New Solar Shingles Can Be Nailed In Place (arstechnica.com) 86
FangVT writes: Ars Techinca reports on GAF Energy's new solar shingles which are designed to save on installation costs. They are not only designed to look similar to existing asphalt shingles but to be installed in much the same way, including being nailed in place. The system has moved the wiring to the top, so as to simplify inspections and repairs. "Because each one of our panels is 45 Watts and only 10 volts, we have access to a whole host of electronic components that don't have to be able to withstand 300 Watts, 50 volts," the company says. "That allows us to be more efficient in the electricity generated from those panels." And in what they say is a first, UL has certified the shingles both as solar panels and as roofing materials. The company also says they come with a 25 year warrant and will be offering a more comprehensive warranty that will also include guaranteed power output.
They wouldn't provide a hard number on the price, but "a homeowner won't pay any more for a GAF solar roof than they would if they were to get a new roof and have someone put solar on it," said GAF Energy CEO Martin DeBono. "That's our benchmark. We're half the cost of a Tesla solar roof in any given market right now."
They wouldn't provide a hard number on the price, but "a homeowner won't pay any more for a GAF solar roof than they would if they were to get a new roof and have someone put solar on it," said GAF Energy CEO Martin DeBono. "That's our benchmark. We're half the cost of a Tesla solar roof in any given market right now."
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Re:No thank you (Score:5, Informative)
TFA mentions something about them offering a longer warranty, which makes sense. 25 years for the electronics is basically down to the component manufacturers not being able to offer reliability data beyond that point - they can do accelerated testing but it's not exactly the same as the thing just being installed and working for 25 real years, and the amount of error grows the further out they take the measurements.
The advantage with panels is that they are relatively easy to replace. When your solar tiles eventually stop working, they are much more effort to remove and replace with new ones.
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When they can warrant these tiles for 100 years I might be interested - until then, I'll stick with the clay tiles I just put up, because I don't expect to have to touch them again in my lifetime, or indeed that of my kids (if they still own the house). They replace tiles that we could have patched up to last comfortably past their hundredth birthday (although is it was, we reconfigured the roof, so just replaced them). Frankly, anything less than that is the sort of thing we'd throw onto a shed - certainly
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I do wish they'd make them in more shapes though - some triangular ones to fill in the gaps would be nice
Many people are super anal about roof appearance. For complete roof coverage I had some panels installed vertically and some horizontally:
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Also one segment like this, around some eaves:
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One neighbor complained to the HOA.. Fuck HOA.
On a different topic - I wonder how these tiles cope with moss? Moss on roofs is incredibly common here, especially if you're near or under trees.
I would suspect that any roof surface that grows moss would be barely functional for solar?
I live in the US south. You see plenty of moss on roofs here, but the roofs are usually not south facing and they're usually heavily shaded. Bad com
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Math is a cool tool that people can use for a lot of neat things, there is a subset of Math called forecasting, where it can seemingly predict the future, by looking at the current trending of a much smaller subset of data, So if you create your warranty length at say 3 Standard deviations with a margin of error below 5% you can probably have a Profitable Warranty period where the having to replace/refund the product will be low (but not 0), and for a lot of people the product will last a lot longer than
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Missing from this conversation is a typical asphalt shingle roof lasts for roughly 20 years.
So yes, if these panels fail in 25 years you're going to need a new roof. But the alternative would also fail in 25 years and require a new roof.
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You're comparing the tiles to the absolute cheapest roof covering. Clay tiles will last a century no problem, often longer. My roof was that old when I had it replaced. Some of the tiles were flaked and breaking, though actually many, possibly most were fine. I did have the roof properly insulated, and as membrane installed, so completely stripped back at which point having the tiles replaced made sense.
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You're comparing the tiles to the absolute cheapest roof covering
I'm comparing the tiles to the same roof covering the company designed them to replace.
Also, asphalt shingles are overwhelmingly the most common roof covering the US. Yes, there are other options that cost between 5x and 20x the cost and last 4x the time. For some reason, those aren't frequently chosen...
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Also, asphalt shingles are overwhelmingly the most common roof covering the US. Yes, there are other options that cost between 5x and 20x the cost and last 4x the time. For some reason, those aren't frequently chosen...
Interestingly they are in other places. You can buy them here for sure, and you see them here and there, but on houses, especially for the main roof covering they're pretty rare. Concrete and clay tiles are definitely more expensive, but is 4x the time figure right?. You don't need to nail m
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but is 4x the time figure right?
Well, when one lasts 25 years and the other lasts 100 years...
Either way though, doesn't affect resale value?
Generally not in the US. A new asphalt shingle roof is roughly $2-5k, so it doesn't affect the price of a $200k+ house much. It's usually only a factor if the current roof needs to be replaced immediately.
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Well, when one lasts 25 years and the other lasts 100 years...
Oh I thought you were referring to installation time! Shingles look to be fast since you slap them on and nailgun them down, plus being light and not brittle makes it easier to shift them into place.
Generally not in the US. A new asphalt shingle roof is roughly $2-5k, so it doesn't affect the price of a $200k+ house much. It's usually only a factor if the current roof needs to be replaced immediately.
Good grief that's cheap. Just the disposal of
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Is that the full cost parts+labour?
Yes, mine was done last year and cost $4k. Also included changing out a couple rotten pieces of sheathing and replacing the waterproofing.
I think the scaffolding alone cost more than that, never mind materials and manpower.
Our trick is to not use scaffolding.
Theoretically, they're supposed to attach a rope-and-harness system to the ridge while they're working on the roof to keep people from falling off while they're working. No roofer I've seen bothers to do so.
So, access to the roof is usually done via extension ladder, which is cheap and fast to put up. Also, many roofers have a hoist
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Our trick is to not use scaffolding.
Theoretically, they're supposed to attach a rope-and-harness system to the ridge while they're working on the roof to keep people from falling off while they're working. No roofer I've seen bothers to do so.
This may be a regs thing, possibly also a height thing? I know bungalows are much more common in the US. They're somewhat less common here, mine's a 2 storey house from 1914 or so which means high ceilings. The ground floor is uh...
brb ... 9'9", at least in this room a
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Missing from this conversation is a typical asphalt shingle roof lasts for roughly 20 years.
So yes, if these panels fail in 25 years you're going to need a new roof. But the alternative would also fail in 25 years and require a new roof.
Solar panels also have a useful life between 25 and 30 years. If you have asphalt shingles and solar panels, you would pay your color company to remove the panels, pay someone to replace your shingles, then pay the solar company to put the panels back on (if someone else removes and replaces the solar panels, you lose your warranty). Just more calculations to keep in mind when making your decision.
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(if someone else removes and replaces the solar panels, you lose your warranty).
And why would that be the case?
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(if someone else removes and replaces the solar panels, you lose your warranty). And why would that be the case?
Two years ago my mom had to replace her shingles. Her solar panels were 5 years old. The solar company said she would lose the warranty on the solar panels if anyone else uninstalled or installed them. I think it's the same as having certified Apple repair centers. If you take your Apple product to a non-certified repair shop, you lose your warranty.
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The solar company said she would lose the warranty on the solar panels if anyone else uninstalled or installed them.
That does not make it lawfull.
A warranty is a warranty. Does not matter who removes them and reinstalls them. At least in a civilized country.
So to rephrase my original question: based on what law could a company make the warranty void? Perhaps thy were talking about the "complete install"? Aka interconnections, inverter etc. ?
A solar panel coming from Factory X, does not lose its 25 - 30 year
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False equivalence. You are comparing to the absolute cheapest option there is. Many roofing products, including some from the same company making these solar roof tiles, will last much longer [gaf.com] - up to 50 years.
I'm a big fan of solar power, and will probably be installing a PV array on my roof in the next few years, but let's not pretend there are only two choices here.
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False equivalence.
Not when the company themselves is comparing them to asphalt shingles.
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Living in Texas, I've never had a roof last as long as the warranty. Usually hail gets it first. My questions for these tiles would be:
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Not sure why you are comparing traditional tiles to shingles. Tiles have a much longer lifespan than shingles as a roofing material. For comparison, Tesla tiles only come with a 10 year warranty, but what are you going to do when the electronics fail?
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Well it is more of an if the electronics fail, as these are rather integrated devices that don't have many stressed areas. However if they do, fail, you still have a roof that is doing the original roofs job of keeping the elements outside. However normally not everything dies but just a few sets of tiles, where you can get reduced performance, in which you either decide to live with it, or replace the broken panels with new ones.
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It sounds like these are similar to composite roofing shingles if they're installed by nailing. A 25-year warranty is pretty much as good as you can get for that kind of roofing (source: I just had my roof re-done, talked to a bunch of contractors in the process), and it's a decent warranty for solar panels. So combining them into one product is a good match. If you make tiles that last a thousand years with embedded solar that stops working after fifty, you're not getting the full benefit of the tiles' dur
Re:No thank you (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would rather have Mexicans fixing my roof, who care about doing a good job, so they can feed their families. Vs the Young Adult White kids who are a Highschool dropout who is doing the job because otherwise their mom is going to kick them out of their basement.
Ready to buy. (Score:3)
Showing it off it nice and all but there are plenty of things that end up being vaporware or an "unexpected cost" makes price 4x the original.
I really hope this pans out because solar power is greatly underutilized.
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Solar still isn't economically feasible.
I say this as someone with a great roof that could provide all of my energy needs from April - Sept at the very least. When I looked into the install, however, I found that it would average out to being more than my normal power bill. Over twice as much annually. And I'm in CA.
So as much as I'd like to go solar, I'll be waiting until they become more cost competitive.
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How exactly are you figuring your costs?
Are you trying to pay off the cost of installing solar in one year? 5 years? 10 years?
If you are getting basically free energy from April-Sept. and it is still costing you more than grid electricity (ignoring the cost of solar installation) I think you are doing something wrong (unless you just don't use electricity during those months anyway).
If the amount you save on electricity over those 6 months (plus I'm sure you are getting at least some solar power during the
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I looked at my total electrical costs over the year vs cost of installing solar amortized over 20 years.
I didn't factor in things like efficacy drop off, and I chose 20 years because most of the installers around here offer 20 year warranties.
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If it takes you 20 years to recoup the cost of the installation and you are still paying twice what grid electricity costs you must either have really low grid electricity costs or extremely high solar installation costs.
I realize that every installation case is different but from a quick search it appears that the average time to recoup installation costs is 7.5-10 years. If it is taking you 20 years to recoup cost then I would assume you are one of the extreme edge cases.
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I guess. We're hydro and I have a smallish house with a virtually brand new efficient AC ( the single largest expenditure of electricity throughout the year ). I'd have loved to have gotten solar, it just didn't make financial sense.
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Showing it off it nice and all but there are plenty of things that end up being vaporware or an "unexpected cost" makes price 4x the original.
I really hope this pans out because solar power is greatly underutilized.
Looking at their website https://www.gaf.com/en-us/abou... [gaf.com] they seem like a legit roofing business, this gives me more hope than som tech startup looking for funding.
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Solar is one of the most useless forms of power generation. When you need it most (night, winter) it is not there. All it does is overload the grid during sunny days. We're already reaching the point where delivering power back to grid will net you income because there's too much of it. If installations double or quadruple this will be standard.
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Most places don't "need [electricity] most" at night. At night, lots of people are sleeping, most businesses are closed, etc. Hence the need for electricity is lower, not higher, at night.
As more EV come online that will change in "interesting" ways. There will be a huge surge that will start when people get off work and continue to grow until most people are home with their vehicles plugged in. It'll peak sometime after midnight then slowly ramp down. And suddenly drop off when people head to work.
During the summer solar will be a big help as a power source but only for a few hours. During the winter and night something else has to cover this new load. And it's one hell of a load. To
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There will be a huge surge that will start when people get off work and continue to grow until most people are home with their vehicles plugged in. It'll peak sometime after midnight then slowly ramp down. And suddenly drop off when people head to work.
That's purely a speculation. You can't *know* when fleets of BEVs are going to charge. Considering the duty cycle of an average car and the almost certainty of smart charging, it will almost certainly be in periods of low electricity rates. Speculating that this charging will happen during the night is speculating that future grids will have low electricity rates during the night, and this is impossible without knowing how future grids will look like. Knowing how future grids will look like means, for examp
Recycling (Score:2)
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Virtue signalling alert.
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How often do you see normal roofing shingles get recycled at EOL? Most of the time they are just gathered up and tossed in a landfill.
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That was one reason why I ended up with a standing-seam metal roof. When it finally needs replacing - maybe in 50 years - the material is exceptionally easy to recycle.
I don't have a recycling plan for the solar panels mounted to the roof. Recycling panels isn't an established industry just yet - probably because something like 98% of all solar panels ever manufactured
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Re: Not more efficient (Score:2)
The panels are smaller too, so you can just make longer strings. Of course 5x the active bypass circuits is still more expensive even at 5x lower voltage.
Funny (Score:2)
But whenever one asks about COST and they say "oh it depends on a number of factors" instead of "xx per sq.m." then expect it to cost 10 times what you thought it would or should.
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But whenever one asks about COST and they say "oh it depends on a number of factors" instead of "xx per sq.m." then expect it to cost 10 times what you thought it would or should.
Not every roof is as simple as 2 flat panels laid down on either side of the central beam that spans the roof.
In some American states the builders and homebuyers are well known for rooflines with wild geometries and insane slopes that do not lend to easy installation of anything.
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This is how my house is. Huge verticals on a ranch. So My roof has more sq footage than my actual first floor and costs a ton due to all the extra labor it will take to scale the un-needed mountain peaks that need shingled.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
...then expect it to cost 10 times what you thought it would or should.
That is a pretty typical sales tactic. In this case, however, they claim to be half the cost of a Tesla roof. Of course, they don't specify if that's before or after the recent Tesla price increase.
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Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
Totally there with you. But as stated in the article is that customer acquisition and installation costs should be much lower in any given area compared to typical panels. What that tells me is that the $/sq m and the more applicable metric, $/kW will be higher so they don't want to say that. And taking them at their word (risky, I know) that doesn't matter because what matters is installed cost and it is 100% true that it varies a LOT for all solar applications. Cost of labor, materials, complexity of install (of the new roof surface and the panels) varies wildly around the country.
So "costs the same when installed" is a valid, albeit unverified, statement.
The best part is, their panel costs should go down as production ramps up and competitors step in if this takes off. The proofs is still in the pudding if their claim that acquisition and installation costs really do go down and stay down relative to traditional solar installations.
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What is the hail resistance of normal solar panels?
I would think it would be easier and cheaper to replace individual shingles/tiles that get hail damage than replacing a whole solar panel that gets hail damage.
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I'm not going to take a chance on an unknown roofing shingle and an unknown solar panel, when the proven ones are available for the same price. But some people just think solar panels are so damn ugly, that they can afford to pay full price for this questionable investment.
Those with lesser means tend to be less fussy.
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Huh. I expect that every roof would cost the same because they're all the same shape, size, with the same pitch, same local building codes and inspection requirements, same orientation with respect to the sun, same latitude, same amount amount of shading, etc. I mean, I could see solar costing different amounts if all of those varied widely from house to house, but obviously they don't.
So did everyone gloss over the UL listing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What actually is the UL rating for shingles? I'm guessing it covers common stuff for building materials like not being flammable and not containing dangerous compounds, but does UL also cover durability? What to they do, accelerated ageing?
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https://www.ul.com/services/ro... [ul.com]
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Thanks. From the link
"We perform fire, wind resistance and wind uplift, impact resistance, structural and physical property testing to UL Standards"
So I'm not sure it relates directly to durability, but is probably a very good proxy for it.
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Output per sq. ft. ? (Score:2)
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"each one of our panels is 45 Watts", which isn't very much compared to modern solar PV panels, which average about 300 watts (in full sun).
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Good point, I'm not seeing where they talk about the size of the panels. If they are approximately the same size as ordinary solar PV you are going to need about 6 times as much roof area to get the equivalent power output. That's a lot, and many houses will not have enough roof that is adequately illuminated by the sun to get that equivalent power.
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This is cool and all but (Score:2)
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For most people, it is indeed the situation that you need to have money to save money.
I replaced my roof shingles ~5 years ago. I think it was about $7000.
I installed solar panels ~2 years ago. It was about $20k, not counting insentivies, rebates, tax credit, etc.
I'm saving ~$1500 a year in energy costs, give or take. It will take 10+ years for me to recoup costs, but the panels should have an effective life of 25 or so years.
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If it's actually a positive investment, you can just get a loan for it. Of course at that point you might as well just buy stocks and come out way ahead after a few years.
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People frequently borrow the money for solar panel installations. That's part of the sales pitch in fact, you can get them installed with no money down and then just make monthly fixed-cost payments. The payments are typically set to be less than your average electric bill, and unlike grid electricity they don't rise with inflation. After some number of years the loan is paid off and then the electricity is free. You may still have to pay grid fees, because in essence you are banking excess electricity to t
Re-read that carefully (Score:2)
"a homeowner won't pay any more for a GAF solar roof than they would if they were to get a new roof AND have someone put solar on it"
Emphasis added by me. A new regular roof would cost about $10k-$15k (Yes, I had this done a few years ago but insurance paid for it due to hail damage). But what they are saying is that you have to pay for a new roof plus the cost of putting solar on it. Oh, and it looks butt-ugly.
I've been saying for years that the hell-bent-for-the-horizon push to go wind and solar remind
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...Wind and solar are going to get obliterated by Gen 4 nuclear and fusion power which could become a reality right before the installed base has to be replaced.
That's some really optimistic thinking you have there. Even if we invented net positive fusion reactors tomorrow- it would still take decades to commercialize the technology and have them get permitted and built.
Home solar panels have been available since the 1970s. That's 50 years. And only now are finally starting to get the solar shingles that have been promised for decades.
Rolling out bulky, complex technology at scale takes a long time.
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living in a hail prone area I see an integrated system getting damaged and replaced as a unit as better than two. Shingles + panels also are less palatable in some communities. While I don't care what my neighbors have on their roof I do like the idea of insuring my roof for an incremental cost. Remember too that high wind comes with hail and thunderstorms and I've seen panels ripped off of roofs because of the lift where most of the underlying roofing material stays in place. I realize that may be a tertia
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What a silly argument.
You are basically telling people not to install proven and working renewable power now, and instead wait for things that don't exist yet and / or have massive political headwinds and decades-long construction times before operating.
You know that if someone installs solar panels today, they'll have already met ROI and probably have saved quite a bit of money by the time the first "gen 4" nuclear plant comes online, if one ever does. And there's no reason to think that it will be built
So? (Score:2)
So what? They are much more expensive than standard solar panels, and infinitely more expensive than standard shingles. At the same time, they are a lot less efficient than Tesla's shingles.
GAF is a big force, but these are still going to be a boutique item.
This seems more like GAF trying to make sure they are positioned to keep their position in the roofing materials market for the future, not offer a mass market product for the present. A big part of it is to allow existing roofers to use the product,
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If a regular roofing crew can install these, it's a huge deal. There are only so many solar installers in any given area, but roofing companies are everywhere. Also, the efficiency is said to be 23%.. That's at least on par with Tesla and supposed to be half the cost.
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Well, if you had at least read the summary: they cost the same as normal solar panels + roof: so not more expensive.