Solar Shingles

buzban writes "Wired is carrying a cool story about a solar panel technology with a form factor like roofing shingles. Sort of a beowulf cluster of small, (relatively) attractive solar panels, if you will..."

Comments

Re:Two Words

[gCGBD]

Unisolar panels are made in Michigan.
They have been out for several years.
They withstand Hail.

They're actually flexible and look like regular tar roofing tiles except instead of being coated with little "pebbles" they are smooth and black.

They also offer a solution for standing seam roofs which are basically big rolls of "tape" that you stick down between the seams.

Keep in mind that these things (amorphous silcon panels) have lower power densities than tradtional glass and crystal silicon panels.

They are also a lot more work to wire up.

The technology keeps improving however.

They offer significant ascetic advantages which are important to a lot of people.

They can also be mass produced in much larger batches than the other technology. (And therefore will eventually be much cheaper. That is if the increasing demand for them ever levels off...)

More examples

[the_twisted_pair]

This sort of thing has to be the way forward. A lot of work has been put into the field in the last 15-20 years, and now economies of scale are steadily bringing the costs down to reasonable. Five years ago, costs for PV panels were around the $10-12 per installed watt; today it's more like $7. We're getting there.

Best of all, it's a fit-once solution that will last as long as any other material might be reasonable expected to, off-setting energy demand all the while. Oh, and the colour is a rather fetching blue-violet depending on where you view it from :)

Here's a few more examples:

Research on photovoltaics in cladding systems done here in the UK at Southampton Uni.

The German cladding manufacturer Schüco has a variety of well-developed photovoltaic cladding systems:

More European examples

A 60KW solar roof cladding installation in Berkeley, California.

Re:THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! OH, HAIL!

[jaredmauch]

Perhaps a quick inspection of related websites (easily found in google) "virtually unbreakable, and durable even in heavy hail conditions"

If I were out to build a new home, I would certainly consider this as a source of power. Even if you are not storing the power in a large battery bank, using what you generate to suplement your existing grid power would cause a decrease in your overall electric costs. Now, there's that whole capex vs opex discussion (cost of shingles vs potential monthly savings + maint costs) which would come into play.. I've mentioned solar and wind powered systems in the past.. if you dig, you can probally find my previous comments on the topic..

Re:I used to be down on solar power until hurrican

[multiplexo]

Solar cells typically take more energy to manufacture than they produce over the lifetime of the cell so from an efficiency standpoint they are a waste of energy.

BZZZZZZZTTTTT! BULLSHIT ALERT! BULLSHIT ALERT! I've seen this claim made more than once on Slashdot. Unfortunately I've never seen one single shred of evidence to back it up. Do you have any sources for this? I can find at least one paper on Google that says that this is bullshit.