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March 30 (UPI) -- A solar panel project steered by Elon Musk's Tesla is well short of its goal of seeing 1,000 installations a week, analysis from consultant group Wood Mackenzie found. Wood Mackenzie in review of Tesla's program published Thursday show roughly 3,000 installations have been completed since the company's Solar Roof was launched in 2016, a drop in the bucket relative to its stated goals.
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Tesla set a goal of manufacturing 1,000 of its roof installations a week in 2019 and followed up with a goal of installing 1,000 per week in 2020.
Wood Mackenzie found, however, that Tesla made only 21 per week on average in 2022. Its best performance was 32 system installations per week on average in the first quarter of that year.
"Wood Mackenzie's distributed solar practice has utilized its proprietary project-level datasets to aggregate installation totals for the Solar Roof for the first time," Max Issokson, the lead author of the report, said in a report emailed to UPI. "The analysis shows that Tesla has missed stated growth expectations."
The consultant group estimates that Tesla's program represented less than 0.03% of the total market last year.
At its beginning, Tesla said its Solar Roof installations were less expensive than a conventional roof "because in most cases, it ultimately pays for itself by reducing or eliminating a home's electricity bill."
Musk has faced other challenges, CNBC reported. While drumming up shareholder support for a $2.6 billion purchase of SolarCity, Musk showed off solar shingles that were not working prototypes and he was later sued by Tesla shareholders on allegations it amounted to a bailout.
Musk eventually prevailed, but shareholders are taking the case to the state Supreme Court in Delaware.
Solar power is growing in the U.S. economy. The Energy Department expects 29 gigawatts of new solar power capacity will be added to the grid this year, giving total renewables a 24% share of total electricity generation.
