Elon Musk’s solar roof is pretty, but it’s not the first

Friday evening in Los Angeles, Elon Musk unveiled his latest bid to save the planet — roofs that generate electricity.

Rather than placing solar panels on top of regular roofing material, Musk showed off four roof styles with photovoltaic cells built into the tiles.

“The interesting thing is the houses you see around you are all solar houses — did you notice?” Musk asked a crowd gathered at Universal Studios, where four houses used to film the “Desperate Housewives” television series had been renovated with solar roofs.

“We wanted it to look better, last longer, provide better insulation and cost less — all things considered — than a conventional roof,” said Musk, the chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Palo Alto’s Tesla Motors.

Both companies, which Musk hopes to combine into one, collaborated in creating and debuting the new solar roof, which San Mateo’s SolarCity says will enter production midway through next year.

Since buildings consume 40 percent of society’s energy, and since they need windows and roofs anyway, why not incorporate solar technologies into the windows and roofs themselves?

[...] they convert less of the sun’s energy into electricity than standard rooftop solar arrays, whose price has plummeted in recent years.

“There’s an awful lot of tech out there, but there’s been a lot of tech out of there for a long time,” said Robert Tenent, program area lead for emerging building technologies at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The company has developed a photovoltaic glass coating that soaks up infrared and ultraviolet light, but doesn’t absorb light in the visible spectrum.

[...] it not only generates electricity, it reduces the need for air conditioning by absorbing light wavelengths that would otherwise heat up a building.

California officials are pushing the construction industry to make zero-net-energy buildings, which generate as much electricity as they use.

The solar roofs that Musk unveiled Friday started as a project of SolarCity, which bought solar cell manufacturing startup Silevo in 2014.

Tesla Motors, Musk’s luxury electric car company, plans to buy SolarCity in an all-stock deal worth $2.6 billion.

The companies boast that their tiles — all encased in tempered glass — can withstand three times as much force as regular roofing materials, making them far more durable.