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

Solar shingles... check... Low roofs... problem..

[Maxite]

Now how to keep kids with ladders from walking on your roof scuffing up the solar shingles.. Or people who have low roofs (there's one near my house, actually it's right across the street) where you can walk from the ground right up onto the roof in the back).

More Olde News...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

A duplex just down the block had these installed 4 years ago. Every time I go by, I'm tempted to ask them if they still work.

Re:More Olde News...

[chewedtoothpick]

The ones that the healthy contstruction company I work for have given no problems in the 6 or so years that we have been installing them... We are actually working on a project, that thanks to these shingles, the entire 28 townhome project will be a zero-energy project which will be contributing to the grid as opposed to draining...

Two Words

[zygote]

Hail Storm.
This sounds like a great idea. I'd be all over it except that at least once a year some part of the metro area where I live gets pounded with hail.
I didn't see anything in the article about how these tiles would be manufactured to survive this or heavy wet snow.

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...)

energy independence begins at home

[Doc Ruby]

How about paving roads with solar panels, under some hard (metamaterial) transparent aluminum? About 16M hectares of America is paved road and parking, so 20W:m^2 (of the 1KW:m^2 peak insolation) would give 32GW. That's 3.2E13W, when US power consumption is 1E13.

Re:energy independence begins at home

[xott]

It wouldn't matter what it was made of, but any effort to get at some of the huge amount of energy falling upon roads around the world is a great idea.
Roading takes a huge amount of space, is only utilised a small percentage of the time and is daily bombarded with a large amount of solar energy. If it was a cheap, clean technology, it would be far better for developing countries to use solar rather than expensive non-renewable technology.

Re:energy independence begins at home

[Doc Ruby]

Counting only the cost of the fuel is stupid. How much does it cost when the coal exhaust comes back as a string of hurricanes? Or an asthma epidemic? It's also stupid to think that we must choose one or the other alternate energy strategies. Wouldn't it be great for America to be a net exporter of energy to the world again?

Re:energy independence begins at home

[Randym]

How about paving roads with solar panels, under some hard (metamaterial) transparent aluminum? About 16M hectares of America is paved road and parking..

While you are right that there is an inordinately large amount of paved area, I think another poster has enlightened you on the transparent aluminum problem.

Still, along those same lines: just covering all parking lots with these panels would be a big step forward. Additionally, parking structures could have these *both* over the top level *and* down the southern exposures. The municipality who paid for the installation would then recover the cost of the panels from their reduced energy costs and/or reselling the energy thus generated back to the electric company.

An additional benefit is that all those parking spaces are now protected from the weather, thus reducing maintenance costs for any car parked there.

And while we're at it, we could use the superstructure that supports the solar panels to also support small wind turbines. Careful design of parking structures could ensure that wind that blows through the structure is accelerated (by narrowing the apertures), thus increasing its usability when captured at the other side of the structure.

In any case, Doc, that was very nice forward thinking.

Worse than kids...

[Deorus]

Think about the red fat Santa Claus. How will he deliver his gifts then?

nope

[my_fake_account]

"Pernick said solar roofs would probably be adopted most quickly in states such as Hawaii and California where the cost differential between electricity derived from solar and fossil fuels is not as great."

I lived in Hawaii for almost four years. Very few people use solar. Even for hot water. Instead they use electricity that is supplied by diesil burning plants.

I talked to native Hawaiians about solar and mostly got blank stares-- even from one guy in HVAC. The only people out there using solar are hippies or those who just happened to move into an apartment or house with solar.

Most people don't think about solar. Just like most people don't think about coal/NG/nuclear/hydro turbines. If solar is going to happen, it's going to take a concerted effort by... somebody. I'd assume it would be in the government's best interest, but apparently it's more important to fight for oil.

Re:nope

[my_fake_account]

except for hot water. I agree-- there is really no need to have any air conditioning or heating in Hawaii-- the trade winds take care of the heat, and it is rarely cold (57 degrees F.-- brrr!) But hot water is a huge energy expenditure, and has nothing to do with photovoltaics, and is easier and cheaper that PV, but still, people don't even consider it.

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..

The government's interest

[Gothmolly]

Why is do people always insist that the government take charge of every fscking facet of their lives?

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.