Tesla Solar Roof installations appearing in the wild

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A user on Twitter has shown off one of the first Tesla Solar Roof installations that aren’t installed at a company employee’s home. The solar power system was installed San Jose, California.

The approximately 9.9kW took up approximately 40% of the roof surface, with the remaining 60% of the tiles being empty dummy tiles that keep the look consistent. The customer also installed a 13.5kWh PowerWall. The inverter, located top-right in image below, still carries the SolarCity branding on what looks like a Delta Solivia inverter.

Two very interesting pictures from the user’s Twitter account showed the wood substructure that the solar shingles are being attached to:

The owner said the final costs will be ‘mid-$50k’ after accounting for the 30% tax credit. The tax credit does not apply to the non-Solar Roof tiles – only the ones with an actual solar cell included.

The Solar Roof tiles installed looked like the ‘textured’ roof tile noted on the company’s website. These and the ‘smooth’ roof tiles are the only ones in production currently.

Interestingly, as @Toblerone’s Tesla Solar Roof installation started to circulate on Twitter, another Tesla Solar Roof owner – @triduchuynh – chimed in showing off their own system, and tellingly asking whether or not the local electrical utility had given permission to interconnect the system.

Per a later tweet, Toblerone’s solar system was given permission to connect on May 29th, approximately eight days after the completion of the installation. The battery system was shown to be charging on March 31st.

The Tesla Gigafactory, located in Buffalo, New York, is in the process of ramping up production of the Solar Roof product. The company projects to produce 1 GW of solar products at the site annually beginning in 2019, and Tesla has said that it could reach 2 GW/year at an unspecified later date. The factory produces standard solar panels, along with the Solar Roof.

The first installations of the solar roof were reported by Electrek.co back in August of 2017.

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