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

One more thing to break indeed!

[PeterAitch]

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

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.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[moon3]

The notoriously pricey roofing costs, with electric shingles the maintenance might skyrocket and one can easily lose all the potential electrical "savings". They wire each shingle ? I would like to see some pilot deployment in action >>

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[PeterAitch]

If they are caught in a fire, the combustion products will hardly be bio-friendly; in fact "toxic" would be a better description. That said, they are not going to be inherently combustible, unless there are lots of organics left in any binder which might be used to keep them on the substrate (i.e. the shingles). Most likely, the shingles are post-treated to produce a rather thick "thin-film" and then given a top coating (a) for anti-reflection purposes and (b) for mechanical/abrasion resistance. As several other posters have noted it's not clear from the article how the front or back electrical contact(s) are designed, either mechanically or electrically.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[hedwards]

Unlikely, given the speedy installation, it's a pretty good bet that the system is installed as a set of larger shingles pre-attached to each other. These are most likely then wired into whatever electronics handle the power management. There's a trade off between percentage of roof covered per unit and cost of replacing a broken or defective cell.

If you need a new roof, this might be a decent deal, but if you don't, the break even point for these appears to be roughly the same as with tradtional cells. However it's probably longer since you're not really able to control the orientation and you can't set up tracking systems.

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.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[icebike]

The point about walking on roofs is a key issue.

Over the life of a house, people have to do this more often than you might imagine. The article is thin on details about just how durable and walkable these things are.

Probably not for snow country, but anything that could absorb some of the air conditioning load would be welcome.

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.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[icebike]

By the time your roof is on fire, toxicity is the furthest thing from your mind.

Asphalt shingles burn well, once lit. The graduals really only protect it from flying embers. And the smoke is fairly nasty.

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

     

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't walk on slate shingles either yet people still find ways to work on slate roofs. I doubt that they don't have a solution.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Jukeman]

I had an old farmhouse for 30 Years with steep (45 degree) slate roof, lots of repair people had to walk on it (a lot of brick chimney repair and flashing, very little slate repair), some without ropes. No one ever broke one by walking on them. Personally, since they are all held in with two loose nails, I though one should slip out when stepping on them; but none ever did.

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!

[swillden]

Tar shingles are cheap, easy to install (anyone can learn how in a few minutes), self-seal given just a couple of warm days and even self-heal to some degree.

Where I live winter heating costs significantly exceed summer cooling costs, so I'd think the best choice is a slippery black roof so snow would slide off and the sun could heat the attic. Even better, of course, would be a power-generating roof which could be used to heat during the winter and cool during the summer.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Bob-taro]

You can't walk on slate shingles either yet people still find ways to work on slate roofs.

I worked in roofing for a while. You can easily walk on a surprisingly steep pitch once you're used to it (I doubt I could anymore). Usually, though, we would walk on boards that were set on metal brackets that hung from nails under the shingles. Even on a low pitch, we would usually put at least one row of boards near the bottom, in case someone slipped. When the roof was done, we'd slide the brackets off the nails, then slide the bracket over the nail head and under the shingle and hammer the nail flush through the shingle. I actually never worked with slate, but I imagine you could use the same method. Maybe you'd have to use a rubber mallet for the last step because the slate is brittle, or maybe you could skip the last step because the nail wouldn't ever work up through the slate anyway.

Re:One more thing to break indeed!

[Captain Hook]

snow is actually a really good insulator

Installation?

[seanadams.com]

They say these can be installed by standard roofing techniques... I don't know if anyone else has ever nailed down asphalt shingles but it's about as low-tech as it gets. So the question is how do these interconnect electrically?

I could imagine a couple ways - perhaps there are contacts that need to be aligned prior to nailing. Either that, or they intend for an electrician to come in after the roofers and attach a bus bar or something. Anyone got the full story?

The future for residential solar is not in the highest-tech, highest efficiency panels. Rather, it will be the system which gives the lowest $/W after ALL costs, including installation, depreciation, and in this case, savings because it also serves as your actual roof. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Re:Installation?

[microcars]

There is a home that my son-in-law built just north of Chicago that has "Solar Slate" installed in portions of the roof that match the asphalt shingles. It was installed by a local roofing company around 2003, you can see a photos of the install HERE.
Did not RTFA and while these are slightly different than what is mentioned these things have apparently held up very well so far for the people that live there.

Sort of an aerial view of one part of the house with the slates installed here.

If you can't see the photos you probably crashed the guy's server, I think it is hosted on his home computer...

Re:Installation?

[Hijacked Public]

English is not my native language but I've been speaking it quite a long time. But I did fuck up that post.

Shingles are typically made by passing a thin fiberglass reinforcement under what is essentially a pipe out of which asphalt is pouring. The asphalt is about 200 celsius. The fiberglass reinforcement is moving at a speed of about 1200 feet per minute.

The possibility exists that the solar panels are added to the shingle in a separate process, glued on or the like, after they've been produced on a traditional shingle manufacturing line.

Recycle?

[NaCh0]

What happens when the CIGS cells wear out?

Are they toxic? Can they be recycled?

Re:Recycle?

[syphax]

First Solar has this covered (for their own CIGS panels)

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.

[Timothy Brownawell]

TFA says "thin film" cells, so I'd imagine they're fairly flexible.There's also a known pattern to how they'll be installed (overlapping horizontal rows that are each offset by about half the length of one shingle), which could probably be used to print wires on the upper part of the top side and the lower part of the back side such that they'll make fairly good contact.

Re:I beg to differ.

[apoc.famine]

Agreed.
 
I highly doubt that two guys with a case of beer, a couple of utility knives, and a nail gun can lay these down and have them work as they are supposed to. Shingling a roof really doesn't require any skills, other than doing the peaks and valleys. If you can put down a shingle, and nail it to the roof, you're golden. If you can hack the excess off that hangs over the side with a knife, you can shingle 95% of a house.
 
Ignoring any interconnections between the shingles that must be lined up, (because, that's beyond a roofer's knowledge base) you still have to tie it into the house electricity. And you have to be able to slap the roof down in the beating sun, while standing on it, and driving nails through it. How exactly does that work if the roof is generating electricity as you do so?

Re:I beg to differ.

[Colonel Korn]

The CIGS PV cell is called "thin film" because the photoelectric sandwich is deposited as thin layers on top of a GLASS plate. Oh, and they apparently are (very) moisture-sensitive, so having them last 20-25 years will be difficult.

The substrate isn't necessarily glass. Flexible metal substrates have been used already by other companies. They do bend, and they're encased in a flexible moisture barrier and offered with a warranty that lasts as long as the lifetime claims. I don't think that the companies selling these would be willing to offer the warranty without a reasonably good expectation that the cells would actually last that long.

Re:I beg to differ.

[catmistake]

Everything is relative. Perhaps these solar shingles take a few extra steps beyond regular shingles, but have you seen what a pain in the ass the nuclear reactor shingles are to install? You need a friggin' nuclear engineering degree! Sure, the effeciency is through the roof, but at what cost? As unlikely as China Syndrome is, it's an insurance nightmare. And personally, I don't want my great great grandchildren toiling to replace a spent uranium ceiling. Solar it is!

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.

Repeat Ten Times Fast

[audubon]

Sally sells solar shingles by the seashore...

Environmental impact?

[Penguinisto]

The traditional mono- and polysilicon panel makers catch hell for using things like lead (leading to RoHS solder being used and etc)... what's the plan for recycling these puppies?

(don't get me wrong, I'm loving the idea, but you know someone's gonna bitch about it...)

Also, since there are places that see annual windstorms which tend to rip the occasional shingle off of the roof, err, how much would it cost to repair/replace?

It'll be hammered out eventually (err, s'cuse the pun), but it's something I hope that someone is thinking about all this today, instead of the being blinded by the whole 'gee-whiz' factor that may come around to bite the whole renewables movement in the butt later on.

(disclosure - I work IT in this industry - take it as you will).

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.

Direct Link to DOW

[swanzilla]

Dow Solar

FTA

"This is just one example of how Dow's $1.5 billion annual R&D investment is allowing us to deliver practical solutions for some of the world's most critical challenges," said Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew N. Liveris.

They might have hit this one out of the park if the projected $20 billion by 2020 is remotely close.

Re:Direct Link to DOW

[Shark]

Nah, they just factored in inflation.

Not enough indium in the world

[Prune]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16550-why-sustainable-power-is-unsustainable.html

Saving energy?

[QuoteMstr]

Wouldn't it be easier to just paint the roof white so that the building reflects more heat and needs less cooling in the summer? (In the winter, insulation will keep the heat inside.)

And wouldn't it also help to use lighter pavement to reduce the urban heat island effect?

It just seems like photovoltaic shingles are pretty low on the net-payback list.

Re:Saving energy?

[NoYob]

Wouldn't it be easier to just paint the roof white so that the building reflects more heat and needs less cooling in the summer? (In the winter, insulation will keep the heat inside.)

No. First of all, no house is energy efficient enough to do that. Much of the heat comes in and out through the windows. The materials used in construction are not good insulators and there are many ways the heat comes in and escapes out through the house: cracks and gaps, vent pipes, chimneys, air leaks around receptacles , opening and closing of doors, kitchen vents, etc....

The best you can hope for in a home is to make it as energy efficient as you can.

Well that's silly

[T Murphy]

Why would I want solar-powered shingles? My shingles never needed to be powered in the first place.

copper indium gallium diselenide...

[thestudio_bob]

Copper indium gallium diselenide, that's like so yesterday. We all know that human hair is the future.

Teenager Invents Cheap Solar Panel From Human Hair

DoW Chemicals?

[ijakings]

Paint them red, they will charge faster.

My brother

[poptones]

Yeah, he puts on "rooves."

Now, let me ask YOU this: can YOUR whiny ass carry a pack of shingles up a ladder in 100 degree sun? Have you ever even been ON a roof?

Contractors are responsible for the contracts, not the roofers. It's not the greasy, sunburnt guys working their asses off who steal your money - it's the well dressed fellow sitting in the truck watching them work who takes your money.

That said, I don't think any of you have read TFA. These are thin film shingles. There are demo videos on youtube - you can see them press holes in the shingles, even drive nails through them and they still work just fine. These are not silicon and glass, they are thin film on some sort of flexible substrate. And it's about time.

Re:My brother

[afidel]

Yes, I've stripped a double layer roof, replaced half the under-sheeting and put on a new roof including rubber matting to combat ice-dams in a long weekend. It's not really that hard. I did have my father as foreman who ran a midsized roofing company 25 years ago but most of the labor was just me and my brother. It's really quite simple if you have airguns =)

Oh, and a funny story about corrupt roofers, my coworkers wife caught the crew doing the neighbors roof putting shingles on bare wood. Turns out the foreman was off drinking at the local strip joint instead of supervising the crew so they decided to slack off. The crew denied it up and down until my coworker provided video. The company ended up having to pay to strip and redo the whole thing even though it was only suspected that the back half was done wrong because who would trust them to have do anything right?

Eagle roofing has had durable shingles for a while

[Brigadier]

Not sure why this is being posted as if it's a new product. Eagle Roofing based in California has been carrying a fairly successful product for some time now. Not only do they have a warrantied usable product but it also supports LEED cool roof requirements. see link below to check it out for yourself.

http://www.eagleroofing.com/greenBld_eagleSolarRoof.htm

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.

Yuk!

[AliasMarlowe]

assfault roads

I do NOT want to drive around your neighborhood...