Tesla will also sell those solar roof tiles which will look much better than regular old solar panels.
This has been available as solar tiles/solar shingles for quite a while. Way before Tesla announced it this has been available, they just have a better marketing engine behind them.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/im-getting-my-roof-redone-and-heard-about-solar-shingles/
I believe that at the moment, solar panels for residential areas doesn't really take off without some kind of government subsidies. It also makes me wonder why the RI government doesn't have a solar power subsidie plan in place to fill the gap in electricity shortages. Seems to me like a faster turn around than huge power plant projects that take years to take off.
solar rooftop right now need little incentive/subsidy to make it financially viable for the facility owner. Not quite yet as an investment for larger entities. But it's getting there. There are companies who are offering private power purchase agreements at commercial levels for US$0.11/kWh with maybe 2% annual increases for 15 years. Some commercial facilities are seeing these contracts as starting to make sense. Especially if they're an international company with a mandate to reduce CO2 or energy consumption.
As far as covering electricity shortages, solar (and wind) without storage does not take the place as additional power generators. They're an energy generator. Their function is to provide energy but not power. By that what I mean is that if you add 100MW of solar panels alone to the grid, you need to have 100MW (or some percentage of this, depending on the flexibility of the grid) of quick responding generation so that if the solar output drops due to cloud cover, the other generators will cover the sudden deficit. It does have a place in the grid though, as part of a larger strategy.
Also, a quick lesson on PLN:
- they can't increase consumer tariff due to rising costs (only if the effects come from Indonesian Crude Price, Inflation, and USD Forex)
- their electricity subsidy is decreasing every year
- the electricity subsidy is strictly based on the volume of energy (kWh) consumed by the consumers subscribed at 450VA and 900VA (AND registered below the poverty line)
- so any cost increases due to purchasing renewable energy at a tariff higher than their current electricity generation cost is a money losing proposition for PLN