During coronapanic I decided to save our beloved planet by paying $71,533 for a Tesla Solar Roof to sit on top of our house in Maskachusetts and provide backup power for the week or so per year that we would typically lose power. About six months later, Tesla told me that the price would be changed to $84,137 (see Tesla Solar Roof (the price is not the price)) and about six months after that they offered to install the roof for $71,533 as originally contemplated (by which point we had sold the house and escaped to the Florida Free State).
In retrospect, considering the raging changes in price that were happening in 2021 (not to be confused with “inflation”, which is a figment of conservatives’ imaginations), I’m surprised that the price bump was so small.
Apparently, there was a class action lawsuit around this debacle. Without having taken any action or signing up for anything, just this month I received a check for $100 for my role in the small drama. What did the lawyers get? $1.5 million.
I actually wish that Tesla would make a Spanish barrel tile version of its roof and then we could re-roof in Florida with their product. I’m not sure that it would be worth paying for their batteries, though, given that we lose power only for a few minutes per year. Maybe the batteries would be great during a once-every-20-years major hurricane, but $20,000 for batteries could buy a lot of hotel nights in Orlando.
(Solar gear on top of a Florida roof is an idea that frightens roofing professionals.)
Spend the $100 on a trip to Titusville, Florida to watch a SpaceX rocket launch? Or how about one of these EMF-blocking hats so that I can stop lining my own hats with aluminum foil (not a “tin foil” hat liner because those are for the paranoid)? Facebook’s AI correctly discerned that I would be a likely customer for this product, named after pioneering Scientist Michelle Faraday (maybe a “no brain fog” hat should actually be named “the Dr. Jill Biden, Ed. D. hat”?):
Could have thought of a way to bridge 1 week of annual power outages without waiting for a year of quotes. The internet has a strange way of preventing anything from getting finished while making lawyers rich.
What would have been your plan? Remember that it needs to (a) save the planet, (b) harvest fat Maskachusetts subsidies extracted from working class renters paying high electricity rates, and (c) provide occasional backup power without having yet another engine to maintain.
Get your (at better prices?) batteries before all the (additional) tarriffs? https://icmontana.com/products/byd-battery-box-premium-lvl-15-4-kwh (instead, I went with a $999 portable gasoline generator that I have hauled out only once [for active use] in 4 years — for a 3 day outage last year), although I do pull it out every couple of months to run and keep the gas from getting too stale (needs stabilizer for the long haul). I do a yearly refresh of the 15 gal. of gas I keep in 3 5 gal. jugs (and just use up the old gas in my gas guzzler ’04 Honda Pilot, maybe gets 20 MPG on a good day with a tailwind, but around town <14, so I try to stick to using my bike!). [Gas also used in my old snow thrower, but it doesn't seem to snow here much anymore!]
The idea of another engine to maintain is not appealing to me!
Lititum-ion batteries are huge fire hazard. I’d rather buy natural-gas based generator. In my no right to work state, it can be maintained only by certified technicians anyway. Tinker at your own risk.
1) There are official and unofficial kits to run gasoline generators on propane, which may help with the gasoline shelf life issue.
2) This site claims to list ethanol-free gas stations:
https://www.pure-gas.org/
3) You might consider using your car as a tanker and experiment with bulb-operated or electric siphon pumps.
Anyone else notice that the clothing is marketed as HSA/FSA eligible? This seems like a loophole wide enough to drive a truck through. But the tax savings is overcome by paying $150 for a t-shirt. What’s the cheapest psuedoscientific thing we can add to a t-shirt to make it tax-free via HSA/FSA spedning?
God that hat just screams “wannabe CIA contractor”.
I guess it might be good to keep stray EM radiation off of your Neuralink, though.
Maybe if that Crooks kid had an faraday cage hat, they wouldn’t have been able to get him to climb that roof
“Shop Men”, and “Shop Women” only? Where is “Shop LGBTQ+” or “Shop Non-Binary”?
I’m boycotting this hat company!
As for your $100, remember to report it as income on your tax return when you file next year! Some $$ for you, some $$ for Uncle Sam, and a whole lot more $$$$ for the lawyers!
Some of us can afford to manetain an engine in exchange for $71k. Greenspun is on a different plane of the wealth/time equation of course.
It’s not a $71k cost. Depending on when a rich homeowner bought solar in MA, he/she/ze/they gets all of his/her/zir/their money back from working class renters. One friend in a 6,000 sf house got paid back in 4 year. I think it is less lucrative now. They charge the chumps some of the highest electictric rates in the country so that homeowners can have free solar panels in the medium term and then free electricity in the long run.
(A Tesla roof is a luxury, but it is still paid for by other people in the long run. Just takes a little longer to get paid back compared to panels over conventional roof. Our house in MA needed a roof so it could have worked out to a fairly similar payback period.)
I’m confused, was the roof actually installed?
It wasn’t installed. I didn’t agree to the higher price and it would have been an epic wait even if I had.
Honestly, neither price seems that high in mini-bidens to replace a roof, let alone with solar panels.
I just replaced gutters with very very minor roof repairs on a large house in Seattle – 13K.