Tesla Solar

Tesla Solar is the "generate" part of Tesla's "generate, store, consume" energy system: it puts solar power onto a home and feeds that electricity to a Powerwall battery and the house. It comes in two forms. Regular rack-mounted Tesla Solar Panels bolt onto an existing roof, and the Solar Roof replaces the roof entirely with glass solar tiles, each making 72 watts, mixed in with matching steel tiles so the whole surface looks like an ordinary premium roof while part of it quietly makes power. Both hook into the Tesla app for whole-home backup and energy management.

What is Tesla Solar?

A solar tile is a roof shingle that turns sunlight into electricity. On a Solar Roof, glass solar tiles at 72 watts each sit among plain steel tiles that make no power, so the surface stays even while only some of it works. Tesla pitches three things that set it apart: the lowest installed price for home solar in the US, a roof built to outlast a normal one, and tight ties to the Powerwall battery and the Tesla app. The panel product is the cheaper, higher-volume path to the same result, making power from sunlight without changing how the house looks.

Why Tesla Solar Exists

Tesla bought this business rather than building it from scratch. In August 2016, Tesla and SolarCity announced a deal to combine into what Tesla called "the world's only vertically integrated sustainable energy company," one whose products would let a home generate, store, and use clean energy together. SolarCity was founded in 2006 by Lyndon and Peter Rive, Elon's cousins, with Elon as chairman and the person behind the whole idea. On November 17, 2016, shareholders approved the merger, with more than 85% of non-affiliated shares voting in favor, and the deal closed in the fourth quarter. The goal was to make solar power, home storage, and electric driving one connected loop rather than three separate purchases.

How it Works

The Solar Roof carries top-tier weather ratings: a Class F wind rating, tested to 110 mph, a Class A fire rating, and a Class 3 hail rating, plus a 25-year warranty that promises at least 95% of rated power at year five and then no more than half a percent of decline per year for two decades. The panels carry a 25-year performance warranty, holding 98.0% of rated power at year one and then declining no more than 0.45% per year. Both run through a Tesla Solar Inverter, the device that converts the panels' direct current into the alternating current a home uses, offered in four sizes from 3.8 to 7.6 kilowatts. The newest design folds that inverter right into the battery, so a Powerwall 3 takes up to 20 kilowatts of solar across six inputs at 97.5% efficiency.

The Economics of Tesla Solar

In 2020, Tesla announced the lowest cost ever to go solar in the US, roughly a third below the industry average, with a price-match guarantee attached. For a homeowner the pitch is simple: a Solar Roof or panel array plus a Powerwall can flip your home from buying electricity to making it, with backup power for when the grid drops. Even so, the number of installs peaked early and drifted down. Yearly installs slid from 326 megawatts (a measure of generating capacity) in 2018, recovered to 348 megawatts in 2022, the best year since 2017, then fell to about 223 megawatts in 2023, the last year Tesla broke out solar as a headline number.

Current Status of Tesla Solar

The quarter-by-quarter view is starker, and it explains the silence that followed. Across 2023, installs fell almost without a break, from 100 megawatts in the prior fourth quarter down to 41, as high interest rates cooled demand the whole way. After 2023, Tesla stopped reporting solar megawatts at all, which tells you where the number ranked inside the company. Solar is now sold as an add-on to storage rather than a growth driver on its own, though the numbers for a homeowner still make sense.

What Comes Next

The future of Tesla Energy is the battery, not the panel. Over the same stretch that solar drifted, energy storage shot straight up, climbing past 46 gigawatt-hours in 2025, roughly ten times as much in four years. Solar's job has been recast as a high-margin add-on that rides along with a Powerwall rather than the main draw. The plan is for solar to anchor the wider system and pad margins, while Powerwall and the grid-scale Megapack carry the revenue. Each rooftop becomes a reason to add a battery, and each battery a place to put the sun.

The Bottom Line

Tesla Solar set out to make the roof a power plant and very nearly made it look ordinary, an ambition that still ships but no longer leads. It has become the supporting player in Tesla's energy story, the source that gives the batteries something to store. Elon still built the piece that makes the whole loop work.

Related

Keep reading: Autobidder, Megapack. Zoom out to the Tesla overview, or open the Tesla Lineup Explorer.