SolarFlower.org. Dow Solar rolls out Solar Shingles in California and Texas. Dow Solar is rolling out its new POWERHOUSE Solar Shingles in northern California and central Texas Image Gallery (5 images) Installing photovoltaic panels is certainly the most common method of generating solar power on a rooftop, and in fact many people might think it’s the only method. There is, however, an alternative – photovoltaic shingles. It makes sense, when you think about it ... why install weatherproof shingles and solar panels separately, if you could get one thing that combined both?
View all “The DOW POWERHOUSE Solar Shingle utilizes CIGS-based (Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide) thin-film photovoltaic cells, which have the highest efficiency of available thin-film technologies,” a representative for Dow told us. Unlike the adobe-inspired curved Solé Power Tiles we’ve covered previously, the POWERHOUSE shingles are completely flat, so they can be worked into existing flat-shingled roofs. Source: Dow Solar About the Author Post a CommentRelated Articles.
MIT stacks solar panels like pancakes, increases their power output by up to 20x. What’s better than one pancake? A whole stack of pancakes! Using the same logic, a team of MIT researchers have stacked a bunch of photovoltaic solar cells together to produce up to 20 times the power output of conventional solar power installations. Normally I’m the first to drop my jaw in awe at MIT’s latest and greatest innovations, but this one really is a bit of a no-brainer.
Basically, photovoltaic cells themselves aren’t all that expensive — according to MIT, they’re only around 35% of the total cost of a solar power installation. The main issue with solar power (and its main cost) is its low energy density, and thus the sheer surface area required to generate a sizable amount of electricity. This is why you need to cover your whole roof with cells to power your light bulbs, and why solar power plants would have to occupy tens of square miles of desert to produce as much power as a nuclear power plant. To combat this issue, MIT has built 3D stacks of photovoltaic cells. Breakthrough 3-Dimensional Solar Cell Technology.