Elon Musk has revealed his company Tesla’s latest world-changing innovation: a solar roof system so fully integrated into a home’s architecture as to be indistinguishable from a traditional roof.
Made from textured glass, the tiles feature microscopic louvres that allow light to pass through while blocking views to the photovoltaic cell within. Tesla claims the tempered glass shingles would be “tough as steel,” with a “quasi-infinite lifetime,” and that heating elements could be added to melt snow in colder climates. The solar roof will come in four different architectural styles: Tuscan, slate, smooth, and textured, and will be integrated into Tesla’s Powerwall 2 home solar battery, allowing most homes to produce all of the energy they would need for a typical day. Tesla is also in the process of further refining the louvre technology to bounce reflected light back onto the solar cell, potentially increasing the tiles’ efficiency.
Pricing on the system has not yet been released, but Musk claims that the solar roof could cost less than than the installation of a traditional roof combined with the cost of electricity from the grid.
Source: Tesla, The Verge, Bloomberg News.