First Tesla roof in state on Best Road

A few years back, Valter Pavoni bought some Tesla stock.

Then he named his new dog Tesla.

Next came a Tesla car.

Now, the Pleasant Ridge resident and his wife Eva are the proud owners of the first Tesla solar roof in Washington state.

A Tesla solar roof is made up of 15-inch x 45-inch tempered glass tiles. On the west and south sides of the Pavoni house, most, but not all, tiles contain photovoltaic cells that generate 12-volt DC power, which is converted to 120-volt AC power by inverters on the garage wall.

Slightly less than half of the tiles on the east side are PV but, to the visitor, the roof looks like one gleaming black expanse.

A Tesla roof is strong and nearly fireproof. Tesla says its tiles can handle 1.75-inch diameter hail and wind speeds up to 166 miles per hour.

“You can bang the glass tiles with hammers and they won’t break – unless you drop them on their corner, as we discovered with a few,” said Pavoni. “But they are easy to replace.”

Why make this sizable investment?

“Because I’m cheap and since we were building a new house, it needed a new roof anyway.”

Not that a Tesla roof is cheap. But Pavoni is thinking 10 years out, when he figures the roof will have paid for itself.

The couple prepaid for their roof in December 2020. Installation was delayed by county permits, “quirks in the ordering process and shortages of some items,” said Lenny Schwartz, CEO of Pinnacle Roofing, the state’s first certified Tesla roof installer.

The permit was approved in April and 20 pallets of tiles and materials arrived in late spring. Opening them “was like Christmas for Valter,” his wife said.

The June installation took three weeks. The Pinnacle team spent one of them in Tesla’s San Jose training facility, getting additional training.

Eventually, the Pavonis will purchase a Tesla Powerwall, an integrated battery system that stores power made by the roof for use when the sun is down – or the power is out.

When Puget Sound Energy has an outage, the Powerwall will switch from the grid to stored solar power “in a millisecond,” said Pavoni. “You don’t even see the lights flash, it’s so fast.”

Once the Powerwall is in place, Pavoni’s goal is to make his own power, charge two cars and sell so much to Puget Sound Energy that his only expense is PSE’s $12 monthly grid connection fee.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average single-family house in the western U.S. uses about 10,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. Pavoni’s new 17.77 kilowatt system will generate approximately 18,505 kilowatt-hours of clean renewable energy its first year.

While many think of California as a solar roof center, Washington is suitable, too. “We get great May to September exposure on those long days and the climate is nice and even. In places like Arizona or Nevada, heat can actually reduce electricity production,” Schwartz said. “Our rain helps clean the tiles, too.”

But rain flows down a glass and metal roof at a faster rate than traditional roofs, so the Pavonis’ house has very large gutters.

Not every house is a good candidate for a Tesla roof. If the roof slope is too low or the roofline is complicated by lots of dormers and corners, it won’t work. “If it doesn’t have good sun exposure, it’s not really worth the extra money,” says Schwartz.

While the man with the Tesla car, Tesla dog and Tesla roof has never met Elon Musk, he is not betting “against a guy who brought the rocket back again,” said Pavoni. “He’s a visionary. Normal people don’t take risks. He does.”

Meanwhile, Pavoni spends lots of time watching his electric meter track how much power he is generating, how much he is using and how much he is sending back to the grid.

“I’m proud of it! It’s something I’ve wanted for a long, long time,” he said.