@@philmaness5983 yeah a bit over. It gets complicated because Tesla also sent a big check and comped one of the batteries. Plus insurance payment and a couple thousand in local incentives for battery and solar. The part that was applicable to federal credit was roughly 61k
I have heard that the people at Tesla are first rate folks to work with and their installers are equally as professional supporting a stellar product! Thanks for the honest review!
I think it's funny how no one asks about R.O.I. for other things like - a traditional furnace, big gas-guzzling pickup, RV, boat, jet ski, traditional roof, house painting, kitchen remodel etc. Solar is one of the few things you can buy that has a positive R.O.I. at some point. And right away gives you more control over your monthly costs.
You do cost of operation calculations for those appliances, not ROI. In solar's case you do ROI, because it is basically a service substitution with an upfront investment. You can go on with your life, heat your house and power your computer with or without solar, the difference is you produce it yourself or buy it from a producer. Thats why you do ROI on solar, but not on any of those things you mentioned.
@@MrGatya2 And i don't really know when you'd get an ROI in most cases, solar can be more expensive than the power returned to you depending on where you are. It matters more if power independence is what you desire. But solar can require a lot of maintenance if you're in an area with particularly rough weather, and the electronics themselves can still fail.
Totally getting this. My dad asked the question of how ugly and obvious large solar farms and wind mills are. Dude, we live in Bakersfield CA, it's fucking mad max of pump jacks, pipe lines and refineries out here! So interesting how ppl get used to seeing/thinking one way and not seeing reality lol
Solar only really purpose is to save you money over using the power company. As far as trucks go you can't pretend you bought a bar of gold that does absolutely nothing. If that truck took you to work everyday for 20years I'd say regardless of what you payed it was a good investment. That truck allowed you to earn 20 years wages! The other nonsense you mention are all toys. different category.
My neighbor paid $16k for a new asphalt roof. He thought I paid too much until I asked how long before his asphalt roof pays for itself. In twenty years he will have to replace his. My roof will have another 50 years and will be paying me. The gap below the tiles is vented and makes a thermal barrier and keeps roof and tiles cool, lowers cooling cost in summer. You can hear the air move. Looks great to.
Absolutely outstanding summary. From beginning to end, you very logically explained this in layman's terms and answered every question I have ever had about Tesla's solar roof. Final question.....have you ever had to ask any of the contractors/installers, or Tesla to come back for any reason, positive or negative? Again, an outstanding job!
Really wish we could of got such a great deal on solar roof. When we looked at it Tesla quoted us 90k dollars. Asphalt was 18k just didn’t make sense for us but glad it did for you
Yeah, there are so many factors. Now I'm always looking at roofs to see how many different angles and planes they have. One has to imagine square footage is a big one too. Thanks!
It's not just about physical durability it's about the degrading photonic cells, and from what I understand, it's about 25 years for the type twos. The only issue I see is that power companies need customers to be able to maintain the grid, so they have been fighting and refusing to allow people to install these. I have heard of far more rejections than installations.
The big concern will be how well the plastic clips will hold up. Plastic generally doesn't do well with lots of extreme heat/cold cycles. Will become brittle over the years. Hopefully the Tesla engineers didn't overlook that aspect & are using an advanced formulated plastic material that doesn't degrade from the thermal stresses.
That was excellent. Thanks for that detailed review. It answered a lot of my own questions. We need both a roof replacement and a solar system, and this video might just push me into getting a Tesla solar roof with batteries.
Power outage - without battery backup the panels shut off to protect linemen. But with battery storage, during a power outage, dependent on the weather, the batteries can recharge the next day.
I think you double counted the cost of a normal roof when working out your ROI as you'd already deducted the insurance money from your cost. So your ROI will be about 20 yrs, probably less with electricity price rises outpacing time value of cash, but you'll most likely have to replace the inverters before then and maybe your batteries too putting you around breakeven over the the life of the system. At least you won't have to worry about electricity price hikes.
I agree. Most people won't have insurance money and this guy is clearly rich compared to most of the planet so it really doesn't make sense for tax payers to give him tens of thousands. The energy costs of everyone else is taxed to raise the money to give to his family.
Some people can never be police. They gotta complain about everything, especially Tesla, so many people are being paid off to run their mouth is about Tesla from all the other big companies that are threatened by them.
My problem is the old growatt grid tie inverter requires 220 volt AC to work. It will not operate if itbis over or below 220 volt AC. Need stabilizer trafo
That first shot would've been fine with just a voice over and didn't need you to nearly die! But the rest of the video was great and really useful. Annoyingly Tesla isn't in our area yet, because I'd love to get a solar roof when it's time to replace the current roof. Apparently our area doesn't allow battery storage either right now, which is the bigger dealbreaker when it comes to getting any solar for me.
Thank you haha One thing I'd recommend is to have an electrician install a transfer switch with generator hook-up, then use a solar generator battery. You could hook it up without your city/utility permission. You just have to decide which circuit of your house best fit the envelope of the generator. For instance, you could put all the "small" stuff on it, but then leave the heavy duty appliances connected to the grid for now. Two-bit Davinci has his office set up with a system like that.
If you install soft-start units on A/C system, fridgerators, freezers and other big high start current devices it can take the strain off your inverter and batteries! I think they are about $200-300.
That is a great tip! Fortunately we have all very efficient systems, we typically operate well within the headroom. When Tesla does their initial site-inspection, they check to see if you'll need any soft starters.
Tesla Solar is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with: worse than comcast, verizon, AT&T and your local slippery used-car dealer wrapped up together. I greatly regret installing their solar + powerwall system (14kW+2powerwall). It took almost one full year after install to get Permission to Operate (due to Tesla's incompetence and many paperwork errors, not the local electrical utility whom Tesla were constantly blaming). At one point Tesla were saying they needed to return to my house to *remove* solar panels because they'd made a calculation error. The problems went on and on. The biggest concern is that the powerwall backup has had several faults and in their last communication with me on the topic Tesla basically said (to summarize) "we don't know what went wrong with your backup and we can't guarantee it wont happen again". So there you have it - you can't trust their backup. I consider Tesla Solar a bunch of greedy scammers - stay right away from them. Oh! And the installing electrician proudly described the 90% submersible battery ... and then went and installed the battery circuit breakers below the waterline! Genius!
I'm only 3 minutes in so far (but watching) and will finish the video. I've actually had my roof installed since early July 2021. I've had PTO (permission to turn on) for 0 of the so far 16 months. The roof is installed and gorgeous (and working!) but I don't yet have the meter to measure what I put back to the grid. So I'm not officially operating. It sucks. But yes it's also generated a lot of talk, and conversations with neighbors. From my perspective this is completely on my utility (which is hot garbage, and the reason SE Pennsylvania has 0 superchargers).
Oh no dude that's way too long to wait! My sympathies. At least you can maybe just turn it on to self-powered mode and you won't export as long as it's Winter? Might be worth a shot. Thanks for the comment!
Question: You showed a photo of snow on the roof so I hope you can answer. How is it working through snow on the roof? That's my worry about roof solar as I live in Michigan and there could be snow on the roof for months with no way to clear it off so I've always wanted to know how that works with roof solar. I figured I'd need to set up an array on the ground where I could get to it and brush it off after a snow else I'd have no working solar most of the winter with it on the roof. Can you tell me how it's working for you? Thank you. Lastly, I saw a vid that there is a way that you can set it up to use your batteries first before pulling from the grid and charging the batteries first before power is sold to the grid. That way if the power goes out, you're still good to go for as long as the power is out, which is not always the case when it's connected to the grid, so have you looked into setting it up that way?
The solar roof sheds snow much faster than normal asphalt roofs or other solar panels. It avalanches off, usually the day after it falls but it depends on the wetness of it. I'd love ground array, more because we could point it south and adjust it for the seasons for optimal performance. Most off-grid panels are ground mounted because they need all the juice they can get. We got grid-battery function added about a month after I posted this. It's made a dramatic improvement on how much money the system makes/saves us, especially in Winter where we didn't get "enough" solar to cover all our usage. You can set all the parameters to charge when you want and keep them for backup at a certain percentage. We've have very few grid outages, so I drain the batteries to 10% every evening during peak, and then partially charge from the grid thru the night. The system can predict the next day's solar and not fill them entirely off grid based on the next day's sun. Thanks! Good luck!
Most power outages caused by excess usage is because of air conditioning when the temperature goes above 100 degrees. Everyone that puts solar on their roof reduces the chance of that happening. This is because on those days you are producing way more electricity than you need and your excess electricity is powering your neighbors AC. Which greatly reduces the strain on the local substation. When more than 50% of the houses get solar there starts having the possibility of pushing electricity backwards through the substation. I do not know if that can cause problems with some substations.
Good point! We noticed when there is an AC day, we have a bunch of solar, like you said. Hopefully batteries, both personal and utility, will help. Thank you!
When talking about return on investment, I find it interesting that no one ever mentions the value of the system itself. I mean, ten years down the line, you sell your house, the solar roof and the batteries adds its value to the house, doesn't it? If I were to buy a house with a solar roof and batteries already installed, I would certainly pay a premium for that.
For real, some people do get that, but it's not common. Someone will add new countertops, etc. and never feel the need to justify price or investment. Lately I point out expensive cars as an example of massive investment hardly ever talked about in ROI. Or even pizza, nobody will care if you buy more pizza than you eat, because surely you just like pizza enough to have leftovers. However, you COULD have just powered yourself off rice and beans... waste of money to eat pizza lol
Tommy Torres is absolutely correct! If you make a graph with the amount of savings vs traditional electricity over 25 years, in this case, you are looking at least $100,000 difference COST OF OWNERSHIP vs a comparable non-solar house. And that’s IF the utility only goes up by 4% per year. Except where hydro produces the electricity, it will probably be closer to 10% per year. My ready response to question of ROI is “What’s your return on investment from the electric company now?” [SPOILER ALERT: it’s 0.0% - you are never going to see that money again; it’s gone! The other thing to consider is that the ONLY reason fossil fuel generated electricity is so LOW (yes, low), is that the consumers pay absolutely nothing for dumping the waste around the world. Just because carbon dioxide is invisible doesn’t mean it’s harmless. We’re putting our CONVENIENCE laziness on future generations to clean up the mess we created since 1973. The first OPEC oil embargo should have been the wake-up call for the US, instead MOST People CONTINUE to hit snooze.
@@sambrusco672 haha absolutely man don't even get me started! The subsidizing of petroleum has doomed so many millions of IQ points to lead poisoning. Another one that kills me, if we *assume* tile roof lasts longer than asphalt (safe assumption, regardless of energy production), than how much would another disposable roof cost in ~20 years with inflation? Probably more than a solar roof today. Alas, people love buying other people's oil, oh well! Thank you!!
@@jameskitzmann6268 True, so get a loan and pay it off just before you list your house for sale and then include the value of the system when pricing your home for sale.You'll have two months of interest on the short term loan or credit card that will be minimal. It's definitely a financial challenge for even a middle class family to have the cash up front for the system. If a household made a savings plan with sacrifices on lifestyle and everyone pitched in for 2 or 3 years, I think it's possible to save the $30k to have to buy the system knowing it will financially benefit (investment) your family in the long run as well as benefiting the health of the planet, your kids and grandkids.
mentioning the cost of asphalt shingles roof and subtracting it from the cost of the solar system is a key. Based on your experience, and factoring the delay in getting the permission, the time to contact Tesla would be 2 years before needing to replace the roof. (correct me if I am wrong).
Here on the other side of the pond, the POI is much shorter. I do not have a Telsa roof, since they are not readily available. However, I do have another product. We paid about 30k all said and done. We had a 100% ROI in 3 years. However, this is because we switched to electric company cars. This means instead of paying a metric crap tonne of tax every money on the cars, we pay zero. We were paying about 750€ per month in taxes. Not to mention, in addition to the real battery you can get a virtual battery. This is in lieu of getting money from the power company, which is massively lower than what you have to buy the same power at. So everything you "upload" you can "download" for free. So, we literally have zero energy costs since we also switched out heat to full electric and we make so much power in the summer, we are covered the entire year. 3 years later, we are in the black.
Enjoyed the video, you covered a lot of questions and concerns 👍 Do you have an opinion about the way the shingles are clipped onto the roof for a home in a hurricane prone area? Any better or any worse than an asphalt shingle roof in a strong wind situation? Thanks again for taking the time to make the video .
I'd have to imagine the shingles are better than asphalt for hurricane winds, since they test solar to a higher degree because of the electricity rules apparently. Recently saw someone who went through that last FL hurricane with solar roof and it held up great, powerwalls we're even submerged in water! That's something I never considered at all, but would've assumed catastrophic... Supposedly they held up! Worth looking into. Thank you!
@@ShortVersion1 Did the roofs on the houses that were completely destroyed also survive? Roofs are not designed to withstand hurricane force winds, not cat 4 or 5 anyway.
Bro, you only have 200 subs, you should have 200,000. Great video and really well presented! We had 10 kw of solar on our last house and it paid for our annual electricity costs each year. Our ROI was about 8-9 years.
Great vid & review of ur gnarly Tesla solar roof install and setup. I think u covered a lot in this fairly. The ROI can probly be calculated in with resale value of the house capital also of course, which is sure to increase it value annually in that regard. I think it looks great and wish u the best, it would be good to get more updates down the track on how it is all surviving. Cheers
As illogical as it sounds, it's generally said that solar doesn't tend to increase resale value. People consider it an added bonus to buy a house with solar installed, but just don't pay extra. Solar is a bad investment if you don't remain in a house until the '10' years payback point, but should be an easy choice if you can afford it and are going to be there long enough to recoup.
Thank you, yeah the snow stays on usually only a few hours the day it falls. Hard to say it affects output at all, because snowy days have so much overcast. If anything these shed snow much faster than other roofs and most solar panels I've seen!
You have to periodically clean them too, and I do not know if hurricane-strength winds can catch the panels and rip your roof off. Which also means you have to replace your roof before getting those panels.
Thanks for the review. Hope you see my comment 9 mo. later... What is your monthly payment for the install? That will give you your ROI. I was an early adapter of solar (lease program), back in 2012. The lease had an increasing monthly payment each year. An option to pre-pay about $8k was in the contract but I didn't have $8k back then. Long story short, the company also had a 6-year exit clause which I opted to remove the panels. I determined the lease payments were way more than the savings on electricity. Lease payment, annually were $1400 while electrical savings was $982 (in 2015). However, despite all efforts to have the company remove the solar panels, they refused. So, I stopped paying, and prepared to fight them in court. #1, in writing, the contract says 5kW, but the inverter is only 4kW. #1.1 The solar generation peaks about 4k in a day during the highest generation month (May for my S-by-S/E facing roof), despite the 22 panels that should generate 5k. #2, they are not honoring their exit clause. #3 They sold me on the idea that solar would be getting me "money back from Electric Co each month", but they didn't. The company didn't fight me. So, I paid about $8100 for the solar system over six years. My "break-even" is estimated to be 2027. That means, my savings on electricity will save me $8100 by mid 2027. Note: I can see a degradation of Solar generation year over year, as expected, from over 46% (2015) to 38% (2022) on average savings annually. (It may be down since my wife started working from home during COVID). Before Solar, I replaced the two heat-pumps with the most energy efficient models. Over time, I replaced all my lights with LED lights. I also replaced appliances with Energy Star models. I still have to remind my wife and daughter to turn off the lights when not in the room... 😕
Thank you. That's wild about them refusing to take them off! We don't have a monthly payment, it was cash, that totalled 32k. Our ROI is always changing depending on the weather, passage of time, and battery settings. It's somewhere between 7-14 years depending on how you see it. It's rough being an early adopter, people who get solar now will pay the same for much more production output per year, with energy prices from the utility going up. Our annual bill just went negative and now helps pay for some of the water bill. We're looking to go further with electrification and heatpumps (water heater and clothes dryer) to get closer to net zero, but realize the ROI isn't exactly the point anymore as our energy costs are virtually non-existent.
@@ShortVersion1 The company I worked with became shady. At one point they wanted me to send the payment to Costa Rica... before it got wiped out by a hurricane. I believe they lost the original contracts so they can't fight it in court. Upon trying to renegotiate, they wanted me to sign a strange "legal" document. Something like not to mention this event or complain publicly about the company. I expected a simple addendum. You cannot addend a missing contract. So, refused that. With some research, I found they got fined for fraudulent activities, misleading buyers of solar systems. So, I believe the company is no longer installing systems, just collecting $$ from existing contracts. Hence the "legal" document to not giving away their secrets. Either way, I think you got a good deal. I feel better knowing I am saving money by lowering my electric bill. I would guess the best ROI would be about 10 years for a system like this. The increased value of your (our) home would pay for itself if we sell.
Amazing! You did your homework, workedout if it was worth it, and in the end it was. But better yet, you shared your experience with others. Please make a video in another year, I would love to see how everything is going.
Depending on your situation, drying your clothes naturally would save you energy, also and again depending on your situation, using a moderate home heating setting would be most beneficial, as you so rightly said, it's about consumption. I'm glad everything worked out favouably for you.
You're right! The drying clothes here outside or on a rack is a tricky one. It definitely makes sense, but there is a cultural stickiness to clothes dryers. Similar to how when we got solar, we lowered how much we heat. However, when people our mom's ages came over, they complained and didn't understand it was cold by choice not because it couldn't get HOT enough to wear shorts inside when there is a foot of snow outside. I think we have to win people over step by step by compelling them with luxury, and as weird as it sounds they wouldn't trust our perspective if we're seen as too "radically green" or whatever. I kind of get it, because my grandparents had clothes lines. If we moved abroad to have children and like...urbanism, we'd definitely raise kids to use drying racks. More likely a combination too. Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 Yes getting over cultural hurdles can be difficult and you don't want to be labeled a weirdo because of your actions/convictions which could quite easily happen. Thread carefully.
We actually just had an epic rain (month's worth in three days) and I remarked that it must be quieter. Hard to tell because it doesn't rain here often, and our last place had metal roof which was very loud.
Thank you very much for a factual and sober review on your experiences with solar cells. I especially admire your calm, sober and clear narrative without giddiness and goofs (except for your little stunt on the roof at the beginning). Here you get sober and useful information in contrast to the many catchpenny or clipbate shows that abound on UA-cam.
Besides not having the cost of the shingle roof let's not forget the cost saved by not installing a stand-by generator that burns natural or propane gas. So, to me, this family got a free roof with long term electric bill saving benefits.
Except us much poorer tax payers had to foot half the bill; nothings free. And then there's the environmental cost of mining the rare earth minerals and then disposing of them. Until people start buying these solar systems without my help, they are a drag on the entire economy.
@@ellisjk1409 Fair point. Although I'd say any incentives the government gives it's worth taking advantage of. Principles won't make policymakers stop, so you can reap rewards from their stupidity. I can't fault anyone for that. Although the "only people who aren't poor can benefit" puts a real damper in any sort of savior complex that any Tesla customers might have. The environmental factors are hilarious, you are spot on that manufacturing more stuff is definitely not environmentally friendly. Recycling is environmentally friendly, not incentivizing more consumerism. Manufacturing is the worst for the environment as far as energy is concerned.
$32k for all that is an insanely good deal! Is that before the 26% federal tax credit? I seriously doubt anyone can get anything remotely comparable for that price.
That was after all the incentives! But yeah it seems really low for all the install labor even. Fortunately, battery prices will keep dropping and the federal credit is going up to 30%, which will be huge.
Sounds like you ended up getting an absolutely smoking deal on your Tesla roof, bless you and your family! It not only damn near make you independent from the energy company it also added the novelty wow factor of the Tesla name associated with your house when you put it on the market, cant' beat that! Thanks for making and posting this well presented video!
Be really nice to see UA-cam channels reviews every year of solar /wind powered homes in colder American/Canadian climates where it's well below freezing 6 to 8 months of the year and not Southern California or Arizona where it never gets below room temperature 72F 20C and the sun shines 350 days a year .
This is at 5,500ft elevation in Northern Colorado, just south of Wyoming. JerryRigEverything just reviewed his third year with panels in Utah valley. Similar results. The wind farms North of us, in Wyoming, do really well. Same with the ones in Lapland Scandinavia (The Arctic Circle), they see them in the new Grand Tour Scandi Flick special.
As someone who lives and works in the worst area of the USA for hurricanes and terrible storms in general, ROI would come second to power outages for me. Running a loud generator for 6 straights days was the worst experience. Not only due to the noise, but having to stop every 8 hours and stand in pouring rain and wind to fill it with fuel. Let's not forget gas storage, and having to haul it all. These power walls would sell here like hotcakes even if it took 20 years for a full return on investment.
in the meantime, can you build a sound dampening system for your generator? I have seen many videos on this site going over how it can be done, some are much more complex then other methods.
I live in Florida - when there’s a hurricane it isn’t windy and rainy for days so refilling a generator in the pouring rain might happen once or twice in a worst case scenario. Gas storage - five or six five gallon cans take up a trivial amount of space and it’s not hard to haul them around. Agree with the noise factor but that can be subdued a lot. A “Generac” type solution is much better for storm concerns especially when hurricanes are really not very frequent
The benefits of Solar out weighs any negative. (As long as you paid the right price) There's just a lot of considerations to be had. Considering will you stay on your residence for 10 years or forever. Return of investment might be long, but if you plan to live on the place forever. I think it's worth it. These systems are built to last, not much movable parts, so no sweat at all it breaking. The cheap ones may be questionable though, so if you buy the right items. You're set!
you may want to look into way Walmart and other companies ditched tesla solar. give you a hint the solar panels went up in flames due to being made in china
@@toomanyaccounts You’re not wrong that those systems were faulty, but they weren’t Tesla panels. The systems in question were purchased from, installed by, and maintained by SolarCity. The lawsuit took place after Tesla purchased SolarCity, so it was an inherited problem. It would be like Stellantis getting sued for something Dodge did. In any case, my panels were made at Gigafactory Buffalo, NY, and my Powerwalls were made at Giga-Nevada. I absolutely love that Tesla is bringing manufacturing back to America!
Really helped with the breakdown of costs. I have been going back and forth with conventional or tiles for solar. I’m in CA and everything is more expensive. I agree with your ten year pay off. Though others disagree (cause everyone is a builder) I think the ten years is about right and there are a lot of variables. I think you did a great job sharing your experience. Long term would be neat to see (5years or 10 years)
Pro CA tip, get a local solar installer and get conventional solar with microinverters. Don't go tesla on solar, they aren't that cheap anymore and their string inverters are crap. You should shoot for about $2.5 per Watt or cheaper if you can. Stick with name brands with your solar parts and make sure you get a warranty from the installer. Also, don't oversize your system, have it cover everything that you use, nothing more. Otherwise you'll be getting pennies on the dollar on return for however much energy you produced, but didn't use.
The roof concept can work but its a long-term game. The real questions are, how long do those tiles/batteries last? Are there unforseen repairs? If so who does the fixing? (very important in places like Florida that might get widespread regional damage) Tax breaks? What about overlapping material systems (critical for remodels)? If the roof fails structurally but the panels are fine, who's liability is it? Do you have higher or lower insurance costs/benefits? What's the cost/frequency of cleaning? Do they lose efficiency over time (batteries, especially)? Are there any other external impacts, etc.? We think of it in terms of panel efficiency, or even Energy ROI, or upfront cost. Any single metric is really deception, in reality there are like 10 factors to consider. Even duration of ownership is a major factor. If you sell the house is a partially paid off installation factored in? The success or failure of any system like this is mostly determined by all the external factors. If its not quite ready it's getting close, nice review.
Hey thank you! Many questions, but generally you'd be surprised by the answers maybe. For instance, roof is more fire-resistant than asphalt, so insurance likes that. They have been seeming exceptionally durable physically, in hail like Texas and hurricanes in Florida. I've been pretty rough with this one. I've sprayed with hose once to clean, they're generally self-cleaning if you get any rain. I'd probably not hose them again, not worth it. Our EV batteries have held up so well, discharging much more power. Based on that, and other experience, I'm not worried about their longevity. In places with TOU rates, I'd even recommend batteries over solar for some people. With a software update, they've started returning much more value to the grid in the last ~8 months. So yeah, stuff will wear over time, but I see it as tools that are beneficial to use. Not everyone should buy a table saw, but if you buy one it's better to wear it out than leave it on a shelf!
My biggest sticking point is no one mentions time value of money when discussing savings from solar. If it costs you 60k upfront to install solar, and you make your money back in 5-10 years (that's being generous) then you'd be better served investing your money as long as you put it somewhere sensible. You can realistically double your money in 10 years investing in the largest most common index fund holdings on the planet if you yield an average 7% annual return. Which isn't unheard of. Even if the U.S. declines over time you can invest in whatever country you think is going to outpace us. Even if you discount the price of a standard roof, you are ignoring the opportunity cost of investing the money. Maybe if you are close to retirement and are investing more conservatively anyway this could make some sense. Then the savings have a chance to outpace bond rates during your average period and you can somewhat reliably confirm lower costs for the future knowing you will live in the house for 20+ yesrs. But even then, you can't really afford to part with a massive chunk of change in retirement unless you are fairly wealthy in the first place. In that case you'd be fine regardless unless we have a complete economic collapse. If that happens, solar is the least of your concerns.
Yeah that's fair, I feel pretty much the opposite. At some point I'd rather have electricity than more money. That point was a couple years ago now so... yeah the collapse would be fine I'm also okay with that. Investing in Africa is cool though, definitely won't here me complaining about lost opportunity cost of not having solar if you invested in Mogadishu.
4k system for the typical 3 bedroom home is a very small system overall. Lots of people expect that that will be enough to power their home off grid. It is not usually enough as you get about 60% max out of a system. Anything more than 60% and you are doing really well. A 3 bedroom home usually uses around 1.3k an hour during the day. If your system at peak only produces 2k... your battery is probably not getting a full charge. Always get as much as you can in solar panels.
Absolutely. People don't realize how there has been a paradigm shift in solar, where it used to be about helping shave off the bill, now it's about trying to go net-zero. For this reason, I'm excited to see the solar-generator segment take off. It can encourage modularity, and be expanded as it sits "behind the meter" and won't need constant bureaucratic approval. It would be nice if someone like Coleman or Weber would make ground-based solar that didn't need to be as tediously/permanently mounted. Thanks!
I have, we definitely are past the point of needing to ration energy, because the cost is so low for us now. SPAN would be great for new builds, however it's diminishing returns in terms of data for us now. I'd love to know per circuit, but I'm pestering Tesla to add that functionality with some sort of pattern recognition software on the whole house. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, because we already have a really good idea of what uses what. For instance, car used
@@ShortVersion1 The ROI on a SPAN panel is not worth it in your case or pretty much anyone with Tesla solar & batteries like myself, SPAN @ $4,500.00 just to purchase not including installation is a deal breaker for me.
Thank you for watching! I appreciate all of the positive feedback, you guys have really made this little video catch on. Some housekeeping: If you're about to comment asking about pricing specifics, just go to Tesla's website and put in your address for a quote. There are too many moving factors for our roof to be a measuring stick for yours. The point seems to be lost on some, that Tesla sent us a large check, and comped us one powerwall after the price-hike fiasco. Not to mention roof-size, complexity, and the ever-changing status of subsidies. Finally, if you'd miss the money, don't spend it. We won't, so we did. Sorry, not sorry.
Great presentation, thank you. What is the electrical cost per kWh in your situation. I live in Washington city, Utah a,d the electricity cost is only 6.6 cents per kWh and it seems difficult to justify the ROI. What do you think?
We went between 7-24 cent/kWh instantaneous, but our yearly average cost was just over 10cent/kWh. Now it's technically negative cost over the year so hard to say. I think in the short-term prices from utility will rise, but the piece of mind of having your own generation is something I'd always recommend! Thanks!
You can get a 10-year treasury bond with a return of a little of 4% per year which is considered a risk-free return. So, in order for the solar installation to make financial sense than you have to have a savings of at least 4% of the total cost of the installation or more per year over those 10 years. Otherwise, you are just doing it to be green.
Keep it up! Our dryer uses twice as much electricity as our electric car. There's some luxuries we afford ourselves hehe Some day maybe we will use a clothes line, for now... we have nasty neighbors!
For the return on investment on the Asphalt roof, that would have just been way less, since a regular roof is just an outlay.I'm interested to know if you're driving your Leaf for free now.
The other week I tallied up how much we charged all year, 654 kWh, and multiplied it by our effective price per kWh, $0.003. So all year it was like we paid $1.96 to charge! Thanks
You forgot to mention you can drive for free via the energy you generate. I have two Tesla's and trickle charge them. I still make more than I need. Too bad you can't just sell it.
According to google maps measuring, it's just under 2,000 square feet. I never really knew because it includes our garage, and it's a split-level. But 2,000 sounds about right. For us, before any incentives it was that much, but less than half after incentives. You should just put your address into Tesla's website for a direct quote. Thanks!
since you dont need to own a stand by generator, or future roofing replacements, or any power outage losses and have that extra peace of mind, you can adjust roi to 9 years, maybe down to 5 years, depending on future roof durability, increases in outside energy costs, lower outside energy reliability due to electric vehicle saturation, heat pump saturation, a too rapid fossil fuel outlawing, or further supply chain interruptions. a practical insurance policy, so to speak
There are so many moving parts. Last week we had a feature enabled to export from the powerwalls to the grid. That could end up paying out ~$4/day more. Too soon to tell. In the next couple years they could explore vehicle to grid, and that would be much more lucrative for people with capable EVs. Exciting times! Thanks!
It is confusing that all electronics runs on DC , and each one has a way to convert AC to DC . If there was a plug on all of the Basically DC units , they could run directly off the batteries bypassing the inverter , and other things can also work on DC . We could cut the loss of inverting all the DC to AC reducing the size of the inverter , making solar more efficient .
What's the big deal with reducing the size of an inverter? It's not like you're going to have it in the middle of your living room. And how much efficiency is lost when converting from DC to AC ? Just found this on wiki : Inverter efficiency is the ratio of the usable AC output power to the sum of the DC input power and any AC input power. Typical grid-tied inverter efficiencies exceed 95% under most operating conditions.
@@Ochi2000 it's not the biggest problem in the world, for sure. For instance, some boat or RV inverters have both AC and DC outputs, which would help you power a few more efficient gadgets without converting the electricity twice. So solar > batteries > DC fridge, which would maybe save 10% from lack of conversion. Not such a big deal with lighting, but potentially adds up if there were hypothetical DC air-sourced heat pumps or residential DC fast-chargers for EVs. As is, we have inverters all over the place in the form of power bricks and hidden components. Would be cool to have a house with direct-DC USB-C ports etc for that reason. Again, not the end of the world. Thanks!
With regards to the attention you have gotten with your install, I have gotten a similar amount of attention for my ~$3500 robot lawnmower. People can really rubber neck when they see something new. Like people were stopping and taking videos and photos pretty much the first 3-4 months. Every time I got the mail or was in the yard, I was explaining it to someone. Just one of those things. lol
If the panels are only held in place by clips (😳), how well would the roof hold up in hurricane/tornado prone areas? Especially with the air gap underneath. And can you still have skylight protrusions with this system in place?
Idk about skylights, I'd assume yes. They've held up well for people in Florida as far as I know, the clips are very robust. They actually use similar clips on the starlink satellites!
Absolutely, we don't have an attic, bit did spray some foam whenever we opened up walls or cavities. We found the whole fireplace/chimney was uninsulated.
One thing that is overlooked here is that a law was passed, at least (Florida), but probably in most other states which allows the utilities to charge $30. per month for their power grid maintenance. That alone pretty much shoots the ROI in the foot.
We have a $10 service charge. The solar/batteries produce way more than enough value to make up for that. This Summer, we've had our whole water bill covered by excess solar output, and then about $50/month negative credit added to the bill. I've not heard of those sort of policies significantly altering ROI. There was a proposed change in California, where they wanted to charge solar owners based on the size of their systems, but that was shot down.
'As far as initial "offset" estimated by Tesla compared to the actual offset and kWh rating of the system compared to actual production, how ACCURATE were the estimates or ratings? We have a final design pending and currently have been presented a 20 kWh system to off set our usage by 64%. Not the numbers we were hoping for and they seem a bit conservative compared to my calculations.
The design estimate is definitely conservative, the roof produced more. That being said, they added extra tiles during install from what our design estimate said. It was also a cloudy summer compared to past ones. 20 kw is a ton of solar. Personally I'd try to drop usage before adding production at that point. Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 thank you for your reply. I was trying to wrap my mind around the consumption side of things as well. We have a similar set up as you, all electric (including hot water heater) and primary vehicle is an EV. We keep our mini splits set between 68 and 72 degrees, depending on the season. The major factor for our consumption might be the older construction methods used in our home and a need for an insulation renewal in the attic. One odd thing I noticed with the design Tesla has presented us, is they designed the roof around existing attic vents, which according to every image I have found of a finished roof online, they convert from the traditional vents to a ridge line vent. I'm guessing this might be where some additional production might come from. I'm working on getting a time scheduled to speak to someone on the phone, the default of receiving texts from multiple people at Tesla has probably led to some communication falling through. Thank you for your guidance on the conservative offset figure.
I put together a smaller grid tie system for my commercial building of 10- 100W panels with 2- 1300W Grid-Tie Inverters for less than $1200.00. This should give me about 30A going back into the system, depending on the sun and clouds. No need for charge controllers or batteries. My building is mostly vacant, used for storage, only uses power for lighting, alarm system, and video system, and is not shaded. It has central AC and heating, but they are not being used at this time. I currently average a little less than $100.00 per month on my electric bill. Most of that is fees for delivery, meter rent, and taxes. I am hoping that with hardly any usage, my bill will go negative. I am sure the power company will figure out a way to charge me and steal my energy. At which time, I will add batteries, share the power with my rental house next door and take them both off-grid.
I have read that, in many areas, if you produce beyond your needs that you receive a "use it or loseit" credit with a very short time frame. Somewhat understandable in that solar is unpredictable at best. Does not preclude investment on the part of the utility. So going beyond net zero for a grid tie system is perhaps not so wise as is figuring utility credits in the ROI. You might want to consider a video on the paradigm that Australia is implementing....but the population of the entire country is less than the state of Texas. All in all, an excellent video....and, I think that you beat Will Prowse to the punch🧐
Yes the utility purchase agreements are usually not super advantageous to residential solar. Here, it comes out of our water bill when it goes negative, which is an interesting way to do it. In California, utilities recently tried to charge customers a monthly fee based on how much solar they have installed... Which is scary! Thank you!
@@ShortVersion1 Yeah...I read thar California was doing that...taxing efforts by anyone to alleviate grid...metering private wells to tax....and it goes on and on....Nero fiddled...
Joseph Brabender III, if that is your real name, where are these areas? I’ve never heard of that. I’ve heard of: • curtailment (in parts of California) where the utility has too much electricity on the grid during parts of the day, and the utility refuses to buy your solar electricity. Literally, you have to dump that electricity into the ground. • There are some areas (Pennsylvania I think), where you can ask for a check for your unused credits once a year. • I live in RI where credits stay on your account until you use them OR you can “gift” your credits to someone (hopefully a good friend or family member who will pay you back for it) But I’ve never heard of credits with an expiration date.
We are very happy with our Solarroof and powerwalls. We were part of the first 100 v3 solar roof program. In the 3 years since install we have mostly eliminated our power bill.
The quickest return on investment is not buying batteries. Just buy solar panels yourself and either have a non-solar local electrician put it up for you or do it yourself. You can have your solar power charge a smaller cheaper "solar generator" which you can use to charge everything that needs to be charged, and connect it to your refrigerator. All the battery power is not needed. Do electric consuming tasks when during the daytime when the system is active and sleep at night. This crazy system only gives them a day plus a bit in the winter of use if the power goes out. Not worth it for those rare times, and the day of storage isn't as comforting as a chord of wood.
telsa solar tile make sense when the roof is end of life, replacement and repair might be an issue. typically solar last 15-25 years, beyond 25 yr is bonus. roof mounted, and ground mounted are much cheaper with used solar. we use 300 watts/hr base average , 400 average watt with ac. i seen bill as low as $45, sometimes $100+. compared our neighbors $450-900 bill. ultra efficient house is the way to go even if you have solar. $200 Air circulators, window treatment cut AC useage by 90%. These have ROI within 30-90 days.
Absolutely, like I always tell people, best return is with caulk and expanding foam. We just got an opportunity that couldn't be passed up. If the tiles were to hypothetically stop working outside of their long warranty, I'd probably leave them up just for the intrinsic quality of tiles over disposable roofs. Some day would love to do auxiliary ground-mounted system to get EUI in the negative. Started out ~48 EUI, then ~25 with efficient improvements, currently at ~7.8, with plans to bring it to ~2. But ROI for us has vanished, as we now could never financially justify more improvements with our usually free electricity. Thanks!
10 year ROI is not bad, but that is with old prices. Heat pump systems have under 10 years, smaller ones 4-5 years. Batteries wear out typically in 10 years, inverters 15-20 years. Solar panel manufacturers typically guarantee less than 10% degrading of efficiency in 30 years.
I passed on the tesla roof because the installation was quoted at $150,000. Even in 20 years that wouldn't even pay for itself. That's after taking out the $38,000 from my insurance. I just used a simple calculation of a generous $400 a month in savings. $200-300 a month is my usual electric bill and maybe excess electricity sold back. 400x12x20
Great review of the technical details of the roof and power generation, but to me the problem is on the cost. The math you used for ROI was simply wrong. You already subtracted the cost of the asphalt roof, because in your ROI calculation you went with the cost you paid...and the cost you paid already took out $12,000 your insurance company gave you for a new roof. As you pointed out, the initial estimate (even with an insurance claim and 26% credit was $30,000)...and then it went up an unknown amount. Doesn't that mean the original price was around $56,000, before the price increase? This pretty closely matches the price listed on independent websites. After the increase, that is probably closer to $65,000 (or at least, what they claim it would have cost if they had stuck with it)? If the only way the power generation works out economically is because of insurance claims and government incentives, then it simply isn't a economically viable business strategy. Considering a traditional roof could have been replaced for around the $12,000 in insurance money, you will need to to run this roof for 23 years to break even. The math I used in generalized, but should show the problem with the tesla roof business model. Cost of the tesla roof ($65,000) - Cost of a traditional roof ($12,000) = $63,800 Energy savings = total energy use prior to roof (24,000 KWH) - total energy use after roof (5,200 KWH) = saving 18,800 KWH/Year US average cost per KWH is $0.144. 18,800KWH x $0.144/KWH = $2,707 saved per pear Additional cost of the Tesla roof over a traditional roof ($63,800) / $2,707 = 23.6 years
I'm okay with math being wrong. It's one of my least favorite lenses of looking at problems. I think the semantic difference here is that MOST solar ROI calculations are for systems where your will need to rip off and replace your roof, regardless of solar. So without going into all the ups and downs of the price (frankly, I thought it was lower and wasn't really interested, accountant told me what it actually cost bottom line), it's really difficult to now say "the batteries cost X." It was a whole system, including a roof. So there can be a way, if you think a little harder for a moment, to talk about the cost of the electrical parts. Would I pay 32.5k for a slate roof? Yeah probably. A metal roof? Yeah definitely. I understand what people mean when they say double counted cost of roof because insurance, I'm putting a pin in that while separating out the actual cost and the three services the system provides. Roof, solar, battery. Thank you! Please don't think I'm being argumentative, it's just my perspective as someone who had ROI at the bottom of their priorities, but gets the question several times a week.
@@ShortVersion1 Not argumentative at all, and you have some good points. There are also reasons to get solar beyond ROI. Personal preference/style as well as just wanting to generate your own energy vs just being a consumer. In order for any solar company to truly revolutionize the energy industry though, they will need a much better ROI.
Do they come with roof heating to get rid of the snow....how often do you clean the roof for optimum efficiency and can you tell by monitoring something that you're roof needs cleaning like a percentage per panel Energy Efficiency. Next question how do you know if a roof panel stops working. And if something was to go wrong with the power wall what kind of warranty was Tesla offering
Melting snow wouldn't be worth the energy it takes, because you wouldn't capture that much on a snowy typical day. I don't clean roof, it's not the best use of time/resources maybe I would after a wild fire or something. Haze from pollution seems to be more of a problem for output than dirty tiles. I think if tile stopped working it would put the whole string out of production and you could tell by significant drop in production. The solar roof warranty is 25 years, the batteries are 10. Thanks!
My buddy has the Tesla solar panels (not the roof) with a powerwall and his experience has been absolutely awful the last couple years, nonstop problems. They remove features from their app (our utility company has dual peak hours and they removed that feature from the app and it caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people - I think they added it back after several months unsure), their customer service sucks, you can never get anything done on any reasonable timeframe, and it's nothing but headaches. It kind of works now.... it turned me off to Tesla anything. EDIT: I also wanted to add that solar resistance you had from your utility company seems to be a common thing, they don't want you to have solar, they want you to give them money. In my city you are not allowed to be off-grid in the city limits (PHX metro area) its highly regulated and there's massive amounts of red tape to go through. It's annoying, the major utility company here in AZ, SRP (Salt River Project), is evil when it comes to solar adoption for its customers, they will charge you higher rates (and recently lost in federal court for essentially price gouging customers that had solar versus those who didn't). I'm glad you've had a good experience. The same thing with Tesla vehicles, they are fun to drive and super fast (unbeatably fun acceleration), but every single Tesla vehicle comes with factory defects and issues.
Oof that's a huge bummer about your friend. There are a lot of kinks to work out on all ends for sure. I advocate for most people to look into solar generators as alternatives to red tape after my experience. Hopefully sooner than later this stuff gets figured out. Thanks!
i might be concerned with the "air gap" between the tiles and the roof depending on it's configuration. i.e. Can it be cleaned out or is it "self cleaning"? - Is it a haven for bug nests? - how much debris (leaf/dust buildup) does it collect? - blowing snow buildup? etc, etc.
Solar panels require an air gap so they don’t overheat and reduce power generation. The air gap provides a little space for cooling the hot solar shingles and reduces heating the house as much via conduction.
You could look at it another way. Instead of paying X amount of money per month to your utility company you are paying X amount to installing the Tesla power wall. You will need to make sure your insurance company will underwrite the Tesla Roof. If they don't you would have to shop around for an insurance that would. Factor in how much more the insurance premiums would be ensuring the roof. Hopefully the insurance companies will catch up on this new technology.
I live in Danmark And I can say the numbers you have for return on investment is almost the same.. My 1 year numbers also hit around 9-10 years. before its all played off 6KW no battery system .. Guess it all comes down to weather and energy price .. And if anything needs repair . It its played of in 15 and it last 25 I will be perfectly happy .. How big is the Price diffrence where you live Nigh vs Daytime ? In Denmark its almost no difference so Filling up batters at night if there is no Sun dont do anything really.. Where I have heard places where the price is like 10x cheaper at night so people fill up the batteries off the grid at night...
Our off-peak is 7 cents, and peak is 24, so there is a bit of a difference. Big enough to do some battery discharging between the periods. Thanks! Would love to get to Danmark some day!
Thanks for the information, I dont know where you are located. It would be nice to have an estimated of where you are so we can figure out the total output of your system vs the latitude and altitude you are. Dont need to be too precise. I am in canada and Tesla system been something I've been looking upon
We're in northern Colorado! Honestly, from what I can tell, there are so many factors with solar production such as orientation, shade from trees, and in our case smog/air pollution. My impression is that solar is still viable if the other criteria are well suited. So a south-facing array with no obstruction could produce a bunch of solar, even in Canada. I've heard there are really precise programs for estimating yield online. Thanks!
How big is your house? My electric bill in Texas is 5 times your yearly bill. You focused a lot on heat, so my guess is you are up north? You didn't mention any "sell back" of your extra electricity? Do you have that option?
3 bedroom, 2 bath ~2400sft maybe, with mixed short and really tall ceilings. In northern Colorado. We sell back excess solar most of the year, and just got the option to export from battery a couple weeks ago. It was a software update, which could save a lot in winter and help export more during peak in summer. Some months we export as much as 900kwh to the grid, but it varies by season.
Well, we've had the EV for years, and used to charge for free at apartments anyway. It's really tricky with all the mental gymnastics one has to do about ROI anyway, there being so many ways to cut it. For instance, the Tesla app showed me how much more energy was used setting AC to higher temp, vs setting it in fan mode. My whole life, if it were cool enough, but I didn't want it to get hot, I would just turn thermostat up a few degrees. That might have used 700w in an semi-idle state (can't remember specifics) but now I see fan mode uses maybe half of that. So the whole last year we probably saved a dollar or two running fan mode instead of higher AC temp. If we didn't have solar, that could've saved 10 bucks or so over a Summer... But how does one factor that in? So more towards your point, I think not because it was usually free for us, but it would be a factor for someone else definitely.
Sorry if I misunderstood but then you pay sometimes for the electric bill plus the solar panel? 2 bills? Correct me if Im wrong. Im thinking of getting them
So people have those kinds of arrangements if they lease solar panels or finance, and then on months the solar wouldn't produce enough to cover their bills they might have two. Ours were bought outright so we only have the utility bill. Except our utility bill also has water and sewage on it, but those I've removed for data points.
In my book anything with an ROI less than 10 years is a no-brainer. Well done, thanks for the walkthrough.
Unless your in your 70’s like me..
I work for a solar/battery installer. If you really paid ~30k for the entire system (which I doubt) you got a hell of a deal.
After rebates/ and insurance, but yeah it was a good deal!
facts he did
Sitting the UK here where a typical solar with battery system costs about $15k. Cause we use a lot less power though as we don't have air con.
@@ShortVersion1 so adding $16K for the roof and the 26% Federal rebate puts the up-front cost at more like $60K, slightly over?
@@philmaness5983 yeah a bit over. It gets complicated because Tesla also sent a big check and comped one of the batteries. Plus insurance payment and a couple thousand in local incentives for battery and solar. The part that was applicable to federal credit was roughly 61k
I have heard that the people at Tesla are first rate folks to work with and their installers are equally as professional supporting a stellar product! Thanks for the honest review!
Absolutely! It was very impressive how they had a team that large, showing up and busting it every day. They even left me the hardhat!
I think it's funny how no one asks about R.O.I. for other things like - a traditional furnace, big gas-guzzling pickup, RV, boat, jet ski, traditional roof, house painting, kitchen remodel etc. Solar is one of the few things you can buy that has a positive R.O.I. at some point. And right away gives you more control over your monthly costs.
You do cost of operation calculations for those appliances, not ROI. In solar's case you do ROI, because it is basically a service substitution with an upfront investment. You can go on with your life, heat your house and power your computer with or without solar, the difference is you produce it yourself or buy it from a producer. Thats why you do ROI on solar, but not on any of those things you mentioned.
@@MrGatya2 And i don't really know when you'd get an ROI in most cases, solar can be more expensive than the power returned to you depending on where you are. It matters more if power independence is what you desire. But solar can require a lot of maintenance if you're in an area with particularly rough weather, and the electronics themselves can still fail.
Totally getting this. My dad asked the question of how ugly and obvious large solar farms and wind mills are. Dude, we live in Bakersfield CA, it's fucking mad max of pump jacks, pipe lines and refineries out here! So interesting how ppl get used to seeing/thinking one way and not seeing reality lol
Solar only really purpose is to save you money over using the power company. As far as trucks go you can't pretend you bought a bar of gold that does absolutely nothing. If that truck took you to work everyday for 20years I'd say regardless of what you payed it was a good investment. That truck allowed you to earn 20 years wages! The other nonsense you mention are all toys. different category.
My neighbor paid $16k for a new asphalt roof. He thought I paid too much until I asked how long before his asphalt roof pays for itself. In twenty years he will have to replace his. My roof will have another 50 years and will be paying me.
The gap below the tiles is vented and makes a thermal barrier and keeps roof and tiles cool, lowers cooling cost in summer. You can hear the air move.
Looks great to.
Absolutely outstanding summary. From beginning to end, you very logically explained this in layman's terms and answered every question I have ever had about Tesla's solar roof. Final question.....have you ever had to ask any of the contractors/installers, or Tesla to come back for any reason, positive or negative? Again, an outstanding job!
Great video - I think it's fair to consider the investment as the delta above what the asphalt roof would cost.
Really wish we could of got such a great deal on solar roof. When we looked at it Tesla quoted us 90k dollars. Asphalt was 18k just didn’t make sense for us but glad it did for you
Yeah, there are so many factors. Now I'm always looking at roofs to see how many different angles and planes they have. One has to imagine square footage is a big one too.
Thanks!
It's not just about physical durability it's about the degrading photonic cells, and from what I understand, it's about 25 years for the type twos. The only issue I see is that power companies need customers to be able to maintain the grid, so they have been fighting and refusing to allow people to install these. I have heard of far more rejections than installations.
The power companies can FO. No one has the right to force a free human to spend money on anything. A very good reason to build your own home off grid.
The big concern will be how well the plastic clips will hold up. Plastic generally doesn't do well with lots of extreme heat/cold cycles. Will become brittle over the years. Hopefully the Tesla engineers didn't overlook that aspect & are using an advanced formulated plastic material that doesn't degrade from the thermal stresses.
That was excellent. Thanks for that detailed review. It answered a lot of my own questions. We need both a roof replacement and a solar system, and this video might just push me into getting a Tesla solar roof with batteries.
What is the desk and treadmill you have? TY! Great vid!
Thank you! We made the desk, and the treadmill is called "urevo" it was on Amazon.
Power outage - without battery backup the panels shut off to protect linemen. But with battery storage, during a power outage, dependent on the weather, the batteries can recharge the next day.
I think you double counted the cost of a normal roof when working out your ROI as you'd already deducted the insurance money from your cost. So your ROI will be about 20 yrs, probably less with electricity price rises outpacing time value of cash, but you'll most likely have to replace the inverters before then and maybe your batteries too putting you around breakeven over the the life of the system. At least you won't have to worry about electricity price hikes.
I agree. Most people won't have insurance money and this guy is clearly rich compared to most of the planet so it really doesn't make sense for tax payers to give him tens of thousands. The energy costs of everyone else is taxed to raise the money to give to his family.
Some people can never be police. They gotta complain about everything, especially Tesla, so many people are being paid off to run their mouth is about Tesla from all the other big companies that are threatened by them.
My problem is the old growatt grid tie inverter requires 220 volt AC to work. It will not operate if itbis over or below 220 volt AC. Need stabilizer trafo
The batteries will be fine
U ever heard about solar panels?
That first shot would've been fine with just a voice over and didn't need you to nearly die! But the rest of the video was great and really useful. Annoyingly Tesla isn't in our area yet, because I'd love to get a solar roof when it's time to replace the current roof. Apparently our area doesn't allow battery storage either right now, which is the bigger dealbreaker when it comes to getting any solar for me.
Thank you haha
One thing I'd recommend is to have an electrician install a transfer switch with generator hook-up, then use a solar generator battery. You could hook it up without your city/utility permission. You just have to decide which circuit of your house best fit the envelope of the generator. For instance, you could put all the "small" stuff on it, but then leave the heavy duty appliances connected to the grid for now. Two-bit Davinci has his office set up with a system like that.
If you install soft-start units on A/C system, fridgerators, freezers and other big high start current devices it can take the strain off your inverter and batteries! I think they are about $200-300.
That is a great tip!
Fortunately we have all very efficient systems, we typically operate well within the headroom. When Tesla does their initial site-inspection, they check to see if you'll need any soft starters.
Soft starters also increase the life span of your motors.
Here in eu i just paid 130 euros for 180kw. You consume mine monthly stuff in 2 days. Imagine the ROI here!
That's wild!!
Tesla Solar is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with: worse than comcast, verizon, AT&T and your local slippery used-car dealer wrapped up together. I greatly regret installing their solar + powerwall system (14kW+2powerwall). It took almost one full year after install to get Permission to Operate (due to Tesla's incompetence and many paperwork errors, not the local electrical utility whom Tesla were constantly blaming). At one point Tesla were saying they needed to return to my house to *remove* solar panels because they'd made a calculation error. The problems went on and on. The biggest concern is that the powerwall backup has had several faults and in their last communication with me on the topic Tesla basically said (to summarize) "we don't know what went wrong with your backup and we can't guarantee it wont happen again". So there you have it - you can't trust their backup. I consider Tesla Solar a bunch of greedy scammers - stay right away from them. Oh! And the installing electrician proudly described the 90% submersible battery ... and then went and installed the battery circuit breakers below the waterline! Genius!
I'm only 3 minutes in so far (but watching) and will finish the video. I've actually had my roof installed since early July 2021. I've had PTO (permission to turn on) for 0 of the so far 16 months. The roof is installed and gorgeous (and working!) but I don't yet have the meter to measure what I put back to the grid. So I'm not officially operating. It sucks. But yes it's also generated a lot of talk, and conversations with neighbors.
From my perspective this is completely on my utility (which is hot garbage, and the reason SE Pennsylvania has 0 superchargers).
Oh no dude that's way too long to wait! My sympathies.
At least you can maybe just turn it on to self-powered mode and you won't export as long as it's Winter? Might be worth a shot.
Thanks for the comment!
Question: You showed a photo of snow on the roof so I hope you can answer. How is it working through snow on the roof? That's my worry about roof solar as I live in Michigan and there could be snow on the roof for months with no way to clear it off so I've always wanted to know how that works with roof solar.
I figured I'd need to set up an array on the ground where I could get to it and brush it off after a snow else I'd have no working solar most of the winter with it on the roof. Can you tell me how it's working for you? Thank you.
Lastly, I saw a vid that there is a way that you can set it up to use your batteries first before pulling from the grid and charging the batteries first before power is sold to the grid. That way if the power goes out, you're still good to go for as long as the power is out, which is not always the case when it's connected to the grid, so have you looked into setting it up that way?
The solar roof sheds snow much faster than normal asphalt roofs or other solar panels. It avalanches off, usually the day after it falls but it depends on the wetness of it.
I'd love ground array, more because we could point it south and adjust it for the seasons for optimal performance. Most off-grid panels are ground mounted because they need all the juice they can get.
We got grid-battery function added about a month after I posted this. It's made a dramatic improvement on how much money the system makes/saves us, especially in Winter where we didn't get "enough" solar to cover all our usage. You can set all the parameters to charge when you want and keep them for backup at a certain percentage. We've have very few grid outages, so I drain the batteries to 10% every evening during peak, and then partially charge from the grid thru the night. The system can predict the next day's solar and not fill them entirely off grid based on the next day's sun.
Thanks! Good luck!
@@ShortVersion1 Interesting. Good to know! Thanks so much for answering!
Most power outages caused by excess usage is because of air conditioning when the temperature goes above 100 degrees. Everyone that puts solar on their roof reduces the chance of that happening. This is because on those days you are producing way more electricity than you need and your excess electricity is powering your neighbors AC. Which greatly reduces the strain on the local substation.
When more than 50% of the houses get solar there starts having the possibility of pushing electricity backwards through the substation. I do not know if that can cause problems with some substations.
Good point! We noticed when there is an AC day, we have a bunch of solar, like you said. Hopefully batteries, both personal and utility, will help.
Thank you!
When talking about return on investment, I find it interesting that no one ever mentions the value of the system itself. I mean, ten years down the line, you sell your house, the solar roof and the batteries adds its value to the house, doesn't it? If I were to buy a house with a solar roof and batteries already installed, I would certainly pay a premium for that.
For real, some people do get that, but it's not common. Someone will add new countertops, etc. and never feel the need to justify price or investment.
Lately I point out expensive cars as an example of massive investment hardly ever talked about in ROI. Or even pizza, nobody will care if you buy more pizza than you eat, because surely you just like pizza enough to have leftovers. However, you COULD have just powered yourself off rice and beans... waste of money to eat pizza lol
Tommy Torres is absolutely correct! If you make a graph with the amount of savings vs traditional electricity over 25 years, in this case, you are looking at least $100,000 difference COST OF OWNERSHIP vs a comparable non-solar house. And that’s IF the utility only goes up by 4% per year. Except where hydro produces the electricity, it will probably be closer to 10% per year.
My ready response to question of ROI is “What’s your return on investment from the electric company now?” [SPOILER ALERT: it’s 0.0% - you are never going to see that money again; it’s gone!
The other thing to consider is that the ONLY reason fossil fuel generated electricity is so LOW (yes, low), is that the consumers pay absolutely nothing for dumping the waste around the world. Just because carbon dioxide is invisible doesn’t mean it’s harmless. We’re putting our CONVENIENCE laziness on future generations to clean up the mess we created since 1973. The first OPEC oil embargo should have been the wake-up call for the US, instead MOST People CONTINUE to hit snooze.
@@sambrusco672 haha absolutely man don't even get me started! The subsidizing of petroleum has doomed so many millions of IQ points to lead poisoning.
Another one that kills me, if we *assume* tile roof lasts longer than asphalt (safe assumption, regardless of energy production), than how much would another disposable roof cost in ~20 years with inflation? Probably more than a solar roof today. Alas, people love buying other people's oil, oh well!
Thank you!!
The market wants you to pay off the system or deduct it from the sale price of the house.
@@jameskitzmann6268 True, so get a loan and pay it off just before you list your house for sale and then include the value of the system when pricing your home for sale.You'll have two months of interest on the short term loan or credit card that will be minimal. It's definitely a financial challenge for even a middle class family to have the cash up front for the system. If a household made a savings plan with sacrifices on lifestyle and everyone pitched in for 2 or 3 years, I think it's possible to save the $30k to have to buy the system knowing it will financially benefit (investment) your family in the long run as well as benefiting the health of the planet, your kids and grandkids.
Did I miss where are you from? From Arizona here thinking about going solar
Colorado! You should!
mentioning the cost of asphalt shingles roof and subtracting it from the cost of the solar system is a key.
Based on your experience, and factoring the delay in getting the permission, the time to contact Tesla would be 2 years before needing to replace the roof. (correct me if I am wrong).
That would be wise! I don't know exactly how far in advance insurance told us to get a new roof, but we did need an extension past a year.
👍🏻 Thanks
Here on the other side of the pond, the POI is much shorter.
I do not have a Telsa roof, since they are not readily available. However, I do have another product. We paid about 30k all said and done.
We had a 100% ROI in 3 years.
However, this is because we switched to electric company cars. This means instead of paying a metric crap tonne of tax every money on the cars, we pay zero. We were paying about 750€ per month in taxes.
Not to mention, in addition to the real battery you can get a virtual battery. This is in lieu of getting money from the power company, which is massively lower than what you have to buy the same power at.
So everything you "upload" you can "download" for free.
So, we literally have zero energy costs since we also switched out heat to full electric and we make so much power in the summer, we are covered the entire year.
3 years later, we are in the black.
That's really interesting about the digital battery! I love when there are other approaches tried around the world.
Thanks!
The insurance company paid you to replace your roof?? Every one I’ve ever heard of just threatens to cancel
That sounds like State Farm!
Enjoyed the video, you covered a lot of questions and concerns 👍
Do you have an opinion about the way the shingles are clipped onto the roof for a home in a hurricane prone area?
Any better or any worse than an asphalt shingle roof in a strong wind situation?
Thanks again for taking the time to make the video .
I'd have to imagine the shingles are better than asphalt for hurricane winds, since they test solar to a higher degree because of the electricity rules apparently.
Recently saw someone who went through that last FL hurricane with solar roof and it held up great, powerwalls we're even submerged in water! That's something I never considered at all, but would've assumed catastrophic... Supposedly they held up! Worth looking into.
Thank you!
Thank you for the info🙏
@@ShortVersion1 Did the roofs on the houses that were completely destroyed also survive? Roofs are not designed to withstand hurricane force winds, not cat 4 or 5 anyway.
Bro, you only have 200 subs, you should have 200,000. Great video and really well presented! We had 10 kw of solar on our last house and it paid for our annual electricity costs each year. Our ROI was about 8-9 years.
Whats your ROI if the government was not funding a portion of it?? Thats the true ROI - not the taxpayer footing rebates.
Great vid & review of ur gnarly Tesla solar roof install and setup. I think u covered a lot in this fairly. The ROI can probly be calculated in with resale value of the house capital also of course, which is sure to increase it value annually in that regard. I think it looks great and wish u the best, it would be good to get more updates down the track on how it is all surviving. Cheers
As illogical as it sounds, it's generally said that solar doesn't tend to increase resale value. People consider it an added bonus to buy a house with solar installed, but just don't pay extra. Solar is a bad investment if you don't remain in a house until the '10' years payback point, but should be an easy choice if you can afford it and are going to be there long enough to recoup.
How much does snow stay on the roof? How does it affect output?
Great report!
Thank you, yeah the snow stays on usually only a few hours the day it falls. Hard to say it affects output at all, because snowy days have so much overcast. If anything these shed snow much faster than other roofs and most solar panels I've seen!
You have to periodically clean them too, and I do not know if hurricane-strength winds can catch the panels and rip your roof off. Which also means you have to replace your roof before getting those panels.
Thanks for the review. Hope you see my comment 9 mo. later... What is your monthly payment for the install? That will give you your ROI.
I was an early adapter of solar (lease program), back in 2012. The lease had an increasing monthly payment each year. An option to pre-pay about $8k was in the contract but I didn't have $8k back then. Long story short, the company also had a 6-year exit clause which I opted to remove the panels. I determined the lease payments were way more than the savings on electricity. Lease payment, annually were $1400 while electrical savings was $982 (in 2015).
However, despite all efforts to have the company remove the solar panels, they refused. So, I stopped paying, and prepared to fight them in court. #1, in writing, the contract says 5kW, but the inverter is only 4kW. #1.1 The solar generation peaks about 4k in a day during the highest generation month (May for my S-by-S/E facing roof), despite the 22 panels that should generate 5k. #2, they are not honoring their exit clause. #3 They sold me on the idea that solar would be getting me "money back from Electric Co each month", but they didn't.
The company didn't fight me. So, I paid about $8100 for the solar system over six years. My "break-even" is estimated to be 2027. That means, my savings on electricity will save me $8100 by mid 2027.
Note: I can see a degradation of Solar generation year over year, as expected, from over 46% (2015) to 38% (2022) on average savings annually. (It may be down since my wife started working from home during COVID).
Before Solar, I replaced the two heat-pumps with the most energy efficient models.
Over time, I replaced all my lights with LED lights. I also replaced appliances with Energy Star models.
I still have to remind my wife and daughter to turn off the lights when not in the room... 😕
Thank you. That's wild about them refusing to take them off!
We don't have a monthly payment, it was cash, that totalled 32k. Our ROI is always changing depending on the weather, passage of time, and battery settings. It's somewhere between 7-14 years depending on how you see it.
It's rough being an early adopter, people who get solar now will pay the same for much more production output per year, with energy prices from the utility going up. Our annual bill just went negative and now helps pay for some of the water bill.
We're looking to go further with electrification and heatpumps (water heater and clothes dryer) to get closer to net zero, but realize the ROI isn't exactly the point anymore as our energy costs are virtually non-existent.
@@ShortVersion1 The company I worked with became shady. At one point they wanted me to send the payment to Costa Rica... before it got wiped out by a hurricane. I believe they lost the original contracts so they can't fight it in court. Upon trying to renegotiate, they wanted me to sign a strange "legal" document. Something like not to mention this event or complain publicly about the company. I expected a simple addendum. You cannot addend a missing contract. So, refused that. With some research, I found they got fined for fraudulent activities, misleading buyers of solar systems. So, I believe the company is no longer installing systems, just collecting $$ from existing contracts. Hence the "legal" document to not giving away their secrets.
Either way, I think you got a good deal. I feel better knowing I am saving money by lowering my electric bill. I would guess the best ROI would be about 10 years for a system like this. The increased value of your (our) home would pay for itself if we sell.
Amazing! You did your homework, workedout if it was worth it, and in the end it was. But better yet, you shared your experience with others. Please make a video in another year, I would love to see how everything is going.
You know it! Thank you!
The biggest change will be the new export from battery feature and our addition of infrared heating panels.
Depending on your situation, drying your clothes naturally would save you energy, also and again depending on your situation, using a moderate home heating setting would be most beneficial, as you so rightly said, it's about consumption. I'm glad everything worked out favouably for you.
You're right! The drying clothes here outside or on a rack is a tricky one. It definitely makes sense, but there is a cultural stickiness to clothes dryers.
Similar to how when we got solar, we lowered how much we heat. However, when people our mom's ages came over, they complained and didn't understand it was cold by choice not because it couldn't get HOT enough to wear shorts inside when there is a foot of snow outside.
I think we have to win people over step by step by compelling them with luxury, and as weird as it sounds they wouldn't trust our perspective if we're seen as too "radically green" or whatever.
I kind of get it, because my grandparents had clothes lines. If we moved abroad to have children and like...urbanism, we'd definitely raise kids to use drying racks. More likely a combination too.
Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 Yes getting over cultural hurdles can be difficult and you don't want to be labeled a weirdo because of your actions/convictions which could quite easily happen. Thread carefully.
Great and thorough review. Thank you. I was just a little concerned at the beginning that you were going to slide off the roof screaming and get hurt.
I picked the lowest roof plane over the softest ground! Just in case!
Thank you
Me too !!!👍🤭👍
Fan-tastic... I was expecting $100,000 with 3 powerwalls / Roof... good to hear it finally happens... somewhere, somehow... endless Hoops
Curious how loud the roof is compared to an asphalt roof when raining?
We actually just had an epic rain (month's worth in three days) and I remarked that it must be quieter. Hard to tell because it doesn't rain here often, and our last place had metal roof which was very loud.
Thank you very much for a factual and sober review on your experiences with solar cells. I especially admire your calm, sober and clear narrative without giddiness and goofs (except for your little stunt on the roof at the beginning). Here you get sober and useful information in contrast to the many catchpenny or clipbate shows that abound on UA-cam.
So much sobriety going on in your review of his review. Crazy how sober his sobriety is. Sound like the VPOTUS.
Wow this house uses a lot of electricity. Great informative video
Besides not having the cost of the shingle roof let's not forget the cost saved by not installing a stand-by generator that burns natural or propane gas. So, to me, this family got a free roof with long term electric bill saving benefits.
Except us much poorer tax payers had to foot half the bill; nothings free. And then there's the environmental cost of mining the rare earth minerals and then disposing of them. Until people start buying these solar systems without my help, they are a drag on the entire economy.
@@ellisjk1409 Fair point. Although I'd say any incentives the government gives it's worth taking advantage of. Principles won't make policymakers stop, so you can reap rewards from their stupidity. I can't fault anyone for that. Although the "only people who aren't poor can benefit" puts a real damper in any sort of savior complex that any Tesla customers might have. The environmental factors are hilarious, you are spot on that manufacturing more stuff is definitely not environmentally friendly. Recycling is environmentally friendly, not incentivizing more consumerism. Manufacturing is the worst for the environment as far as energy is concerned.
$32k for all that is an insanely good deal! Is that before the 26% federal tax credit? I seriously doubt anyone can get anything remotely comparable for that price.
That was after all the incentives! But yeah it seems really low for all the install labor even. Fortunately, battery prices will keep dropping and the federal credit is going up to 30%, which will be huge.
Sounds like you ended up getting an absolutely smoking deal on your Tesla roof, bless you and your family! It not only damn near make you independent from the energy company it also added the novelty wow factor of the Tesla name associated with your house when you put it on the market, cant' beat that! Thanks for making and posting this well presented video!
Thank you brother it's been a blast!
real estate guy here that adds nothing to your house.
@@carloscruz7317 depends who wants it.
It might add value to Musk sycophants. Otherwise, having Tesla associated with your house add nothing.
@@TroySavary having a solar roof absolutely adds something. Tesla or not.
Be really nice to see UA-cam channels reviews every year of solar /wind powered homes in colder American/Canadian climates where it's well below freezing 6 to 8 months of the year and not Southern California or Arizona where it never gets below room temperature 72F 20C and the sun shines 350 days a year .
This is at 5,500ft elevation in Northern Colorado, just south of Wyoming.
JerryRigEverything just reviewed his third year with panels in Utah valley. Similar results.
The wind farms North of us, in Wyoming, do really well. Same with the ones in Lapland Scandinavia (The Arctic Circle), they see them in the new Grand Tour Scandi Flick special.
As someone who lives and works in the worst area of the USA for hurricanes and terrible storms in general, ROI would come second to power outages for me. Running a loud generator for 6 straights days was the worst experience. Not only due to the noise, but having to stop every 8 hours and stand in pouring rain and wind to fill it with fuel. Let's not forget gas storage, and having to haul it all. These power walls would sell here like hotcakes even if it took 20 years for a full return on investment.
in the meantime, can you build a sound dampening system for your generator? I have seen many videos on this site going over how it can be done, some are much more complex then other methods.
I live in Florida - when there’s a hurricane it isn’t windy and rainy for days so refilling a generator in the pouring rain might happen once or twice in a worst case scenario. Gas storage - five or six five gallon cans take up a trivial amount of space and it’s not hard to haul them around. Agree with the noise factor but that can be subdued a lot. A “Generac” type solution is much better for storm concerns especially when hurricanes are really not very frequent
The benefits of Solar out weighs any negative. (As long as you paid the right price)
There's just a lot of considerations to be had. Considering will you stay on your residence for 10 years or forever.
Return of investment might be long, but if you plan to live on the place forever. I think it's worth it. These systems are built to last, not much movable parts, so no sweat at all it breaking.
The cheap ones may be questionable though, so if you buy the right items. You're set!
Cool video! I did Tesla Solar (panels) + Powerwalls and I have buyer’s remorse about not doing the solar roof.
There's always the next house haha
Thanks!
you may want to look into way Walmart and other companies ditched tesla solar. give you a hint the solar panels went up in flames due to being made in china
@@toomanyaccounts You’re not wrong that those systems were faulty, but they weren’t Tesla panels. The systems in question were purchased from, installed by, and maintained by SolarCity. The lawsuit took place after Tesla purchased SolarCity, so it was an inherited problem. It would be like Stellantis getting sued for something Dodge did.
In any case, my panels were made at Gigafactory Buffalo, NY, and my Powerwalls were made at Giga-Nevada.
I absolutely love that Tesla is bringing manufacturing back to America!
@@American_Energy It was Elon's company all along. He had his cousins start it for him.
Really helped with the breakdown of costs. I have been going back and forth with conventional or tiles for solar. I’m in CA and everything is more expensive. I agree with your ten year pay off. Though others disagree (cause everyone is a builder) I think the ten years is about right and there are a lot of variables. I think you did a great job sharing your experience. Long term would be neat to see (5years or 10 years)
Pro CA tip, get a local solar installer and get conventional solar with microinverters. Don't go tesla on solar, they aren't that cheap anymore and their string inverters are crap. You should shoot for about $2.5 per Watt or cheaper if you can. Stick with name brands with your solar parts and make sure you get a warranty from the installer.
Also, don't oversize your system, have it cover everything that you use, nothing more. Otherwise you'll be getting pennies on the dollar on return for however much energy you produced, but didn't use.
You talked me out of wanting one, thankls.
me too. he wont do a review 10 years from now cuz it wont work any more
@@ronp5644 100% these roofs will be boondoggles that have to be entirely removed or no one will even buy the home.
I just subscribed. Good luck with the channel. Your first video was great information keep it up.
The roof concept can work but its a long-term game. The real questions are, how long do those tiles/batteries last? Are there unforseen repairs? If so who does the fixing? (very important in places like Florida that might get widespread regional damage) Tax breaks? What about overlapping material systems (critical for remodels)? If the roof fails structurally but the panels are fine, who's liability is it? Do you have higher or lower insurance costs/benefits? What's the cost/frequency of cleaning? Do they lose efficiency over time (batteries, especially)? Are there any other external impacts, etc.? We think of it in terms of panel efficiency, or even Energy ROI, or upfront cost. Any single metric is really deception, in reality there are like 10 factors to consider. Even duration of ownership is a major factor. If you sell the house is a partially paid off installation factored in?
The success or failure of any system like this is mostly determined by all the external factors. If its not quite ready it's getting close, nice review.
Hey thank you!
Many questions, but generally you'd be surprised by the answers maybe. For instance, roof is more fire-resistant than asphalt, so insurance likes that. They have been seeming exceptionally durable physically, in hail like Texas and hurricanes in Florida. I've been pretty rough with this one.
I've sprayed with hose once to clean, they're generally self-cleaning if you get any rain. I'd probably not hose them again, not worth it.
Our EV batteries have held up so well, discharging much more power. Based on that, and other experience, I'm not worried about their longevity. In places with TOU rates, I'd even recommend batteries over solar for some people. With a software update, they've started returning much more value to the grid in the last ~8 months.
So yeah, stuff will wear over time, but I see it as tools that are beneficial to use. Not everyone should buy a table saw, but if you buy one it's better to wear it out than leave it on a shelf!
My biggest sticking point is no one mentions time value of money when discussing savings from solar. If it costs you 60k upfront to install solar, and you make your money back in 5-10 years (that's being generous) then you'd be better served investing your money as long as you put it somewhere sensible. You can realistically double your money in 10 years investing in the largest most common index fund holdings on the planet if you yield an average 7% annual return. Which isn't unheard of. Even if the U.S. declines over time you can invest in whatever country you think is going to outpace us. Even if you discount the price of a standard roof, you are ignoring the opportunity cost of investing the money. Maybe if you are close to retirement and are investing more conservatively anyway this could make some sense. Then the savings have a chance to outpace bond rates during your average period and you can somewhat reliably confirm lower costs for the future knowing you will live in the house for 20+ yesrs. But even then, you can't really afford to part with a massive chunk of change in retirement unless you are fairly wealthy in the first place. In that case you'd be fine regardless unless we have a complete economic collapse. If that happens, solar is the least of your concerns.
Yeah that's fair, I feel pretty much the opposite.
At some point I'd rather have electricity than more money. That point was a couple years ago now so... yeah the collapse would be fine I'm also okay with that.
Investing in Africa is cool though, definitely won't here me complaining about lost opportunity cost of not having solar if you invested in Mogadishu.
4k system for the typical 3 bedroom home is a very small system overall. Lots of people expect that that will be enough to power their home off grid. It is not usually enough as you get about 60% max out of a system. Anything more than 60% and you are doing really well. A 3 bedroom home usually uses around 1.3k an hour during the day. If your system at peak only produces 2k... your battery is probably not getting a full charge. Always get as much as you can in solar panels.
Absolutely. People don't realize how there has been a paradigm shift in solar, where it used to be about helping shave off the bill, now it's about trying to go net-zero.
For this reason, I'm excited to see the solar-generator segment take off. It can encourage modularity, and be expanded as it sits "behind the meter" and won't need constant bureaucratic approval. It would be nice if someone like Coleman or Weber would make ground-based solar that didn't need to be as tediously/permanently mounted.
Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 Failure rates from users having to handle photovoltaic cells on a regular basis would be eating any cost target.
Have you considered getting a SPAN junction box? Really allows for tracking power used per circuit and you can even set priorities if on battery only.
I have, we definitely are past the point of needing to ration energy, because the cost is so low for us now.
SPAN would be great for new builds, however it's diminishing returns in terms of data for us now. I'd love to know per circuit, but I'm pestering Tesla to add that functionality with some sort of pattern recognition software on the whole house.
It doesn't need to be 100% accurate, because we already have a really good idea of what uses what.
For instance, car used
@@ShortVersion1 The ROI on a SPAN panel is not worth it in your case or pretty much anyone with Tesla solar & batteries like myself, SPAN @ $4,500.00 just to purchase not including installation is a deal breaker for me.
Thank you for watching! I appreciate all of the positive feedback, you guys have really made this little video catch on.
Some housekeeping:
If you're about to comment asking about pricing specifics, just go to Tesla's website and put in your address for a quote. There are too many moving factors for our roof to be a measuring stick for yours.
The point seems to be lost on some, that Tesla sent us a large check, and comped us one powerwall after the price-hike fiasco. Not to mention roof-size, complexity, and the ever-changing status of subsidies.
Finally, if you'd miss the money, don't spend it. We won't, so we did. Sorry, not sorry.
Good for you, I’m definitely getting everything Tesla in my house (when I buy it)
Do you feel like you are misrepresenting this subject if you know that it can't actually be used for any type of comparison?
I think covering up the Tesla logos on the boxes would've been the right move.
Great presentation, thank you. What is the electrical cost per kWh in your situation. I live in Washington city, Utah a,d the electricity cost is only 6.6 cents per kWh and it seems difficult to justify the ROI. What do you think?
We went between 7-24 cent/kWh instantaneous, but our yearly average cost was just over 10cent/kWh. Now it's technically negative cost over the year so hard to say.
I think in the short-term prices from utility will rise, but the piece of mind of having your own generation is something I'd always recommend!
Thanks!
You can get a 10-year treasury bond with a return of a little of 4% per year which is considered a risk-free return. So, in order for the solar installation to make financial sense than you have to have a savings of at least 4% of the total cost of the installation or more per year over those 10 years. Otherwise, you are just doing it to be green.
Haha Doge went up 96% this week, bonds are cringe! But yes 4% or be green hard choice
Thank you!
Great video....Curious...so why was your insurance company offering to pay YOU to have a new roof installed?
The old one was 20+ years old and had some damage.
Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 Thx...I'm assuming it was damaged in a storm so the money was in response to an insurance claim for damage that you filed.
Am I reading this right? 120k views, but only 334 Subscribers? If so, keep up the good work. Those Subs will pick up.
I had it installed on my roof it is more expensive as normal solar but benefits of maintenance free roof is the best option
Sometimes I giggle. You describe the cost of drying clothes in summer... I use my outside dryer... a washing line.
Keep it up! Our dryer uses twice as much electricity as our electric car. There's some luxuries we afford ourselves hehe
Some day maybe we will use a clothes line, for now... we have nasty neighbors!
For the return on investment on the Asphalt roof, that would have just been way less, since a regular roof is just an outlay.I'm interested to know if you're driving your Leaf for free now.
The other week I tallied up how much we charged all year, 654 kWh, and multiplied it by our effective price per kWh, $0.003. So all year it was like we paid $1.96 to charge!
Thanks
Maybe talk about cleaning ? Do you have trees ? Do you clean weekly monthly ?? What do you use to clean ? I would think simple green ?
We don't clean, trees make a bigger difference. Recently addressed this in FAQ video.
Thanks
You forgot to mention you can drive for free via the energy you generate. I have two Tesla's and trickle charge them. I still make more than I need. Too bad you can't just sell it.
Great video. What is the square footage of your house? We were told to look at 35.00 to 45.00 per square foot. Is that correct?
According to google maps measuring, it's just under 2,000 square feet. I never really knew because it includes our garage, and it's a split-level. But 2,000 sounds about right.
For us, before any incentives it was that much, but less than half after incentives. You should just put your address into Tesla's website for a direct quote.
Thanks!
since you dont need to own a stand by generator, or future roofing replacements, or any power outage losses and have that extra peace of mind, you can adjust roi to 9 years, maybe down to 5 years, depending on future roof durability, increases in outside energy costs, lower outside energy reliability due to electric vehicle saturation, heat pump saturation, a too rapid fossil fuel outlawing, or further supply chain interruptions. a practical insurance policy, so to speak
There are so many moving parts. Last week we had a feature enabled to export from the powerwalls to the grid. That could end up paying out ~$4/day more. Too soon to tell.
In the next couple years they could explore vehicle to grid, and that would be much more lucrative for people with capable EVs. Exciting times!
Thanks!
He said low, then said 30 stacks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LMFAO. You got jacked bro
It is confusing that all electronics runs on DC , and each one has a way to convert AC to DC . If there was a plug on all of the Basically DC units , they could run directly off the batteries bypassing the inverter , and other things can also work on DC . We could cut the loss of inverting all the DC to AC reducing the size of the inverter , making solar more efficient .
Absolutely, all the DC appliances are for boats and RVs but it would be cool to have the option.
What's the big deal with reducing the size of an inverter? It's not like you're going to have it in the middle of your living room. And how much efficiency is lost when converting from DC to AC ?
Just found this on wiki : Inverter efficiency is the ratio of the usable AC output power to the sum of the DC input power and any AC input power. Typical grid-tied inverter efficiencies exceed 95% under most operating conditions.
@@Ochi2000 it's not the biggest problem in the world, for sure. For instance, some boat or RV inverters have both AC and DC outputs, which would help you power a few more efficient gadgets without converting the electricity twice.
So solar > batteries > DC fridge, which would maybe save 10% from lack of conversion. Not such a big deal with lighting, but potentially adds up if there were hypothetical DC air-sourced heat pumps or residential DC fast-chargers for EVs.
As is, we have inverters all over the place in the form of power bricks and hidden components. Would be cool to have a house with direct-DC USB-C ports etc for that reason. Again, not the end of the world.
Thanks!
With regards to the attention you have gotten with your install, I have gotten a similar amount of attention for my ~$3500 robot lawnmower. People can really rubber neck when they see something new. Like people were stopping and taking videos and photos pretty much the first 3-4 months. Every time I got the mail or was in the yard, I was explaining it to someone. Just one of those things. lol
Fantastic! Haha I've looked into those and want one pretty badly.
I think we're going to replace the lawn with rocks someday soon though.
Thanks!
Very nice video. I am curious ... are the non-active roof panels also glass or are they metal?
They do have some metal ones that I've seen used in special instances, but most are also ceramic.
If the panels are only held in place by clips (😳), how well would the roof hold up in hurricane/tornado prone areas? Especially with the air gap underneath. And can you still have skylight protrusions with this system in place?
Idk about skylights, I'd assume yes.
They've held up well for people in Florida as far as I know, the clips are very robust. They actually use similar clips on the starlink satellites!
Using 22% efficiency rating of solar , your ROI will be closer to 15+ years but adding additional insurance for storm damage pushes it over 20 years
Now add more insulation into your attic. During the winter use a heat camera to find any cold spots in the house.
Absolutely, we don't have an attic, bit did spray some foam whenever we opened up walls or cavities. We found the whole fireplace/chimney was uninsulated.
@@ShortVersion1 Also check around outlets. Contractors sometimes don't install insulation behind them so you have to add some to the plate.
@@Rottingboards It's way more important to air seal the attic floor than it is to add insulation.
@@homeauthorityllc It's way more important to add fire proof insulated cones over your can lights. Heat rises....
One thing that is overlooked here is that a law was passed, at least (Florida), but probably in most other states which allows the utilities to charge $30. per month for their power grid maintenance. That alone pretty much shoots the ROI in the foot.
We have a $10 service charge. The solar/batteries produce way more than enough value to make up for that.
This Summer, we've had our whole water bill covered by excess solar output, and then about $50/month negative credit added to the bill.
I've not heard of those sort of policies significantly altering ROI. There was a proposed change in California, where they wanted to charge solar owners based on the size of their systems, but that was shot down.
@@ShortVersion1 I don't understand what your water bill has to do with your electric bill. Each of our utilities are stand alone bills.
'As far as initial "offset" estimated by Tesla compared to the actual offset and kWh rating of the system compared to actual production, how ACCURATE were the estimates or ratings? We have a final design pending and currently have been presented a 20 kWh system to off set our usage by 64%. Not the numbers we were hoping for and they seem a bit conservative compared to my calculations.
The design estimate is definitely conservative, the roof produced more. That being said, they added extra tiles during install from what our design estimate said. It was also a cloudy summer compared to past ones.
20 kw is a ton of solar. Personally I'd try to drop usage before adding production at that point.
Thanks!
@@ShortVersion1 thank you for your reply. I was trying to wrap my mind around the consumption side of things as well. We have a similar set up as you, all electric (including hot water heater) and primary vehicle is an EV. We keep our mini splits set between 68 and 72 degrees, depending on the season. The major factor for our consumption might be the older construction methods used in our home and a need for an insulation renewal in the attic.
One odd thing I noticed with the design Tesla has presented us, is they designed the roof around existing attic vents, which according to every image I have found of a finished roof online, they convert from the traditional vents to a ridge line vent. I'm guessing this might be where some additional production might come from. I'm working on getting a time scheduled to speak to someone on the phone, the default of receiving texts from multiple people at Tesla has probably led to some communication falling through.
Thank you for your guidance on the conservative offset figure.
I put together a smaller grid tie system for my commercial building of 10- 100W panels with 2- 1300W Grid-Tie Inverters for less than $1200.00.
This should give me about 30A going back into the system, depending on the sun and clouds.
No need for charge controllers or batteries.
My building is mostly vacant, used for storage, only uses power for lighting, alarm system, and video system, and is not shaded.
It has central AC and heating, but they are not being used at this time.
I currently average a little less than $100.00 per month on my electric bill.
Most of that is fees for delivery, meter rent, and taxes.
I am hoping that with hardly any usage, my bill will go negative.
I am sure the power company will figure out a way to charge me and steal my energy.
At which time, I will add batteries, share the power with my rental house next door and take them both off-grid.
Amazing man! Good for you!
Hi Thans for you information
How long do solar panels last?
I know they should be changed but I don't know the Tesla datathanks for information!
At least 25 years, thanks!
Wow, had to put you on 2x playback, amazing how slowly you speak
I have read that, in many areas, if you produce beyond your needs that you receive a "use it or loseit" credit with a very short time frame. Somewhat understandable in that solar is unpredictable at best. Does not preclude investment on the part of the utility. So going beyond net zero for a grid tie system is perhaps not so wise as is figuring utility credits in the ROI. You might want to consider a video on the paradigm that Australia is implementing....but the population of the entire country is less than the state of Texas. All in all, an excellent video....and, I think that you beat Will Prowse to the punch🧐
Yes the utility purchase agreements are usually not super advantageous to residential solar. Here, it comes out of our water bill when it goes negative, which is an interesting way to do it.
In California, utilities recently tried to charge customers a monthly fee based on how much solar they have installed... Which is scary!
Thank you!
@@ShortVersion1 Yeah...I read thar California was doing that...taxing efforts by anyone to alleviate grid...metering private wells to tax....and it goes on and on....Nero fiddled...
@@ShortVersion1 thats crazy...here pay us for the sun your using ..
@@phylthamendment it didn't pass but definitely is the way some actors would have things move towards if left unchecked.
Joseph Brabender III, if that is your real name, where are these areas? I’ve never heard of that. I’ve heard of:
• curtailment (in parts of California) where the utility has too much electricity on the grid during parts of the day, and the utility refuses to buy your solar electricity. Literally, you have to dump that electricity into the ground.
• There are some areas (Pennsylvania I think), where you can ask for a check for your unused credits once a year.
• I live in RI where credits stay on your account until you use them OR you can “gift” your credits to someone (hopefully a good friend or family member who will pay you back for it)
But I’ve never heard of credits with an expiration date.
We are very happy with our Solarroof and powerwalls. We were part of the first 100 v3 solar roof program. In the 3 years since install we have mostly eliminated our power bill.
I know I am in the minority but I prefer the look of solar panels. Beyond that, solar with storage is so much more affordable now for DYI.
Everyone should install it, it’s maintenance and care will make the owner disciplined
The quickest return on investment is not buying batteries. Just buy solar panels yourself and either have a non-solar local electrician put it up for you or do it yourself. You can have your solar power charge a smaller cheaper "solar generator" which you can use to charge everything that needs to be charged, and connect it to your refrigerator. All the battery power is not needed. Do electric consuming tasks when during the daytime when the system is active and sleep at night. This crazy system only gives them a day plus a bit in the winter of use if the power goes out. Not worth it for those rare times, and the day of storage isn't as comforting as a chord of wood.
telsa solar tile make sense when the roof is end of life, replacement and repair might be an issue. typically solar last 15-25 years, beyond 25 yr is bonus. roof mounted, and ground mounted are much cheaper with used solar.
we use 300 watts/hr base average , 400 average watt with ac. i seen bill as low as $45, sometimes $100+. compared our neighbors $450-900 bill. ultra efficient house is the way to go even if you have solar. $200 Air circulators, window treatment cut AC useage by 90%. These have ROI within 30-90 days.
Absolutely, like I always tell people, best return is with caulk and expanding foam.
We just got an opportunity that couldn't be passed up. If the tiles were to hypothetically stop working outside of their long warranty, I'd probably leave them up just for the intrinsic quality of tiles over disposable roofs. Some day would love to do auxiliary ground-mounted system to get EUI in the negative.
Started out ~48 EUI, then ~25 with efficient improvements, currently at ~7.8, with plans to bring it to ~2. But ROI for us has vanished, as we now could never financially justify more improvements with our usually free electricity.
Thanks!
Great video. Where in the country do you live?
Northern Colorado! Thanks!
10 year ROI is not bad, but that is with old prices. Heat pump systems have under 10 years, smaller ones 4-5 years.
Batteries wear out typically in 10 years, inverters 15-20 years. Solar panel manufacturers typically guarantee less than 10% degrading of efficiency in 30 years.
I passed on the tesla roof because the installation was quoted at $150,000. Even in 20 years that wouldn't even pay for itself. That's after taking out the $38,000 from my insurance. I just used a simple calculation of a generous $400 a month in savings. $200-300 a month is my usual electric bill and maybe excess electricity sold back. 400x12x20
Wow that's an outrageous quote. After price hikes? Big or complicated roof?
Yeah man makes sense to pass
Great review of the technical details of the roof and power generation, but to me the problem is on the cost. The math you used for ROI was simply wrong. You already subtracted the cost of the asphalt roof, because in your ROI calculation you went with the cost you paid...and the cost you paid already took out $12,000 your insurance company gave you for a new roof. As you pointed out, the initial estimate (even with an insurance claim and 26% credit was $30,000)...and then it went up an unknown amount. Doesn't that mean the original price was around $56,000, before the price increase? This pretty closely matches the price listed on independent websites. After the increase, that is probably closer to $65,000 (or at least, what they claim it would have cost if they had stuck with it)? If the only way the power generation works out economically is because of insurance claims and government incentives, then it simply isn't a economically viable business strategy. Considering a traditional roof could have been replaced for around the $12,000 in insurance money, you will need to to run this roof for 23 years to break even. The math I used in generalized, but should show the problem with the tesla roof business model.
Cost of the tesla roof ($65,000) - Cost of a traditional roof ($12,000) = $63,800
Energy savings = total energy use prior to roof (24,000 KWH) - total energy use after roof (5,200 KWH) = saving 18,800 KWH/Year
US average cost per KWH is $0.144. 18,800KWH x $0.144/KWH = $2,707 saved per pear
Additional cost of the Tesla roof over a traditional roof ($63,800) / $2,707 = 23.6 years
I'm okay with math being wrong. It's one of my least favorite lenses of looking at problems.
I think the semantic difference here is that MOST solar ROI calculations are for systems where your will need to rip off and replace your roof, regardless of solar.
So without going into all the ups and downs of the price (frankly, I thought it was lower and wasn't really interested, accountant told me what it actually cost bottom line), it's really difficult to now say "the batteries cost X."
It was a whole system, including a roof. So there can be a way, if you think a little harder for a moment, to talk about the cost of the electrical parts. Would I pay 32.5k for a slate roof? Yeah probably. A metal roof? Yeah definitely.
I understand what people mean when they say double counted cost of roof because insurance, I'm putting a pin in that while separating out the actual cost and the three services the system provides. Roof, solar, battery.
Thank you! Please don't think I'm being argumentative, it's just my perspective as someone who had ROI at the bottom of their priorities, but gets the question several times a week.
@@ShortVersion1 Not argumentative at all, and you have some good points. There are also reasons to get solar beyond ROI. Personal preference/style as well as just wanting to generate your own energy vs just being a consumer. In order for any solar company to truly revolutionize the energy industry though, they will need a much better ROI.
Because of the durability of the shingles, do you get a break from your insurance? That should add into your return as well, right?
Nope, maybe some day that would be sweet!
Nice Ad
Good for T.
Watched whole vid.
Great review.
Super.
Do they come with roof heating to get rid of the snow....how often do you clean the roof for optimum efficiency and can you tell by monitoring something that you're roof needs cleaning like a percentage per panel Energy Efficiency. Next question how do you know if a roof panel stops working. And if something was to go wrong with the power wall what kind of warranty was Tesla offering
Melting snow wouldn't be worth the energy it takes, because you wouldn't capture that much on a snowy typical day.
I don't clean roof, it's not the best use of time/resources maybe I would after a wild fire or something. Haze from pollution seems to be more of a problem for output than dirty tiles.
I think if tile stopped working it would put the whole string out of production and you could tell by significant drop in production.
The solar roof warranty is 25 years, the batteries are 10.
Thanks!
My buddy has the Tesla solar panels (not the roof) with a powerwall and his experience has been absolutely awful the last couple years, nonstop problems. They remove features from their app (our utility company has dual peak hours and they removed that feature from the app and it caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people - I think they added it back after several months unsure), their customer service sucks, you can never get anything done on any reasonable timeframe, and it's nothing but headaches. It kind of works now.... it turned me off to Tesla anything.
EDIT: I also wanted to add that solar resistance you had from your utility company seems to be a common thing, they don't want you to have solar, they want you to give them money. In my city you are not allowed to be off-grid in the city limits (PHX metro area) its highly regulated and there's massive amounts of red tape to go through. It's annoying, the major utility company here in AZ, SRP (Salt River Project), is evil when it comes to solar adoption for its customers, they will charge you higher rates (and recently lost in federal court for essentially price gouging customers that had solar versus those who didn't).
I'm glad you've had a good experience.
The same thing with Tesla vehicles, they are fun to drive and super fast (unbeatably fun acceleration), but every single Tesla vehicle comes with factory defects and issues.
Oof that's a huge bummer about your friend. There are a lot of kinks to work out on all ends for sure.
I advocate for most people to look into solar generators as alternatives to red tape after my experience. Hopefully sooner than later this stuff gets figured out.
Thanks!
i might be concerned with the "air gap" between the tiles and the roof depending on it's configuration. i.e. Can it be cleaned out or is it "self cleaning"? - Is it a haven for bug nests? - how much debris (leaf/dust buildup) does it collect? - blowing snow buildup? etc, etc.
afaik its a required feature of every roof, its needed for ventilation. its not a telsa roof thing
@@Justanothervegandude Since when?
There are very small holes in the metal screens at top and bottom. Air goes through to cool your roof. Nice!
Solar panels require an air gap so they don’t overheat and reduce power generation.
The air gap provides a little space for cooling the hot solar shingles and reduces heating the house as much via conduction.
You could look at it another way. Instead of paying X amount of money per month to your utility company you are paying X amount to installing the Tesla power wall.
You will need to make sure your insurance company will underwrite the Tesla Roof. If they don't you would have to shop around for an insurance that would. Factor in how much more the insurance premiums would be ensuring the roof.
Hopefully the insurance companies will catch up on this new technology.
My AH insurance didn't propose any money to me, instead they ended our insurance contract due to older roof
I live in Danmark And I can say the numbers you have for return on investment is almost the same.. My 1 year numbers also hit around 9-10 years. before its all played off 6KW no battery system .. Guess it all comes down to weather and energy price .. And if anything needs repair . It its played of in 15 and it last 25 I will be perfectly happy .. How big is the Price diffrence where you live Nigh vs Daytime ? In Denmark its almost no difference so Filling up batters at night if there is no Sun dont do anything really.. Where I have heard places where the price is like 10x cheaper at night so people fill up the batteries off the grid at night...
Our off-peak is 7 cents, and peak is 24, so there is a bit of a difference. Big enough to do some battery discharging between the periods.
Thanks! Would love to get to Danmark some day!
Thanks for the information, I dont know where you are located. It would be nice to have an estimated of where you are so we can figure out the total output of your system vs the latitude and altitude you are. Dont need to be too precise. I am in canada and Tesla system been something I've been looking upon
We're in northern Colorado!
Honestly, from what I can tell, there are so many factors with solar production such as orientation, shade from trees, and in our case smog/air pollution. My impression is that solar is still viable if the other criteria are well suited. So a south-facing array with no obstruction could produce a bunch of solar, even in Canada. I've heard there are really precise programs for estimating yield online.
Thanks!
How big is your house? My electric bill in Texas is 5 times your yearly bill. You focused a lot on heat, so my guess is you are up north? You didn't mention any "sell back" of your extra electricity? Do you have that option?
3 bedroom, 2 bath ~2400sft maybe, with mixed short and really tall ceilings. In northern Colorado.
We sell back excess solar most of the year, and just got the option to export from battery a couple weeks ago. It was a software update, which could save a lot in winter and help export more during peak in summer.
Some months we export as much as 900kwh to the grid, but it varies by season.
Should you factor in the gasoline savings from your EV?
Well, we've had the EV for years, and used to charge for free at apartments anyway. It's really tricky with all the mental gymnastics one has to do about ROI anyway, there being so many ways to cut it.
For instance, the Tesla app showed me how much more energy was used setting AC to higher temp, vs setting it in fan mode. My whole life, if it were cool enough, but I didn't want it to get hot, I would just turn thermostat up a few degrees. That might have used 700w in an semi-idle state (can't remember specifics) but now I see fan mode uses maybe half of that. So the whole last year we probably saved a dollar or two running fan mode instead of higher AC temp. If we didn't have solar, that could've saved 10 bucks or so over a Summer... But how does one factor that in?
So more towards your point, I think not because it was usually free for us, but it would be a factor for someone else definitely.
Sorry if I misunderstood but then you pay sometimes for the electric bill plus the solar panel? 2 bills? Correct me if Im wrong. Im thinking of getting them
So people have those kinds of arrangements if they lease solar panels or finance, and then on months the solar wouldn't produce enough to cover their bills they might have two.
Ours were bought outright so we only have the utility bill. Except our utility bill also has water and sewage on it, but those I've removed for data points.
Excellent!
Thanks for that!
Very informative!