The world of solar power is fast moving. We are always looking around the bend for the next innovation. On Friday night Elon Musk had everyone buzzing over his latest announcement of glass solar tile roofs that are customized to the style of your house. The claim is that they will be affordable, durable, and look good making solar an even easier choice for homeowners. So will solar tile roofs become a reality for us all? Will they actually be affordable and reliable?

Well, as with any other technological advancement, only time will tell. The main question is how these hundreds of individual tiles all connect to each other? With conventional solar panels there is one connection between panel and inverter. With hundreds or thousands of individual roof tiles it will be much more expensive to install the system and to perform maintenance. If one tile goes out it may effect the entire system and if that one tile is in the middle of the rest, several tiles will all have to be taken out to fix the issue.

These solar tile roofs will only make sense if you are already planning to remodel a significant portion of your house or to replace your roof. If your roof is in good shape, a conventional solar panel system will make much more financial sense. We are excited to see continuous advancements such as these in the solar industry. Boundaries continue to be pushed and prices continue to drop making solar a closer reality for homeowners every day.

As a company that is technology agnostic we are constantly looking for new manufacturers to source from that have the best equipment, best warranties and best pricing. We are happy to see that others, such as ZEP BV out of the Netherlands, along with Elon Musk, are introducing technology that will compete with that of Solar City giving consumers a wider selection of providers for the latest technologies out there such as solar tile roofs.