JUN 19

Wow! The solar tiles are so PRETTY! It's such an interesting look, and I WANT IT. too bad i don't have loads of money ^_^

Seems like it would look even more attractive if you could get NORMAL blue/silver/black roof tiles to mix in with the solar tiles, thereby making it completely indistinguishable to the naked eye.

Ok you might say it its a darker color, well my roof right now is black & gray composite so......maybe the scientists can solve that problem too.

Having all of the tiles the same color woudl look much better.

There is also a company, whose name escapes me, that is producing a similar product that mimics slate roof tiles. Living in an older city like Cleveland, there are a lot of slate roofs and if the price ever comes down significantly, there will be a huge sales opportunity here!

Love it! If the aesthetics and cost issues of solar power are handled, I think everyone in my part of the world would be willing to adopt it.

You know you've crossed a milestone when clean energy solutions -- once relegated to the hills of Vermont are used by large suburban macmansions.... This is good.

Those must be terribly expensive, but I couldn't agree more with the idea of aesthetically integrating photovoltaics with traditional roofing materials.

Both the terra cotta and and slate solar tiles are great ideas and the more options consumers have, the better. Especially when the product is delivered in a modular fashion and easily installed on new & existing structures.

It would be nice, however, if the prevalence of McMansions that Terrance mentioned in his comment were reduced through zoning and intelligent urban design.

Some reduced efficiency solar panels probably won't be of much comfort in 10-20 years when there's no more cheap oil to support suburban sprawl developments.

Here's another one: netzeroenergy.org

Which happens to be my house, shameless plug, but relevant.
Unfortunately my roof does not face south, but it looks cool! The tiles at the edge are concrete tiles, which are not so popular here in North East.

That was my first thought as well, build the entire roof with a uniform color palette. That would make the solar tiles blend even more pleasantly.

Weren't there articles recently about new car paints that look like dark colors to the eye, but reflect heat almost as well as white? If you make the (unpowered) roofing tiles with such a pigment, you could blend the entire roof without the penalty of increased thermal gain.

Sounds like you'd need at least twice the roof area for these that you would with standard solar pannels. Do-able, though if cheap enough. But they look expensive.

Any cost info?

Have they finally got system -not just the PV array, but the inverters, that big battery and installation- prices down to where the interest cost is not greater than the cost of grid energy? Oops, I forgot depreciation. Even if you expect the PV array and the electronics to outlast you, the battery will go away in ten years or less.

Hmmm. 53 W/m^2, why bother? I'll bet they are expensive (take a lot of energy to manufacture) and are a maintenance nightmare. I wonder how well the thousands of electrical connections will fare on a rooftop environment. A rooftop seems to me to be a perfect accelerated aging environment for fragile electronic equipment.



However, I bet they will still look good after they stop working in 7 years.

For grid-connected systems, there's generally no need for a battery, the PV is there to reduce overall consumption (or if you have enough, to add electricity to the grid.)

You have a good point.
I have a similar system (see netzeroenergy.org)
In my case the tiles are 3ft wide and thus has a lot less connections than the blue system, but more than standard panels. I did some mean time between failure analysis, and am more likely than not to have zero contact failures in 20 to 30 years based on the data I had.

Also by connecting in multiple strings a bad contact only causes a percentage loss of output.

I looked into this quite a bit.
The MC3 connectors are very positive fit and contact, and are weatherized, being under the roof out of the weather I expect much better reliability than under traditional panels.

The other way to interconnect is to make holes through the roof deck on connect on the inside (if accessible). I didn't like this idea. Because the membrane on the roof deck is my waterproof layer (the tiles are mere protection for the membrane).

(I too have BEng in electron engineering)

Still building McMansions, and decorating them with pis poor very low efficiency solar cells to be green! Goddamn! Will Yankee Doodle never catch on! Shiite-heads! Sustainability is a keyword, and without it, You Die! Zero maintenance is a not a concept, Zero upkeep is a practical reality now-a-days! No Shyster vulture capitalist planned obsolescence allowed! By law! Obama law! Off-grid is not some fool's folly - today it is a practical reality with good solar cells properly installed! but not for the crap McMansions in these photos! Goddammit folks, I'm trying to be patient with you, and so is the rest of the world! The fvcking oil is gone folks! The new dollar is the "Yuan". Suburbia is dead and in the past, GM is defunct, Chrysler's are gone and so are the "Glory Days" of America's past! Build the future! You must now build smaller, more practical, solar oriented super-insulated,water conserving, greenhouse attached, complete with chicken coups, aquaculture pools, gardens, dry toilets, water preservation systems, survival shelters along the lines of the "Earthship" concept! Not goddamn palaces to the glory of and age gone by! Warning! only the smart survive, and America is not being smart, it is trying to preserve the past and that simply will not wash! not in architecture, transportation, science, technology, biology, medicine, of life in general! Change in imminent and omnipresent. Move on America! move on or crumble under the force of a powerful and rising Asian fact.

500 watts per 100 square feet today is a long way from not long ago. I don't think it'll be long before aesthetic panels will do much better. And at a lower cost. Thanks for this post

thats really creative how they changed the design

Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?

This is a big step in the right direction! There will always be a market for larger homes, but this is one way to make even the biggest "McMansion" have a smaller energy appetite! Thanks for finding and sharing this!

The above installation is downright ugly - but there is a simple solution: produce a black-colored (non-solar) tile for the rest of the roof. Sure, it would absorb more heat than the terra-cotta, but it would also by definition be in areas that don't receive as much direct sunlight. I think a uniform color would look MUCH better.

Here is a site where you can get a different view of the roof (all terracotta) and a bit (very) different outlook.

http://ecdfan.blogspot.com/2009/06/marketing-of-solar-tile.html

I don't know who is correct but it sure smells like there is a dead rat somewhere around!

Somewhere there is a company that will actually spray your roof with the right chemicals to produce electricity.

Why all the talk about connections has no one heard of wireless?

The tiles are great everyone likes a blue roof but there must be choice of colors.

It doesn't really matter what great technology is invented there are always some people who insist on walking rather than catching the new fangled thingy called a bus!

are unicorns, and pots of gold -- just follow the rainbow.

Regarding the solar tiles, these people have no idea what they're doing and I would warn you to do your homework before considering. I used to design BIPV for a living, work for a major PV manufacturer, and I know what I'm talking about and therefore can't comment "on the record". Just do your homework.

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