I know there probably is a good reason, either the tech, financial trade offs, etc.
And I’m not a homeowner but I’ve been watching on the topic lately.
Wouldn’t serving as a roof have a significant offset to the true cost? Even at 50% off the roof?
It seems they do the opposite, build on the existing ones.
Edit roof not form
In: 42
You are combining 2 critical systems. in your house. Electrical, and weatherproofing, and creating a dependency between them.
An asphalt shingle has one and only one job, and that is to shed water, when properly applied, it does it’s job for 30-ish years. It is made of fiberglass, tar, and coarse sand. It’s failure modes are physical trauma.
A solar shingle is a piece of technology. It is multiple layers of glass, plastic, Photovoltaic cells, wiring, electronics, connectors, etc. They are “warrantied” to “25-30” years, but the earliest cases have only been on the market for ~20 years. So the reliability data is just not here yet for them.
They need to have the reliability data in place before they begin to make sense when comparing a cost of $4 per square foot to install vs $20-$30 ish (and that only gets about 70% of your roof)
Now you can’t sell power back to the power company any more, you can only accumulate credits to offset your use. There is no way to have them “pay for themselves”. it would take about 20 years for the roof to pay for itself by offsetting power bills, right about the same time you would need to replace them again.
Math just doesn’t add up for them.
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