I thought I would share my experience with having a solar roof installed on a small building. While not all of my experience will necessary translate to others it may help some of you. And its a way of pseudo documenting the progress.
First up you should know that I go out of my way to buy the most expensive and least valued based solar. Most of the reason I do this is aesthetics. Trying to find solutions that are compatible with of enhance the environment they will be placed in. So it's about looks first.
First project were Dow solar shingles. I waited for 5 years for these to be developed and brought to market in my area. They of course did not produce what they were advertised to do and I am not certain they will even last as long as advertised. Dow must have agreed because within one year they stopped production and sold out to a company who also soon filed Chapter 7 after spending a considerable amount of money to refine the product. But it looks good.
Next up is a stand alone solar system that tilts and tracks. This is the SmartFlower which also has gone through a number of financial iterations and bouts with bankruptcy (see a pattern here?). Conceptually its a good idea and its more artistic than functional but it certainly fits our major priority. It's biggest problem besides cost is that it has issues when the ambient temperature exceeds 90F, which it does often in my area in the summer.
Now we move on to my next solar project, a Tesla Solar Roof. Again the major criteria here is looks so Tesla scores high here at first glance. While I have never seen a Solar Roof first hand the pictures look good.
We decided to apply them on a perfectly good roof that probably had twenty years more life in the asphalt shingles just because we wanted a bit more solar to go with our two Powerwalls. The garage and SmartFlower really never produce more than about 22 kWh a day and that is just at the low end of our average non cooling power consumption. We felt we needed a bit more to be comfortable and to ensure that most grid outages could be survived for days on end. Today we would have to scale way back on just critical use only.
So this is the building they are being applied to, a barn.
The exposure is mostly SSE with very minor shading on the far east side. But the other side of course is facing NNW so it has very little solar potential and even a bit of shading from trees, but mostly in the AM which it would not produce anyway.
First up you should know that I go out of my way to buy the most expensive and least valued based solar. Most of the reason I do this is aesthetics. Trying to find solutions that are compatible with of enhance the environment they will be placed in. So it's about looks first.
First project were Dow solar shingles. I waited for 5 years for these to be developed and brought to market in my area. They of course did not produce what they were advertised to do and I am not certain they will even last as long as advertised. Dow must have agreed because within one year they stopped production and sold out to a company who also soon filed Chapter 7 after spending a considerable amount of money to refine the product. But it looks good.
Next up is a stand alone solar system that tilts and tracks. This is the SmartFlower which also has gone through a number of financial iterations and bouts with bankruptcy (see a pattern here?). Conceptually its a good idea and its more artistic than functional but it certainly fits our major priority. It's biggest problem besides cost is that it has issues when the ambient temperature exceeds 90F, which it does often in my area in the summer.
Now we move on to my next solar project, a Tesla Solar Roof. Again the major criteria here is looks so Tesla scores high here at first glance. While I have never seen a Solar Roof first hand the pictures look good.
We decided to apply them on a perfectly good roof that probably had twenty years more life in the asphalt shingles just because we wanted a bit more solar to go with our two Powerwalls. The garage and SmartFlower really never produce more than about 22 kWh a day and that is just at the low end of our average non cooling power consumption. We felt we needed a bit more to be comfortable and to ensure that most grid outages could be survived for days on end. Today we would have to scale way back on just critical use only.
So this is the building they are being applied to, a barn.
The exposure is mostly SSE with very minor shading on the far east side. But the other side of course is facing NNW so it has very little solar potential and even a bit of shading from trees, but mostly in the AM which it would not produce anyway.
