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THE Solar Cell Thread Pt. 4 (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 22 Jun 2017, 03:41:06

Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

A California startup has developed PV modules that look like standing-seam metal roofing
POSTED ON JUN 1 2017 BY SCOTT GIBSON

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A California company says that its new building-integrated Solar Roofing looks like standing-seam metal roofing. Forward Labs says that installations will start in the San Francisco area next year.

A Palo Alto, California, company says that it has developed a building-integrated photovoltaic system with a top layer of tempered glass that looks like a standing-seam metal roof. The solar panels can be installed for $3.25 a watt — roughly the cost of a conventional racked solar array.

Forward Labs is now taking $1,000 deposits and says that installations will start in the San Francisco Bay area early next year. The company is apparently planning much wider distribution in the future, but cautioned visitors to its website that it could not commit to fulfilling any orders beyond the immediate Bay Area in 2018.

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This shows the layers of the new PV roof
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Thu 22 Jun 2017, 10:49:32

Great! It's good to see more competition in this space.

From an economic standpoint, between electricity prices in southern CA, and the amount of sun they get (solar incidence, solar irradiance) makes solar VERY sweet for that area compared to much of the country.

With cheap electricity (coal country, still) in central KY, and a fairly poor solar irradiance compared to southern CA, such roofs make little economic sense most places -- at least so far.

The price of this, the Tesla roof, etc. should be sobering to the wildly exaggerating green sites that try to claim Solar is "free", etc. (But it won't be, of course).

Which is probably why we see so few solar roofs around here vs their popularity in southern CA.

But still, this stuff must be built in volume to get much cheaper and the competition will help speed that up, so bring it on! After all, you never know, maybe some day they will finally pass a meaningfully large CO2 tax, and make such roofs suddenly much more feasible economically.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 22 Jun 2017, 13:15:59

I don't think I can answer your question about middlemen. There probably will at least be a regional distributor with inventory who is training contractor/installers. Then again, many Silicon Valley startups use unique business models, as did Tesla and Amazon. They might be asking contractor/installers to fly to California, pay for their training, and then be using UPS/FedEx/etc. for direct product distribution.

As for the power industry itself, you eliminate all the middlemen. Except for people like you and me who have the interest and skills to integrate these products into our homesteads, most people need a - wait for it - installation contractor and a maintenance contract.

One constant theme has always pervaded Silicon Valley startups, which is that most of them fail. I'm specificly warning you now that although you might want to get some training, I would not give "Forward Labs" any investment money, because no fewer than EIGHT solar firms have gone belly up within two miles of my home. They were once as common as software companies, before the Chinese dumping of solar panels brought on their demise.

But then again, maybe they will make you a true believer. Admittedly I am still smarting from the $7500 I "invested" in the Cape Wind fiasco.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 22 Jun 2017, 15:42:39

Why would anyone want the huge extra expense of a simulated standing seem metal roof for the north or north east and northwest angled parts of their building/home? Simple reality no or poor quality direct sunlight means no current from solar PV but given most home owner regulations you are discouraged from having different roofing types on different sides of the home.

Seems you would be much better off going with traditional roof top solar installed on top of the existing roofing.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 22 Jun 2017, 16:51:35

Well as the owner of a "conventional" rooftop PV array I will tell you (forgive me baha) that such things are butt-ugly in person, hard to sell your wife on, because she wants the perfect quaint little cottage, not something with a dozen and a half or more gleaming silicon panels. Either the SS roof from Forward Labs or the slate/shingle/tile/glass options from Tesla are far more attractive than add-on panels. I minimized the visual impact on my own house by mounting my panels as far from the street as possible on a rear roof surface.

One practical problem that you have with add-on rooftop PV panels is that they must pierce your rooftop moisture barrier and be anchored to the frame of the flat roof or the trusses of a pitched roof to resist high winds. To begin with, you need to install a roof with a warranteed life of 25+ years, to prevent the necessity of removing/reinstalling the panels when servicing the roof. Having the roof cladding and the PV integrated together neatly avoids having to pierce the roof and to have seperate roofing and solar contractors. (I deal with this, I had 35 years left of a 40-year mineral-clad steel roof warranty when I mounted PV panels on top with 25 year warranty, and probably invalidated my roof warranty on the roof area beneath, as they drove 6-inch hex head bracket mounting screws into my 2x6 vaulted ceiling rafters.)

I DO have a HOA and I did get their permission to install the PV panels. In my letter to them I specified that I was installing the panels on the rear West-facing surface of my roof, where the ridge runs almost exactly North-South. In the SF Bay area, we frequently have what we call "fog" but which is actually a marine layer at the height of the hills around the valley. (The source is either the SF Bay or the Pacific, depending upon whether that day's breezes are onshore or offshore.) But most days the marine layer has been burned off by the sun before noon. Therefore having the PV installed on the West face of my roof (afternoon sun) is better than the East face (morning partial sun).

BTW, you are turned around. In the Northern Hemisphere we try to face the panels S/SE/SW towards the Sun when possible, not N/NE/NW as you indicated. But once again, if your roof has integrated PV, there should be a good appearance match between the PV portion and the conventional materials it mimics which you would use on the remaining roof surfaces.

Let me say that both the Tesla and Forward Labs products are mainly for new home construction, although they could be used in a retrofit/remodel if replacing the roof anyway. Knowing what I now know, I would not actually place PV panels on a roof at all, provided I had the space on the ground for the panels. I would either use fixed panel mounts or active tracking panel arrays, placed where I could perform maintenance without climbing a ladder in my old age. A row of large shrubs or evergreen trees can entirely hide such PV from view.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby asg70 » Fri 23 Jun 2017, 11:20:37

The problem is the existing housing stock simply does not have proper roof design or orientation. Outside of the embedded cost of razing all of that housing and rebuilding, you have to deal with what's there.

The way to do that is to just drive the cost of panels as low as possible (already here for the most part) and just cover the entire roof surface to compensate for shade and off-angles.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby asg70 » Sat 24 Jun 2017, 09:42:03

pstarr wrote:Everybody in the solar installation industry know that integrated solar roof tile systems by design are flawed and known to overheat because of the lack of air flow.


I did a quick google search on this and could not find some sort of epose' on this flaw. If there is an engineering problem there's an engineering solution.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby cephalotus » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 12:45:22

The solar rood was "invented" more than 25 years ago and theer are some insatlaltions around in Germany for more than 20 years. This is hardly a Tesla innovation.

Problem is, the standrd modules may not look as nice, but have been significantly cheaper, produce more power (less heat) and they are much, much less complicated over longer term periods. We now have more than 20 years of experiences with thousands of solar roofs and the standard design works very well. Even if hail destroyed some panels 8which is rare) you can replace them quite easily if they are standard sized.

If not, just remove the defective ones and rearrange the strings

with a solar roof you are usually fucked or it gets super expensive...

There are all black modules which are a tiny bit morre exoensive but might be a compromise.

In US the market could be different, so far your prices for small home PV systems are still much higher per kWp compared to Germany so an the solar roof may not look so expensive to you?

https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/images/ ... son_en.pdf
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby MD » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 15:18:49

Did anyone else notice how much of the roof of the pictured house is in shade?
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 15:22:46

Granted, the solar roof has drawbacks - not quite as serious as the above comments imply, because progress has been made in the past 20 years.

However, if you own a house in a historic district (such as for example the entire island of Nantucket) then you simply have no other options. You cannot add panels to your roof, and you cannot put them in your yard. If you were to ask the Historic District Committee about solar, they would deny permission without a thought. But if you were to gain their approval for shingles, slate, or standing seam metal and chose to use a solar roof that mimics those materials on the South side, you could do so - and if the roof is convincing enough, they'll never know.

But I've just about decided that I'll use a wind turbine on Nantucket, it's a better match to conditions, the place is foggy and breezy. As for Wisconsin, hopefully I'll have enough land to place the solar racking on the ground, and hide the panels behind a hedge.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 17:52:08

KaiserJeep wrote:Granted, the solar roof has drawbacks - not quite as serious as the above comments imply, because progress has been made in the past 20 years.

However, if you own a house in a historic district (such as for example the entire island of Nantucket) then you simply have no other options. You cannot add panels to your roof, and you cannot put them in your yard. If you were to ask the Historic District Committee about solar, they would deny permission without a thought. But if you were to gain their approval for shingles, slate, or standing seam metal and chose to use a solar roof that mimics those materials on the South side, you could do so - and if the roof is convincing enough, they'll never know.

But I've just about decided that I'll use a wind turbine on Nantucket, it's a better match to conditions, the place is foggy and breezy. As for Wisconsin, hopefully I'll have enough land to place the solar racking on the ground, and hide the panels behind a hedge.
I honeymooned on Nantucket forty years ago. If I was in your shoes today I would sell out to the dumbest kid with a trust fund I could find and get to hell out of there. You don't want to deal with anything the Mass. state government has control of unless you have money to burn.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby asg70 » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 19:44:52

pstarr wrote:Solar roof tiles are not new and Must has not improved a failed technology. Must is just another in a long line of Great-American Scammers.


Must? Dude, if you're gonna troll the forums with FUD, check your keyboard first.

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BTW, your rantings are devolving more and more into StarvingLion's "everything's a scam" boilerplate. Someone should really trace your IP and haul you off for meds before you go postal at a Tesla showroom or something.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 07 Oct 2017, 21:50:25

Pstarr, you really really need to have your head shrunk. You used to contribute your knowledge to the Forum, now you just whine about everything and mock other members.

This is the second time I have spoken to you, don't make me get out the wooden spoon.

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Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
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Re: Tesla’s Solar Roof Has a Competitor

Unread postby Shaved Monkey » Tue 10 Oct 2017, 07:16:45

You dont need to put panels on your roof to have solar, if you cant because of heritage listing or shade or orientation,surely there will be a time when wallmart super markets gas stations warehouses or any other company that has lots of roof space will have panels on their roofs you can buy power from.
The other solution is community owned wind turbines
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