Dow Chemical Rolling Out Solar Shingles Next Year

Several users wrote to tell us that Dow Chemical plans on selling solar shingles as early as next year. The solar version can be integrated with normal asphalt shingling and will be introduced in 2010, with a wider roll-out scheduled for 2011. "The shingle will use thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), a photovoltaic material that typically is more efficient at turning sunlight into electricity than traditional polysilicon cells. Dow is using CIGS cells that operate at higher than 10 percent efficiency, below the efficiencies for the top polysilicon cells -- but would cost 10 to 15 percent less on a per-watt basis."

Comments

I beg to differ.

[NoYob]

Dow Solar Solutions said it expects "an enthusiastic response" from roofing contractors for the new shingles, since they require no specialized skills or knowledge of solar systems to install.

What?!? Roofers just lay out the shingles and nail them up there with pneumatic nail guns. They may not have the skills to wire them, place the wires correctly under the regular shingles to not only preserve the solar shingles but to make sure none of the shingles leak, and I'm sure you can't treat these things like regular shingles: drop them off the truck on to the ground, crane them up to the peak of the roof and let them fold over it and sit there for a couple of days until the installers get there, walk on them, and every other abuse can commit against asphalt shingles because they can take it, after all.

There will have to be some sort of training or there's going to be some really unhappy home owners when their new solar roof doesn't produce as much electricity, if any, as they thought because of screwed up shingles.

Re:I beg to differ.

[zippthorne]

Why would you need routine inspection? Very few damage profiles will fail to affect the output of the PVs, so you ought to be able to do the inspection every day by simply polling each cell.

Re:I beg to differ.

[forand]

These are similar to slate shingles if my reading is correct. You cannot:

drop them off the truck on to the ground, crane them up to the peak of the roof and let them fold over it and sit there for a couple of days until the installers get there, walk on them, and every other abuse can commit against asphalt shingles because they can take it, after all.

with slate shingles. So while any random guy off the street cannot put on a slate roof there are quite a few business specializing in this in most areas of the USA. Since you have to make sure you align slate tiles to prevent leaking you need only design the solar connections to connect in broad regions where leaking would be prevented.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Timothy Brownawell]

It seems unlikely that these will weather very well, so we'll have to see how they cope with thermal cycling and storm stresses.

I'd think that people can be reasonably expected to be somewhat unhappy when their roof doesn't last as long as it should. So I'd think Dow would have put a bit of effort into making sure that these things don't break that easily.

Have you ever *seen* the guys who put on rooves?

[gestalt_n_pepper]

We're talking contractors here. Assuming they *don't* steal your money outright, you're lucky that the shingles stay on at all, much less have well connected, insulated wiring.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Colonel Korn]

It seems unlikely that these will weather very well, so we'll have to see how they cope with thermal cycling and storm stresses. Nice to note that things have moved along since I worked on Si photovoltaics - it's taken longer than I expected, though

They'll be sold with a 20 year warranty, and trust me: they wouldn't be willing to offer that warranty without being confident that they wouldn't have to pay up regularly.

DoW Chemicals?

[ijakings]

Paint them red, they will charge faster.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[StrategicIrony]

It says they can be mixed with regular shingles, so I would imagine one would make "walkways" of regular shingles to access things like roof-vents, gutters, swamp coolers, chimneys, etc.

world indium stocks

[timmarhy]

buy shares in indium exploration companys then, because they don't have enough known resources to produce all these solar shingled roofs. sure you could use othe heavy metals, but they are rather nasty.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Jarik C-Bol]

and then runs 4 screws through one of your solar shingles. tell me that's not going to cause some problems with them.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[swillden]

Disposal is a larger issue. Even you average wood shingle is will last 100 years in a land fill. Asphalt is anyone's guess.

I suspect that within 50 years we'll be mining our landfills anyway, so I don't worry about that issue so much.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Captain Hook]

snow is actually a really good insulator