Inside the Slow, Yet ‘Incredible’ Installation of a $78,000 Tesla Solar Roof

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“I needed a new roof anyway,” says Winka Dubbeldam, standing outside her house in Springs, a hamlet on the east end of Long Island. And as long as she was replacing her roof, Dubbeldam, a Dutch-born architect, planned to add photovoltaic panels, to reduce carbon emissions and her electric bills. But the solar power companies she called expected her to apply for building permits, as well as for the rebates and credits that would make the job affordable, herself. “It was dizzying how much paperwork I would have had to do,” says Dubbeldam, who runs the New York firm Archi-Tectonics and chairs the architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. She was also concerned that the panels would mar the appearance of her modest, Cape Cod-style house, which she bought in 2014 and uses mostly on weekends.

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