Solar Roof: Tesla's sustainable home accessory

Despite focussing its efforts on its new mass-production car, the Model 3 saloon, Tesla is continuing to launch new innovations, this time adding another energy-efficient product to its line-up.

Chief executive Elon Musk yesterday launched the company's new range of solar panels, Solar Roof, which it says "ultimately pays for itself by reducing or eliminating a home’s electricity bill".

Installing one will cost $21.85 (£16.90) per square foot, which Tesla says is the price of fitting a regular roof. It also claimed that the panels could increase the resale value of a home.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Unlike more conventional solar panels - large black cells - these can be designed to look like regular roof tiles. Buyers have the choice of black tiles with either a textured or smooth finish, while tuscan and slate styles will be available next year.

"Homes would only need between 30 and 40 per cent of their roof tiles to be solar", says the Daily Telegraph. The rest would consist of "Tesla's cheaper non-solar tiles which would blend in with the solar ones".

According to the newspaper, a Solar Roof would cost the average homeowner in the US around $69,000 (£53,400), which includes one of Tesla's $7,000 (£5,400) Powerwall battery units used to power the home.

However, not all homes are suited to solar panels, says Futurism. Factors such as "average sunlight of the area" and "how much of that sunlight is allowed to reach the roof" play a part.

To help buyers calculate whether their home is suitable, Tesla has released a tool showing how much a roof would cost and the amount of money it could save them over a certain period of time.

Orders for Tesla's Solar Roof open today, with installations on US homes starting this summer. Fittings for those outside the US begin next year.