Solar Roof Tiles – The future of solar industry
Solar Energy has found wide usgae in the last one decade. Individuals, commercial organisations and Governments have started using and advocating solar energy in a mass scale. The components used in a solar power generation system has seen a huge improvement and lot of research and development activities are being carried on to improve them further.
Building Integrated Photo Voltaics (BIPV)
Building Integrated Photo voltaics are solar panels that can replace the building materials as the solar panels themselves act as the skin of the building. The solar panels can be integrated either at the side or at the roof top. The solar panels covering the terrace is quite popular and in the most cases, the solar panels are mounted on a raised structure and the space underneath can be utilised. In this case, there will be spaces between the solar panels to let the wind flow pass on between them. This leads to water leakage in case of rains. To close the space between the solar panels the entire side has to be closed in order to prevent the wind flow coming inside. Off late, the roof structure itself is being made of solar panels. This eliminates the need for the traditional roofing material. There are quite a few solar roof products available. They are also called solar shingles. Some selected products are listed and detailed below.
TESLA
Tesla has made invisible solar tiles that looks very similar to a traditional roof tile. The entire roof can be made with the solar tiles or with a mix of solar tiles and traditional tiles base don the capacity required. It comes in four different tile types viz., Textured, smooth, tuscan and slate.
As you can see form the images above, the solar roof looks exactly like a traditional roof tiles. These TESLA solar roof has to be pre-booked to get them installed. India is still not in the list of the available countries mentioned in their website.
APOLLO TILE II
Apollo Tile II is from CertainTeed, which is now a subsidiary of Saint Gobain. It integrates seamlessly with the roof tiles. Unlike TESLA Solar roof, these solar tiles are very much distinct from the traditional roof tiles and look similar to a traditional solar panel in colour. How the shape and structure is designed in such a way that it aligns with the other roof tiles. It can either fixed on an existing roof tile or a new tile. However, this is still not available in India.
POWERHOUSE
Powerhouse by RGS, which is backed by DOW Chemicals is another solar shingle that allows the roof to be made of building integrated solar photo voltaic panels. They easily integrate with asphalt roofing tiles. They are compact and not bulky. This makes them look like a traditional roof.
They are widely available in the USA. They do not do the installation themselves as they are tied up with several local installers.
Installation video of Powerhouse
MANGALOREAN SOLAR ROOF TILES
Anu solar has solar panels integrated with traditional mangalorean tiles. The solar panel is embedded on the traditional solar tiles. The capacity of each solar panels is 12W.
These solar roof are changing the way roofs are being built. These are durable and produces more power than traditional solar panels in a given space. The orientation may not be south facing as in the traditional set up. However, east – west facing installations have also shown more output (3-4 times) than the traditional south facing installations.
Image Courtesy: Respective websites and arstechnica.com
