When the new glass roof tiles from Tesla were in the media, I was intrigued because we eventually needed a new roof and we live in the Hail Alley of Colorado which means hail is frequent and often damages roofs. Our house had a particularly strong roof shingle that has held up well, but the roof has begun to lose granules from age.
On June 1, 2017 President Trump thought to put America First by pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement from 2015. That seemed like an ill-advised move to us so to counteract this act I sent Tesla $1000 and signed up for their solar roof program. This was about one year before our 3.9 kw panel system was installed by Tesla. We went ahead with the panel system because it was difficult to know when the glass roofs would be ready. There were several delays as production and installations issues were worked out.
When the solar roofs were first installed the distribution area was in California but over time more states were added and in April of this year I was contacted about our roof project here in Colorado.
The first active step was sending additional information regarding our power company and usage data. We also had to prove we had home insurance and liability up to $1,000,000. The next step was approving the roof design based on the Xcel allowable kilowatt production for our usage.
A couple of installers came out to measure the roof and inspect the project. They were happy to see that the roof is practically at ground level on the north side of the house.
A building permit was submitted to the town of Arvada and approved in May. Then Tesla began the Xcel application process. So that is where we are now.
We fully own the 3.9 kw roof panel system and already have the Powerwall battery set up. The inverter will be replaced for the larger system so we will have an extra twelve 325 watt panels that we hope can later be installed on a garage.