As a former roofer I may be biased, but I always laughed when Elon suggested it would be as affordable as a regular roof. And I'm a Musk fanboi.
These roofs are crazy unaffordable. They estimated the average cost of a asphalt roof around 6$, in Calgary for example it's around half of that. They also took 13.7 cent per KWH as their price of electricity, in Calgary it's currently 3 cents.
They also estimated the cost with only 35% of the tiles being solar generating, but when doing the electricity estimates they used 50% of the tiles being solar producing.
Quote:
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. Previously, Consumer Reports had determined that a textured glass tile solar roof should cost no more than $73,500, including installation, to be competitive with an asphalt roof. That price factors in the about $2,000 a year a household would save on electricity bills in some of the country's more favorable solar markets, such as California, Texas and North Carolina.
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Let's say your typical roof costs 8500(higher then the Calgary average). That means you've invested a extra 65,000 for a 2,000 yearly return? That's a pretty paltry 3% return. And that's in the sunny southern states, returns are gonna be even worse for northern/cloudy/neighboorhoods with lots of high trees.