solar shingles ??

ScottMP

I've been talking solar around the house lately and my wife says she saw solar shingles in a TOH magazine. I just checked their website and found nothing.

I need to know so when the question comes up again ( more than likely 10:00pm when I am trying to sleep ) I'll have the answer. Any body see this ?

I will do soalr for the kids pool this summer and want to supplement my DHW when the kitchen gets done.

Scott SPF Milne

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kevin coppinger_4

Scott...

the wife is right...It was several years ago though...They used a photovoltaic set up to run an electric water hetaer....VERY expensive...the job was in California...kpc

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Constantin

There are a couple of shingles out there,

...none of them are inexpensive. IIRC, most are the amorphous silicon kind, i.e. they run at lower efficiencies but are tough and flexible. Some are even deposited on stainless steel... so you'd have a pretty tough roof.

Due to the low conversion efficiency, most homes would require very large surfaces to cover the kinds of loads that most of us produce. Take your electric bill, figure out what the daily needs are, then size the photoelectric plant to produce that kind of energy in our neck of the woods (i.e. 3-4 hours of full sun/day). Now multiply the cost per shingle + installation.

Once you wake up from exploding backwards from the table you were sitting at (and knocking yourself out in the process), I suggest a stiff drink and putting the calculation before the lovely wife. Presumably, once the impact on discrectionary spending has sunk in, this idea too will pass (perhaps like a kidney stone?)

But seriously, I suspect you'd get a much quicker payback from choosing energystar appliances, etc. than sizing a photovoltaic plant to excessive loads, no matter how good the government grants, incentives, etc. are.

The dawn solar thread from a few days ago had links to uni-solar and some other outfits that make shingle-style collectors. As tempting as these kind of products are, I would wait putting them in until the production capacity in this market has caught up with demand and prices return to the same level, if not lower ones, than a few years ago.

ScottMP

ARRRGGG

Electric ... not in my neck of the woods.

Sounds liek thats what she saw.

Now I have to explain electric and hydronic to her. I think I'll just go down stairs and beat my head against the wall. It'll feel better.

Scott

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