Video will teach emergency responders

The Tesla Solar Roof has always seemed to us here at InsideEVs as a pretty cool product. Instead of using traditional solar panels to generate electricity which, let's face it, aren't the most beautiful addition to a house, they allow you to generate electricity while serving as your entire roof surface. And they look good doing it. Made from impact-resistant glass, they are also stronger than traditional roofing materials.

Though the Solar Roof has only been installed on relatively few buildings so far, we were curious exactly how it's all put together. Luckily for us, our curiosity won't kill us because someone else has a need for that information as well: fire departments who may, in the future, have to respond to a house ablaze adorned with these hi-tech shingles.

The video above, produced by Advanced Extrication, is meant to instruct firefighters about how to deal with a Tesla Solar Roof without getting shocked or slipping and sliding off of it. To do this, they pretty much destroy the functioning installation that was supplied to them by the Silicon Valley automaker. Before that destructive process begins, though, they show us exactly how the wires beneath the shingles feed the collected current and send it to the inverter, as well as how the shingles themselves are mounted. It's actually pretty neat.

The shingles come three to a tile and are mounted on four plastic feet along the top edge. The tiles can actually pivot upwards on these as you can see in the image above. Wiring runs between the tiles and the roof and meets up before feeding into the main trunk, which then runs to the system's inverter. The voltage is relatively low — about 16 volts of direct current (DC) per set of three tiles, and it's not grounded. This last point makes it possible, then, for a firefighter's axe to smash through the tiles and the wire without fear of shock.

Less than 16 minutes in length, not only do we see how the tiles are installed, we also get to see them "uninstalled" in a number of ways: the aforementioned axe, a pole with a hooked end, and with a chainsaw. Additionally, we learn a few things about fighting fires and its dangers.

Enjoy!

Source: YouTube