The uglification of Connecticut’s rooftops
WHILE AWAITING A MORE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING ALTERNATIVE, AN ARCHITECT BEMOANS AN INFLUX OF ‘ROOF RASHES’
Thirty-five years ago, the roofs of our homes were invaded. The “oil crisis” of the late 1970s meant that tax credits flooded the free market to help Americans use less OPEC-threatened petrochemical energy. Millions upon millions of American homes sprouted solar hot-water panels on our roofs, threatening untold hot water heaters with non-existence.
In 1986, Ronald Reagan pulled the plug, ended those tax credits, and that home invasion ended.
Not only were these panels too expensive without tax credits, they caused leaks in roofs, leaked themselves and often failed when it got below freezing outside. The roof rashes popping up upon our homes ceased, and now have simply vanished over the last 30 years.
Well, have you noticed that the massive skin infection of our homes’ roofs is back?
Once again, tax credits have acted as fertilizer for an invasive species that causes benign asphalt roofs to be covered in shiny black panels, seemingly overnight. These panels are called PV’s, short for photovoltaics.
Starting in 2005, those credits grew to 30% by 2015, involving 10,000 installers. That infusion of cash goosed this century’s alternative-energy cottage industry into a plague of visual transformation. The ITC (Solar Investment Tax Credit) is now 26%, will be 22% and then will cease in two years. Perhaps turning off the cash spigot will kill the infestation, or, maybe, “alternative” energy will become mainstream. But the visual damage is rampant, and will be present long after the tax steroids have abated.
The mad dash to cash in by roof-papering our homes has made once benign bonnets of raised ranches, center hall colonials and bungalows patchedover with ragged swaths of plastic quilts, only limited by what direction they face, the panel dimensions and the roof shape. Ad hoc profit mongering (by the distributors and the consumers) has meant the quietest part of our homes, those asphalt shingled roofs, have become ravaged by ragged overlays, completely ignorant of the home’s appearance.
The result is, dare I say, ugly. Of course, those slapping PV’s on unsuspecting roof forms are saving the planet, and maybe pocketing some coin, but soon their ugliness may be as regretted as the last mass domestic infection, those hot-water heating panels Jimmy Carter planted on a previous generation’s suburban roofs.
On the TV show “Desperate Housewives” in 2016, Tesla’s Elon Musk announced that he had invented “solar shingles”: roofs that could, themselves, generate electricity, replacing all those asphalt shingles. Instead of randomly tacking down blankets of black panels over unsuspecting
ASPHALT SHINGLED ROOFS HAVE BECOME RAVAGED BY RAGGED OVERLAYS, COMPLETELY IGNORANT OF THE HOME’S APPEARANCE. THE RESULT IS, DARE I SAY, UGLY.
roof-planes, entire roofs will have their surfaces completely covered in electricity-generating shingles.
GREAT! Our national nightmare of the roof uglies is over! Not so fast. Architects like me went nuts hunting down how and when we could offer this as an alternative to the patches of black ooze on top of our designs. “Not yet.” was the response: “When?” we asked. “We’ll let you know” was the answer.
Well, according to Tesla, the redesign from that first media event’s offering is immanent. But in truth, no matter how it is done, creating electricity from the sun will simply become as normal as opening a window in homes of the next generation, it is just a question of when. Technology is exploding on a host of fronts, and where there is money to be made, technology follows the gravy train.
This latest rising tide of techno-invasion of our homes’ domestic bliss will soon kill itself: What was screaming in its presence, the black shawl of PV roofwraping, will eventually fall silent and invisible — once the $40,000 cost of the Tesla Solar Glass Roof (and their competitors) reduces to the point that tax credits are not required to make to make them affordable.
Money cannot buy happiness, but here it can end the visual pollution of our roof’s Black Plague. Eventually.