alt Hacker NewsDid any other manufacturers build their own version? It seems like the right long term idea but the lack of other players seems to indicate there's some underlying issue that isn't solved yet.
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There are! This is outside US (Sorry, page is in Japanese) https://www.ichijo.co.jp/technology/energy/solar/ They are famous for integrating their supply chain, controlling all of the build. If it is possible to make it work financially, they should be able to do it
There are a few companies, I remember Invisible Solar which produces modules which look like traditional clay tiles.
The market pitch is different tho, they are aimed at providing less effective solar for places where you have a hard need to keep the old look, old churches, monumental buildings and such.
Even just searching in Germany there are at least 4 companies making different designs. I guess they must be selling quite well. Most make non solar tiles of the same size and design for shaded parts of the roof.
There's a few competitors.
The market shrank because standard panels and their mounting techniques got more aesthetically pleasing and cheaper.
GAF did. There are two issues: 1) too expensive 2) not modular. I like that I can separate my solar decision from my roof decision. Panels make that possible.
I did consider but there are 2 issues. 1. Efficiency. Not all roof parts can be exposed to sun. You overpay 2. You need to time it with roof change
I mean in general it could be a right-ish idea. I myself have noticed when buying solar panels after replacing shingles that basically the per sqm cost of solar panels is like 2x of shingles (of the not super expensive kind). It could be easily more economical to use a modern version of this to replace your roof.
On the other hand, Tesla's solar shingles are tiny compared to panels, more in the shape of actual shingle strips, means tons of connectors, wiring losses, dangerous shorts (these things carry 10s of amps) etc. and probably a nightmare to troubleshoot.
I would not get these for any reason other than aesthetics.
The problem is the cost. Tiles are pretty small, and you need to wire them together. This means a lot of small-gauge wires going all through your roof.
Multiple tiles also need to be connected in series to get reasonable efficiency, so you get plenty of failure points where one bad connection can cause a significant part of your solar roof to become useless. And you won't be able to easily fix it.
You can obviously fix all these issues, but it makes tiles too expensive.
Its not the right long term solution tho, tiny roof tiles as solar panels have so many problems:
- Magnitude higher number of interconnections which impacts reliability and efficiency
- Uniform roof tile style
- Requires entire roof rebuild which is always more expensive than retrofit of panels on top
- Complex installation resulting in less installers available overall for the market
- Crossing of trades between roofing & electrical
A slightly better solution would have been to make the big traditional solar panels your actual roof panels but really retrofitting them on top of panels solves most of those issues above.