The long-awaited product with which Tesla plans to revolutionize the rooftop solar industry is now available, according to an email from the company. Tesla has stated that it began manufacturing Solar Roof tiles last month at its gigafactory in Buffalo, New York.
Incidentally, Tesla also says Panasonic’s Heterojunction Intrinsic Thin Film (HIT) PV modules have been being made at the site since last summer. This was not widely reported and pv magazine staff were not aware of this, although we did report the beginning of pilot cell production in September.
Along with this milestone, the company reports that it has begun installation of the Solar Roof for “non-employee homeowners”, a reference to the pilot projects which were installed on the homes of top executives and other employees. Tesla notes that this included validating glass tile reliability and weatherization testing.
Tesla notes that equipment configuration is continuing at the Gigafactory, which has the aim to achieve 1 GW of annual cell and module production annually. This will make it the largest PV factory in the Western Hemisphere.
The company is also hiring beyond the approximately 500 employees who are currently working on the site.
Author: Christian Roselund
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.