Tesla reportedly missed its goal of installing 1,000 solar rooftops per week
Five and a half years have passed (really 5.69), Tesla’s Solar rooftops don’t look like a revelation but more like a hobby. Although Elon Must Set Goals 1,000 rooftop solar installations per week, the company’s latest average is said to be a tiny fraction of that number.
Citing an anonymous source, Electrek reported that Tesla installed only 2.5 megawatts of rooftop solar in the second quarter. That would equate to about 260 middle size (9.6-kilowatts) of home installations last quarter, or about 20 per week, by some post-tissue math. A more generous estimate (say, if we assume each installation is only rated at 5 kW) would leave Tesla somewhere around 38 per week, or close to 4% of the way to the goal. 1,000 per week.
Tesla originally displayed its rooftops in 2016 on the street best known as Wisteria Lane, home to “Desperate Housewives” was filmed. “It’s not a roof-top thing. It’s a roof,” Musk said around that, seeing it as a nice-looking alternative to solar systems that tend to stick out.
So what’s keeping on the roof? Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the report, but the company may have done more than it can chew. “We basically made some significant mistakes in assessing the difficulty of certain roofs” Musk said last year, when Tesla raised prices for some buyers. “You can’t have a one-size-fits-all situation,” he said.
Supply chain issues can also be a factor. During the first quarter of 2022, Tesla reported a decline In solar energy deployment, most involve conventional panels. The company blamed “import delays beyond our control for some solar components” for the decline.
Aside from that, Tesla’s larger solar business is said to be doing well lately. The company’s US residential division just saw its “best quarter since 2017 shortly after the SolarCity acquisition,” Electrek Written. We’ll hear more about that when Tesla releases its second-quarter report on July 20.
In addition to Tesla, several other companies have tried to make solar shingles happen, including Energy GAF and SunRoof. However, no matter how well they harmonize, no solar system has ever replaced conventional solar systems – at least not yet.
