Tesla,Solar City
Date: 2019-06-14
"I am very excited about version 3 of solar roof. We have a shot at being equal to a comp shingle roof plus someone's utility cost or being lower than that. That's one of the cheapest roofs available. So you can have a great roof with better economics than a normal fairly cheap roof and your utility bill." -- Elon Musk, Tesla, CEO

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Tesla's next generation of solar roof tiles will be even less expensive than initially announced after Tesla's 2017 merger with Solar City. Today, a standard asphalt shingle roof can cost as little as $4 per square foot. In 2018, the Solar City solar tiles cost about $21.85 per square foot.

Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016 for $2.6 billion and planned to offer solar panels and home battery storage systems to consumers through its retail stores and online. In 2018, Tesla cut prices on its residential solar systems and its often touted solar roof tiles have not yet been produced on a commercial scale. (Source: Tesla, ZME Science, June, 2019)Contact: Tesla, www.teslamotors.com; SolarCity Corp., (650) 638-1028, www.solarcity.com

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Sunflare Solar
Date: 2018-10-01
La Verne, California-based Sunflare Solar is touting its patent-pending, lightweight thin-film CIGs solar shingles for both flat TPO-covered roofs and for pitched metal roofs, including carports. Within 18 months, a residential version will be available, once UL certification is complete. All three shingle versions are based on a four-cell, 180 watt design.

The Solarflare shingle looks like an ordinary asphalt shingle and weighs 0.6 pounds to accommodate fast and easy installation. "We tested a 40 kW roof install and found that the roof was loaded in just 20 minutes," the company claims. The commercial shingles can be fixed to the substrate with double-sided tape or adhesive, and if the metal roof has grooves, those can be used as a default raceway for wire management. There is no roof penetration on the TPO roof, since hold-down hooks can be attached with adhesive where necessary.

The company also manufactures roughly standard-sized solar panels with a 6 cell by 10 cell configuration, which sell for about 70 cents per watt.

General advantages the Sunflare cells have over crystalline silicon cells is that the thin-film cells are 75 pct lighter and 95 pct thinner. Flexibility is imparted by a 0.127 mm stainless steel backbone in the Sunflare panels. (Source: SunFlare Solar, PR, Sept., 2018) Contact: Sunflare Solar, www.sunflaresolar.com

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