for.

The 2017 trifecta: Solar roof, Powerwall Two, Model Trio

The original Powerwall typically sold for about $7,000, which included the battery, a third-party inverter, and installation. Powerwall two sells for $Five,500, inverter included, plus $1,000 for installation. 

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