Earlier this year at Tesla’s 2019 shareholder’s meeting, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla was working on the longevity of the solar roof panels, the Tesla Solar Roof V3.
Tesla was planning to install the solar roofs in 8 more states. Musk took pride in the fact that the solar panels were cost-effective. However, there is one downside to the Solar Roof V3; it takes too much time for installation.
A new patent which is called ‘Inter-tile support for solar roof tile’ filed by Tesla shows that it may have come up with a solution as the patent was for producing and installing solar roof tiles in jointed groups.
When the Tesla Solar Roof came out, the company promised that the installation would take about 5-7 days. In reality, it took them roughly 2 weeks to finish the installation.
In the patent application, Tesla writes, “The roof module can include at least a first photovoltaic roof tile, a second photovoltaic roof tile positioned adjacent to the first photovoltaic roof tile, and a spacer coupled to and positioned between the first and second photovoltaic roof tiles. The spacer is configured to facilitate a semi-rigid joint between the first and second photovoltaic roof tiles.”
The application further mentioned, “To facilitate scalable production and easy installation of PV roof tiles, a group of tiles can be fabricated together and jointed in a rigid or semi-rigid way. Carefully designed spacers inserted between adjacent tiles are needed to facilitate the joining of adjacent PV roof tiles.”
The price for the entire Tesla Solar Roof was high but Tesla made a good bargain by mentioning that when compared to the electricity savings over time, the Solar Roof is worth it.
Last month, Musk said that Tesla would be revamping their Solar tiles further and would be producing 1000 solar tiles per week by the end of this year. Only time could tell how Tesla fares this way.
