
Tesla’s Patented Solar Roof Revealed In These Sketches
Tesla recently obtained a patent for the Solar Roof that was unveiled in late 2016 and is now slowly entering the market.
The Solar Roof is based on the idea of making the roof from solar tiles, instead of retrofitting conventional roof with solar panels.
Overall costs of the roof and solar are expected to be lower for new homes (or those which require a new roof) and it does have much improved visual appeal.
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The Solar Roof is fully integrated to the building. Moreover, from the ground level, it looks like normal tiles, while from the sky it looks like solar cells. Despite that, efficiency is just 2% lower than in the case of standard solar panels. Interesting is that the cells are connected in the system through small connectors.
Tesla happened to be the first to commercialize the solar tiles and it’s not a trivial achievement, according to the patent application.
The solar cells are produced by Panasonic, who is Tesla’s partner at the Gigafactory 2 in New York.
““A solar panel includes a backsheet layer, a bottom encapsulant layer adjacent the backsheet layer, a plurality of photovoltaic cells adjacent the bottom encapsulant layer, a top encapsulant layer adjacent the plurality of photovoltaic cells having a plurality of louvers constructed therein to block side view of the plurality of photovoltaic cells, and a top layer adjacent the top encapsulant layer.””
Source: Tesla Solar Roof Tile, Electrek
Categories: Tesla
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2 Comments on "Tesla’s Patented Solar Roof Revealed In These Sketches"
“Despite that, efficiency is just 2% lower than in the case of standard solar panels. Interesting is that the cells are connected in the system through small connectors.”
Is that 2% of total efficiency? Typical solar panels have an efficiency of 15% to 20%. Does that mean it is 13% to 18% now? or is that 2% less of the the 15% to 20% generated?
Even if that’s true you have to remember that each tile has dead space on its sides so you need to cover a bigger area of the roof to get a similar energy generation as sopar panels.