Integrated Solar Or Traditional Roof/Solar Panel For Lowest Cost

Getting a cool new integrated roof seems cool. Especially if it's your aim to lower your energy bills significantly.  In some cases, like sunny states across the U.S. one can displace the cost of a new roof by getting an integrated solar roof system.  However, in another state that is typically sun-starved, getting a solar panel system set up it can be more advantageous and cost-effective.  

Businesses will attempt to shift market preference.  And, Tesla has spent the last year claiming that combining solar cells and roof-top tiles will secure customers concepts of looking to repair a roof. When Tesla CEO Elon Musk proclaimed the solar roof, he stated that the goal would be to produce a product "that's less than the installed cost of a roof plus electricity."

Elon Talks Cost

Musk continued later that if your roof needs restoring anyway, the cost/benefit could be reasonable for many families. Back in May, Tesla and SolarCity officials said they anticipated the solar roof goods to be cheaper "on the whole" than installing a new tile roof (though the conventional asphalt roof without solar power is still less costly than any solar-equipped roof).

Still, Ars did some estimates and found that in places where the price of energy is cheap and net metering is banned, a solar roof doesn't make sense correlated to adding regular panels on a new roof. And without net metering or state tax credits, the price of the system is essentially always quite high.

So why is National Renewable Energy Laboratory now declaring that one of the greatest ways to make solar cheaper is to roll roofing collectively with solar panels if the cost of a Tesla solar roof is more costly in many places than simply arranging a roof replacement and solar panels?

The explanation is that the industry for solar roof-type goods is nascent. But it's one of the rare areas where solar cost can be diminished even further with some innovation. "Achieving low-cost domestic PV with an integrated product is very challenging and will likely require significant investments in research and development," NREL declared. "The lower efficiency of current integrated products also makes these products more expensive than conventional PV modules, because more integrated product is required to generate an equivalent amount of electricity," National Renewable Energy Laboratory continued. "Robust design innovation that addresses these issues likely will be critical if integrated products are to capture significant market share through 2030."

Better Roof Making The Cheaper The Solar

Still, as we get refined with making roofing, and solar-integrated products, expenses could fall. Remeber that this is not a wild assumption to make: we've already seen residential solar panel expenses fall from 52¢ per kWh in 2010 to 15.1¢ per kWh in 2017. And it's not just Tesla fighting for this: the Colorado-based lab cites CertainTeed's solar shingle goods and GAF's solar panels as models of products breaking the divide between roof and solar panel installation.

Currently, the expenses of advertising, permitting, shipping, and installing are acquired twice whenever a fresh roof is built and then solar is built on top of that. In the long run, if businesses build supply channels that only acquire those prices once instead of twice, we could see meaningful savings.

Meaningful savings are essential to all customers seeking solar panel purchases and installations.  We all want to price our solar panels to the lowest level possible so that we can maximize savings. Go to HahaSmart.com and try our price checker tool. It tells you how much solar power you need, and how much you can save.