You soon will have no excuse not to go solar! We occasionally hear, “I don’t like the look of solar panels on my roof.”
Elon Musk and co have taken it one step beyond, with a more attractive and efficient solution, the solar roof.
According to Musk, the roof tiles are made of textured glass and are extremely durable — enough to last a lifetime. This is all in the works, but they are very serious about being able to debut it as an option for consumers. Panasonic will produce the solar cells and Tesla will put together the glass tiles, in addition to everything that goes along with them. This plan depends on whether or not shareholders will approve the $2.2 billion acquisition of the biggest solar rooftop installer in the US, SolarCity.
“The tiles are comparable to competing high-efficiency solar panels. The current prototypes that Tesla engineers are working with reduce the efficiency of the underlying solar cell by just 2 percent. With further refinement, the microscopic louvers responsible for making the tiles appear opaque can be used to actually boost the efficiency of standard photovoltaic cells.”
It will be interesting to see what comes down the pike for Tesla and Mr. Musk. With climate change being top of mind for many these days, this initiative is a great way to start lessening the footprint.