- [Narrator] Our homes need energy.
Whether it's cooking breakfast in the morning,
checking email,
or now even driving across the country.
Most of our lives depend on electricity.
And solar is key
to making sure our future stays bright.
So when Tesla reaches out and ask you if you wanna take part
in an exclusive first look at one of the new products,
I crossed my fingers hoping I was gonna be getting
behind the wheel of a cyber truck.
But when they tell you it's part of their solar lights,
their new solar glass roof,
I still got kind of equally excited.
But before we get there,
let's start just a little bit closer to home.
(upbeat music)
Solar like most technology has evolved
used to be really expensive
and didn't actually give you that much of your return.
But things are changing.
The cost for the panels are going down.
They can generate more electricity,
they're less of an eyesore than they used to be.
And the case for adding solar to your home
is making more and more sense.
So if you decide you want to get a solar set-up from Tesla,
you pretty much have three options.
You can get the traditional panels that are installed
on your current roof, which is kinda what we're used
to seeing, you now have the new solar glass roof.
And for either of those,
you can add Tesla's power wall batteries
to get the most out of your system.
So I've been living with Tesla solar
for little over a year now.
So I've got traditional panels,
and they also decided to install two
of Tesla's power wall two battery packs.
So moved into a new house about three years ago.
It gets hot here in California in the summer,
so I was running my air conditioning at night.
And one of the surprise expenses that I saw
was my electric bill.
In the summer months,
my electric bill was reaching as high as $550.
It was really high and something I didn't anticipate
as an expense when I first moved
and I've been looking at solar for While
somebody who drives electric cars it always seems something
that I was going to do eventually.
But sort of seeing how much my electric bill was
sped up that process.
So I ended up settling on an 11.375 kilowatt array
on my roof and decided to go for two Tesla power wall tues.
Those are the external battery packs
each one's about 13.5 kilowatts
and the government again is running some incentives
kinda the more you spend the bigger your tax credit was.
So for solar panels on the roof
and for my two power wall tues it came to about $49,000.
And I certainly didn't have for $49,000 in cash
to pay for it.
I was able to finances relatively low interest
and no prepayment penalty, so that my monthly bill
for all the solar stuff I had committed about $250.
So, in the hot months, I was saving about $250.
In the cooler months, I was saving about 75 to 80 bucks.
So every month, I was saving money.
I added value to my home by putting the solar on there
and I could use my electricity now
without really having to worry about it.
So that's it my experience with traditional solar panels
that kind of we're all used to it's been like,
but when Tesla reached out
and asked if I wanted to see what a real house
with the solar glass roof was like, I had to check it out.
This is one of only a few houses in the world
that have this tech right now.
And I was pumped to see it
and compare it to the solar
that kind of we're all used to seeing.
(upbeat music)
I don't know what to expect in my head,
but I saw it it just looks like a really nice roof.
I think I was expecting it to look like solar panels
all across the roof.
But the aesthetic of it is just a really nice modern roof.
I think that goes to the simplicity
and the beauty of the product
and every tile you see on the roof
doesn't have to be a solar tile.
In fact, it wasn't.
We went out to this gentleman's house,
you can pick how many of the tiles
actually have the sort of capability built into them
you can adjust or scale up or down,
depending on how much electricity you want to generate.
So Tesla made a lot of headlines I think
especially with the gen two of the solar roof.
They showed different tiles, different versions
that ended up being more difficult to deliver,
here at the third Gen, there's only one aesthetic.
And because we want aesthetic,
it seemed like Tesla was able to fine tune it a lot.
So now the solar cells inside of these tiles are 65% bigger
than last generation tiles themselves are much larger
so there's less gap in between the tiles,
it's a lot easier for roofing sellers to install leasing
so the install time isn't months anymore.
It's same install time as a normal roof.
So I think the big question here is the cost.
I think everything sounds awesome,
but you have to pay for it.
So I want to know what the cost savings was,
if any, by installing this roof versus a ordinary, you know,
generic roof most people have on their houses.
So I went to the best nerd I know
sort of the expert in crunching these numbers,
Ben Sullins of Teslanomics.
- Thanks, John.
Let's break down the costs here
of this solar roof installation.
The total cost here was just under $65,000.
And that was for a 9.2 kilowatt photovoltaic solar system.
Now, this also includes the price of a power wall.
So at $8,000 average, let's remove that
giving us a new total of just over $56,000 that they paid
for the roof and the photovoltaic solar system.
Now, the way that you look at this typically
is a price per watt.
So take that 9.2 kilowatts and convert it to watts.
So 9200 watts, divide that by the 56,000 and change dollars
it costs for the system,
and you're right at $6 and 12 cents per watt.
This is pretty high, considering the average in California
is right around $3 and 44 cents,
which is up slightly from when I got my solar panel system
about five years ago,
so it makes sense that typically you're paying a lot less
than this $6 a watt price.
In fact if you were to take the average
in California of $3 and 44 cents per watt
and multiply times the 9200 watts here,
you're looking at a price of $31,648 before any incentives.
So that's the solar part of the equation here.
The other part is the roof.
And this is kind of difficult because the cost for roofs
vary greatly.
You're looking at $11,200 for asphalt,
$38,400 for metal,
$80,000 for tile and over $100,000 for slate.
So the final answer here
is that if you were to look at an asphalt roof
and redo the roof with that,
plus the solar panels system using the average rates here
in Southern California, you would actually spend $42,848,
which is just under $14,000 cheaper
than what the solar roof costs in this case.
Now, I think it's a fair thing to argue
that this is not an average roof
and it's something that is more akin to
one of the higher end materials.
So if you look at those,
a metal roof would cost just over $70,000,
which would be about $13,263 more expensive
than the Tesla solar roof.
A tile roof would cost over $111,000
and be almost $55,000 more expensive.
And the slate roof is just ridiculous here
looking at over $134,000
which would be $77,000 more expensive
than the Tesla solar roof.
So the Tesla solar roof here in this case
appears to be a pretty good value
because it is not your low end common type of roof
it is much higher end than that.
But it is cheaper than all of the high end Options
given the functionality and the amount of roof
that's being covered.
So I hope that analysis help there and yeah,
feel free to ring me anytime you need some numbers crunched.
- [John] Solar panels was a huge step for homeowners
and taking control of their power usage in their house.
The solar glasses is for that next step.
So I think anybody who needs a new roof,
but also lives in a state where you have
more sunny months than rain or snow
I think the solar glass makes a tonne of sense.
If you're paying for new roof anyway, that's expensive.
So for a little bit more,
and if you want to step up the materials
you put that roof on, you get the benefits of a new roof,
you get the cost savings of solar,
everything's done while looking aesthetically,
really pleasing.
So solar aside, I think what really makes the systems
work as well as they do are the power walls.
You can get them for both types of solar installations.
And essentially, they're just big batteries
that can help power your home,
you can scale them up or just have one
value to store and then use your solar energy
even when the sun is down.
I sent my house up a little bit differently.
So you control all of this through the Tesla app.
And you would think that when it's sunny out,
you're gonna use the solar when it's dark out
your switch over to the power walls.
That's not necessarily how I set it up
or how I was advised to set it up.
The electricity you generate from your house
obviously you can use for your house,
but there's a lot of extra it's not being used.
In California, at least you can sell that electricity
back to electric company.
So my case Edison so I can actually make money
by selling back Edison electricity that I'm generating.
In the morning sun comes up,
I'm using the solar panels to charge
my power wall batteries.
So when I get to peak hours,
so electricity is the most expensive
like mid morning to afternoon.
I'm actually using the power walls during that time.
And I'm selling electricity that I'm generating on the roof
back to Edison.
And then at night electricity gets cheaper.
I'm now using the grid power my house at night.
And should there be a power outage at night
I always little bit of battery in the power wall
to keep things running.
So by the time this is all said and done
on the Hot months, like the electric company,
generally ends up owing me money.
It all runs through the app
and the app does a couple of cool things so it can detect
if there's a storm warning for your area
and automatically set the power walls to not drain
below a certain level so you have that reserve power
if you need it.
So my power walls and through my app knew
that there was rolling blackouts happening
and that there was huge winds that were going on.
And they set the power walls to retain that power.
And when we had that blackout,
all my lights did was flicker for a second
and everything kept running as normal
like didn't even know that we had lost power.
I actually had to go into the app to check
If we had any power loss use the solar power generation,
and the battery pack, sort of energy storage
in your house always has that power.
Add enough power walls and enough solar,
you don't need to be connected to the grid at all
if you don't want to.
But I like the peace of mind.
I like knowing that if I never needed to,
I can run my whole house
without having any electricity being pulled from a dirty
source or just a nice peace of mind for me,
sort to keep my house running, you know, lit up.
So whether you have solar panels, or solar glass roof,
or the power walls as well,
I think the beauty of the whole system,
is that you don't really have to think about it.
But once I got this all installed,
I set the app once
and haven't really thought about it since.
That's the awesomeness of the eco system.
That's where I think a company like Tesla
that clearly has an advantage in this space
bring something new to an industry like solar
that was kind of flat for a long time.
I like the peace of mind of solar,
my wallet like the cost savings.
I like the green factor as well.
I think when you factor all of that together,
it's a really winning combination.