Wow, he did this all himself? Very impressive, and I'd love to see what comes of this. Does he have any plans for how he would fund clinical trials in the event that the preliminary results are promising enough for that?
It's great that important discoveries like this can now routinely be accompanies by formalized proofs. The fact that it's being released alongside a Lean proof from Day 1, rather than the Lean proof being released months or years later, is super helpful for verifying that it's correct.
I feel sorry for whoever has to read and understand the solution. It looks like the typical convoluted unreadable mess I see the models generate for software. It might be technically correct, but gaining insight from it is just intellectual hell.
A proof is not like a program. The goal of a program is to "do the thing", thus you can make the argument that it doesn't matter what the code looks like as long as its works right. But the goal of a proof isn't to "do the thing" (where "the thing" is just to print Yes or No), it's to communicate. An unintelligible proof is really just a first draft.
its important to read it anyway because there have been and will continue to be errors in the construction of the proof software itself. which leads ai and humans alike to prove things that arent true
Is there any competitor in the USA? The idea of roof tiles which are themselves solar panels seems sensible to me, and it's more aesthetically pleasing than putting panels on top of normal tiles.
It's extremely labor intensive and costly to put stuff up on the roof, and problematic in terms of electrical connector, electrical safety, and being proprietary for mounting and roof repair. Big ass PV panels that are 2.0 x 1.0 meter in size (or larger) are so cheap now for photovoltaic ground mounts that the labor and mounting can actually cost more than the panels.
460W panels can be something like $0.25 USD per STC watt in single pallet quantities shipped as LTL freight.
Or at least if you have to use your roof, just put them on boring aluminum rail mounts on roofs which are a much more known factor for roofing repair and labor.
without having looked into the tesla roof tiles like at all (so stop reading here if you want any sort of informed discussion), are these things like placed individually and wired together individually? does every tile get a microinverter or is it like a net of tiles belong to one? is this potentially hundreds of connectors acrossed your roof that would be so many points of failure. if so that seems nuts and hardly worth the absurd cost just for aesthetics. feel like anyone who can afford this could just have whatever roof they want and then have their solar array farm nearby on their presumably many acres of land.
in the marine/rv world there are like walkable solar panels that you can literally just like walk on now, theres solar awnings, i dunno. just in my limited experience i'd be surprised if they dont have the christmas light problem (one goes out many go out) and solar arrays just seem to do awesome in panel configurations and i think in the consumer world theyre reaching 25% conversion, no idea what tesla is marketing but those guys are dorks with marketing anyways
Assuming you're in the US 48 states there should be plenty of companies that'll take your money for a factory sealed pallet load of panels. They come wrapped up from the factory, basically all they do is do the invoicing/billing to you, they buy them by the 40' or 45' container load and then load them onto trucks at a loading dock.
PV panel factory datasheets will clearly specify how many are on a pallet and how many pallets fit in a single container.
I am curious what the installation process is like. It seems like all the home solar companies I've dealt with want to sell you the whole kit (panels, inverter, etc.). If you've done this, I am curious how your experience was.
I've done it for small scale off grid telecom projects in the 10 to 20kW class of total quantity of panels at one site, not actually at my home (which is surrounded by trees on all sides in the pacific northwest, I'd need to build a 40kW ground mount to have any reasonable amount of production). It's completely doable if you study electrical fundamentals but I'd also recommend hiring a pro to help out if you don't have the background.
There is considerable overlap between the knowledge base for -48VDC telecom battery/DC bus/breaker/fuse panel and distribution systems and PV/off grid solar stuff, so using some of the same people who do on-grid rectifier-to-telecom-DC-power-system work was fairly straightforward for us.
It's a slightly weird proposition, in that, well, pitched roofs last about 50 to 100 years, typically (at least here; I gather it _is_ somewhat different in the US due to different materials and building standards). So you probably don't really _want_ to prematurely replace your whole roof, so your market is basically... people who happen to need a roof replaced right now?
They also appear to have been _extremely_ expensive. Like on the order of 10x the cost of a conventional solar installation.
Conventional solar panels look perfectly fine to me, FWIW.
Yes. Both GAF and CertainTeed, the #1 (30% of the market) and #3 (15% of the market) shingle makers in the US, both have solar shingles.
Their solar shingles looks like regular shingles and install on the roof the same way as regular shingles. Installers just need to be regular roofers with some extra training to handle the peculiarities of solar shingles. I don't know about GAF but the extra training for CertainTeed can be done online.
Compare to Tesla Solar Roof where the physical installation requires completely different skills. As a result there are way more crews available who can install GAF or CertainTeed solar shingles than Tesla roofs.
The Tesla roof tiles are more efficient than the solar shingles and they cover the whole roof, whereas the solar shingles usually don't cover the whole roof, so the Tesla roof usually generates more power.
GAF is 140 years old and CertainTeed is 122 years old, and making building materials is their main business. This makes them a lot less risky than Tesla was. If they ever decide to stop doing solar shingles it is almost certain they will handle it better than Tesla since their core business depends on keeping roofing contractors happy. They will almost certainly keep repair parts available, crews will remain available for maintenance.
Even if decades from now replacement solar shingles are not available any dead solar shingle can be replaced with a regular shingle and an electrician can adjust the system accordingly. When the roof reaches end of life and needs to be replaced, you just need an electrician to de-energize the roof and then removing it is just like removing a regular roof.
The Tesla roof on the other hand requires a special crew, both for repairs and replacement. Removing the roof is a much more involved process than removing a solar shingles roof.
This is likely going to screw existing Tesla roof owners. With Tesla actively in the business it was seen as a premium feature, bumping the market value of your house by maybe 5 or so percent.
Now buyers will see a house with one as a potential maintenance liability that will be a nightmare when it reaches EOL. Sellers may have to offer a substantial discount to sell their houses.
It comes down to GAF and CertainTeed treat it as a roof first which has solar technology, whereas with Tesla is more solar technology that is a roof.
There are apparently several traditional roof shingle makers who have previewed solar tiles. A friend of mine who is a roofer told me he would not trust Tesla and is waiting for a reliable supplier. Apparently he is a smart man.
I was getting solar quotes recently and came across the CertainTeed brand that makes a “solar shingle”. I have no idea where they are made or how they compare to regular panels.
I did want it. Would have looked great on my quite old house where it is highly impractical to have conventional solar panels, as there is essentially not enough space anywhere to have more than one or two panels in the same location, and I need new tiles soon anyway.
I think it turns out it was announced too early and attempted to scale before it was ready (turns out it won't be ready at all in this iteration).
> not enough space anywhere to have more than one or two panels in the same location
That isn't necessarily a downside though. By having panels on a variety of orientations on your roof, you can spread out the generation through the day and mitigate a bit of the duck curve.
It is true, but my house has some many dormers (a new word for me), chimneys and air vents, that I hardly can get a meaningful set of panels in. Solar tiles would have been great. Alas.
Interesting. They look great on a single-surface roof with 90° edges. It seems that as soon as your roof deviates from that the aesthetics begin to trend toward conventional PV panels (which of course also do not accommodate more complex roof profiles).
Bonkers roof profiles are primarily and American thing, to be honest; not that they’re totally non-existent elsewhere, but the super-complex roof on a detached house is very American.
tl;dr - It's driven by internal room shape requirements (plus weak planning; in some jurisdictions "no, that's an eyesore mess, redesign it" it a thing in planning, but I gather largely not in most US juristicitions).
Building a startup, everything is important, but you do have to stack rank. This is getting to the point where it's probably the most important thing. And it won't take that long to fix.
I think you've written a good counterargument, but I disagree with your claim that "morality is really just yet another incentive". Incentives must be external.
It's just you. Any director, storyteller, or filmmaker can see the potential here to realize scenes that simply wouldn't be possible otherwise. But indeed there's plenty of slop coming out too.
They're always very understated in their update descriptions. This is actually a HUGE improvement in the model's capabilities rather than just a small tweak.
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