The calculator deducts the upfront cost of the roof and the Powerwall battery from the cost of what you'd otherwise spend on energy over 30 years. Tesla's online cost calculator uses your address to determine the ratio of solar to non-solar tiles your house would need to get 100 percent of your energy from solar (the company told Consumer Reports that it doesn't use your address for marketing purposes). Each style of glass tile comes in both solar and non-solar tiles, which have different prices (the solar tiles produce energy, the non-solar tiles do not). Tesla eventually plans to offer four styles of tile, but currently, only two are available: smooth glass, for a contemporary look, and textured glass, which is designed to mimic the look of asphalt shingles. Installation will be handled by SolarCity, which is owned by Tesla. Although there is a slight difference between our original calculation and Tesla's new one-last fall we built in a cost of $6,500, Tesla's current cost for a Powerwall as part of a Solar Roof installation is $7,000. Both our original calculation and Tesla's include the cost of Tesla's Powerwall battery, which is necessary for a home to store the energy generated by the tiles. In their initial pricing announcement, Tesla said it derived its own cost calculations using CR's methodology, and it beat the upper limit we identified by nearly 11 percent, coming in at $65,550 ($21.85 per square foot) for the same example house. We estimated that the installed cost of a 3,000-square-foot Solar Roof should be no more than $73,500. Our analysis was based on the estimated cost of 30 years of electricity, but it didn't factor in the value of any solar incentives or rebates. Last fall, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk first unveiled these photovoltaic, tempered-glass roofing tiles, Consumer Reports performed a cost analysis and determined that, for a Solar Roof to compete with a conventional asphalt roof, it should not cost more than $24.50 per square foot for an average-sized American home. The company says it's sold out of the product until early 2018. Nonetheless, consumers have been quick to plunk down the $1,000 deposit, according to Tesla. That's still going to be informed by the same things you would look at for typical solar panels." "But it's not like this suddenly changes everything about your decision on whether or not you should have solar at all. "It's revolutionary in the sense of how they're incorporating solar-the scale of it," says David Sarkisian, a policy analyst at the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, referring to the Solar Roof. That sounds like a pretty good deal, but is it too good to be true? The answer is a complicated one, since Tesla's calculator relies upon some important assumptions and predictions that delve deep into the economy of residential solar power in the U.S. If Tesla's math is correct, it seems that in many cases the roof would more than pay for itself in electricity savings over the 30-year life of the warranty. Now that Tesla has announced detailed pricing for its Solar Roof, which the company started rolling out in August, potential customers can get an estimate on an installation using the company's online calculator.
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