Tesla’s Incredible Solar Roof Is A Lot Cheaper Than You Might Expect

When Elon Musk isn’t tunnelling holes under Los Angeles, or preparing to colonise Mars he’s also revolutionising how we use solar power.

Tesla’s Solar Roof looked incredible at launch: Specially designed roof tiles that are installed just like any other roof but also happen to be solar panels.

While it looked amazing, many predicted that much like Tesla’s cars, this new technology would come at a considerable premium.

Well it turns out that not only is Tesla’s Solar Roof cheaper than most people expected, it’s actually cheaper than getting a normal roof fitted.

You see, while the tiles themselves are more expensive than traditional tiles, Tesla’s costs include removal of your old roof, fitting of the new one, a PowerWall battery for storage and an infinite warranty on the tiles themselves.

Incredibly, despite offering all of that it looks as though Tesla’s system is going to cost around $42 per square foot.

That’s considerably less than many expected, and a good $10 per square foot less than the cost of a traditional roof with solar panel installation over the top of them.

The tiles themselves are pretty remarkable. Using specially designed tempered glass tiles Tesla have developed a way to camouflage the solar tiles so that they’re hidden among non-solar tiles.

Tesla claims that its tiles are three times stronger than conventional roof tiles, and to prove its point Tesla fired a cannonball made of ice at all three and recorded what happened.

Smashing roof tiles with a hail cannon

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on

So how much electricity can it produce? Well of course it massively depends on your location, your local climate and the position of the house.

Tesla estimates however that a roof costing $50,000 will make back around $65,000 in savings over a period of 30 years.

This is a very very rough estimate though so if you’re curious there’s a calculator on Tesla’s site that can help potential customers find out.

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58e3a135e4b03a26a3660b03,589b4a9be4b076856217e7b6,57bd48c2e4b0b8a585b6a149,579091dce4b0e438dbd9a444

Ok so now it’s time for the bad news. Tesla’s Solar Roof is initially launching in California, and then it will be slowly rolled out across various part of the US.

There’s no telling when or even if it will arrive in the UK, however knowing Elon Musk’s ambitions it’s absolutely not worth ruling out.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post UK, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.