House is around 3100 sq ft and is 2 stories. I am going to guess there is a little over 1800 sq feet roof because garage area (one with 1.6 kW) in top left is not included in sq footage. But I am not a home guy so it is a guess.
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Solarglass Roof - V3 - any customers?
- Thread starter bonaire
- Start date
House is around 3100 sq ft and is 2 stories. I am going to guess there is a little over 1800 sq feet roof because garage area (one with 1.6 kW) in top left is not included in sq footage. But I am not a home guy so it is a guess.
jerjozwik
Active Member
As I understand it, price of the solar roof is highly dependent on the amount of tiles with solar versus those without. Supposedly those with solar are 3-4 times as expensive as those without solar.
woferry
Member
Seems like your last year usage and annual energy production should be MWh. I guess you must be a good bit farther north, or maybe there's shading or something, my 13.32 kWp system was estimated 17,091 kWh for year 1. But I have to ask, it's not clear from that drawing what angle/height those roof planes are on. Wouldn't that front-most section with the 1.6kW of tiles always be in the shade of the surface behind it (with the 3.2kW of tiles)?
A co-worker is also going through the quoting process, in his case they didn't actually indicate the tile placement like yours (or the kW per-plane), his only indicated which roof planes would have tiles. So interesting that they seem to be upping the level of detail again (mine showed roughly where the producing tiles would go, though it didn't include the detail of the stagger from row to row, it just had straight edges). But it seems odd to me to have stopped short on the plane with the 2.2kW, but put that 1.6kW in the very front, unless the roof angles are very different than how I'm imagining them.
I am a bit North of you, but not that far, 25 miles maybe in the east Bay Tri-Valley.
There is shading to the south. We have a huge oak tree. When we trim it there are usually 5 guys up there at the same time and they full several cords of wood out of it.
Part of the day, especially in the winter, the front area (its the garage) is in shade from the other parts of the roof of our 2 story home. However in the spring and fall most of the day it has sun. And in summer it has full sun from 9AM to 6pm.
One advantage I see in these solar tiles is they can really put small areas of solar on a roof. And as the design shows they took advantage of this on our home. The previous plan from the other provider with conventional panels had no solar on the northern side (the 3.2 and 1.6 kW areas of the front ) of the house even though there are plenty of areas that do get sun.
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It is not panels.
I only mention that because looks is a big factor for us consider Tesla.In the drawing what you see It is active roof tiles versus inactive roof tiles. It all looks like roof tiles. Elon mentioned you wont be able to easily see the difference between active versus inactive tiles sections. And you can see in the drawing the v3 solar roof has chunkier tile sections.
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Hey thanks for that estimated figure. My 13.2 KW system here in Northern NJ was estimated to produce 15,965 KWh for year 1, I'm actually happy to see that sunny southern California only provides a relatively small bump in production.
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Any further word on the next styles of solar tile to be be released? Anxiously awaiting something Spanish-style clay tiles. I believe Elon said they'd be releasing a new style every six months to a year once they got pumping.
I am in Northern California not SoCal. California is a long state, from Jersey to Florida if laid on the East Coast. We are somewhere in the middle, east of San Francisco
I suspect SoCal would get much higher solar production than we will see.
With that said, we are 30 miles inland, so our climate is a lot different than on the coast. On a summers day we will be clear and sunny in the low 100s. And 30 miles away in San Francisco they will be foggy and overcast all day with temps struggle to get out of the 60s.
woferry
Member
Indeed, there is some more flexibility when the panels are smaller (and since V3's tiles are larger than V2 it seems some of that flexibility has been lost). The installers for my roof said there's no way I could have gotten my kWp with traditional panels, given the roof penetrations and setback requirements (I never had traditional panels quoted, so I don't have anything to back up that claim). I will note though that those tiles facing in less-ideal orientations will likely never get close to their peak production capability, so it adds to the claimed capacity but doesn't add as much to the real-world output (they do still add, of course, but the incremental cost of that extra output is higher). And of course there's the matter of what inverters will be paired with the tiles in what configuration. With traditional panels I think it's more straightforward to carve-up the load across multiple inverter channels when necessary. With the larger number of mini-systems of different sizes and output expectations in a Solar Roof, the inverter channels probably won't be balanced unless you get really lucky. In my case while the inverters sum-up to 10.4 kW max vs. the 13.32 kW max of the panels, the one inverter has more than half of the tiles (and the ones in the better orientation) while the other has the rest, so the one regularly clipped at 5.2 kW during the summer, while the other only ever really hit the peak during cloud edges (my best day so far the peak output was 8.995 kW on a cloudless day). So effectively the max inverter output is even less than the nameplate 10.4 kW. And now in the winter the one still gets close to clipping (and still clips some days), while the other inverter isn't doing nearly as well on any given day. I'm still hoping to some day get per-channel output data to get a better view of the performance of each set of tiles throughout the day. I'm thinking there might be a better distribution of the 4 strings across the 2 inverters than the one Tesla picked, but I can't say that for certain with the data I have right now.
Small update. The roof is ordered.
A ton of paperwork generated after pushing the accept button. Unfortunately the installation schedule showed it may take 3-4 months for construction to start.
A ton of paperwork generated after pushing the accept button. Unfortunately the installation schedule showed it may take 3-4 months for construction to start.
Congrats! Did you choose max solar or scale it down a bit? Or maybe you don’t have to decide until later? Also, is there an extra deposit to make at this point? Presumably it would become non-refundable at some point.
We went with the Max Solar. The page with the accept button gives the two options and you have select one before clicking Accept. But, I assume there will be some tweaking on the price/features and the contract explicitly said it could occur.
So far nothing about an extra deposit, but you know before it is goes to far that is coming. I am not sure how big that will be but I expect it to be substantial to cover getting and shipping the material here from Buffalo.
Anyone know what percentage Tesla wants on a starting deposit? I guess we know where the yearly bonus, and a bit more, is going!
Does Tesla have something like the Solar Edge optimizers which allow each panel (or I guess tile module in this case) to operate at a different production levels? With the system proposed using Panasonic panels I asked to them to add them (thanks to fellow member forum member G) and they costed them in. I hate to see the production impacted because a small area is shaded while the rest sit in bright sunlight. Maybe too many connection in a Solarglass roof.
I was told to expect a 50% payment at start of project and then 50% remainder at PTO. It does seem too good to be true if there is no sizable deposit in advance.
woferry
Member
I think the optimizers would expect more power from the panel than these tiles produce, besides requiring way more of them. At least in V2, Tesla used what they call a Diode Trunk Harness, which links between 1-4 PV Modules in series back into the main PV circuit. The diodes in the harness are there to bypass a set of PV Modules that are shaded or otherwise underperforming. I'd assume they're doing something similar for V3, but haven't seen enough details from an install yet to know that for certain.
The point you're at I think you've already paid the 'deposit', now you're actually on to real invoices/payments. For my V2 roof it was the initial $1000 deposit, another $2500 due once the system design was going, and then the remainder of the total cost was due 50% "upon delivery of material" (so they had already completed tear-off and rolled the dumpster away before I got this invoice), and then the final 50% plus permit/inspection costs due once final inspection passed (where they don't submit the paperwork for PTO until after this payment is received). With V3 I guess the initial deposit is down to $100, and it sounded from my coworker like they may not doing the second $2500 payment anymore, so you may just be up to the first 50% at delivery. But they should definitely tell you what to expect (if you already signed the contract it should have been in there I'd think, it was in my contract).
Since they invoice via PayPal and you can use a CC for it, I worked with my credit card company to temporarily (and severely) up my credit limit for the two 50% payments, to earn a boatload of points out of the deal.
I think the optimizers would expect more power from the panel than these tiles produce, besides requiring way more of them. At least in V2, Tesla used what they call a Diode Trunk Harness, which links between 1-4 PV Modules in series back into the main PV circuit. The diodes in the harness are there to bypass a set of PV Modules that are shaded or otherwise underperforming. I'd assume they're doing something similar for V3, but haven't seen enough details from an install yet to know that for certain.
The point you're at I think you've already paid the 'deposit', now you're actually on to real invoices/payments. For my V2 roof it was the initial $1000 deposit, another $2500 due once the system design was going, and then the remainder of the total cost was due 50% "upon delivery of material" (so they had already completed tear-off and rolled the dumpster away before I got this invoice), and then the final 50% plus permit/inspection costs due once final inspection passed (where they don't submit the paperwork for PTO until after this payment is received). With V3 I guess the initial deposit is down to $100, and it sounded from my coworker like they may not doing the second $2500 payment anymore, so you may just be up to the first 50% at delivery. But they should definitely tell you what to expect (if you already signed the contract it should have been in there I'd think, it was in my contract).
Since they invoice via PayPal and you can use a CC for it, I worked with my credit card company to temporarily (and severely) up my credit limit for the two 50% payments, to earn a boatload of points out of the deal.
Thanks for info. I guess I will adding a lot of points onto my United CC. We just pushed the big button last night. Then spend 20 minutes printing forms. We will read them over the weekend.
We sure are giving Tesla a lot of money these days. Model 3 should come in in a few days. We be an all Tesla family then. I guess I should buy the stock!
And on the panels would you expect there to be a dedicated inverter for each of the sections they showed on the diagram? If so and if it is like your system, I assume that the yield from each section would be a function of the modules that were NOT under-performing. Is that the correct way to think about it?
jerjozwik
Active Member
lol, well tesla refunded my bank $1,000 and just checked my tesla account and my preorder roof is no longer there. no email, call, or any notifications.
guess thats their way of saying non-applicable? hahaha
guess thats their way of saying non-applicable? hahaha
