Solar roof tiles: real soon now?

[RobertArthur]

A new kid in town or on your roof, there's talk on the street, it sounds so familiar, great expectations, everybody's watching you: solar roof tiles. In the near or further future, for a younger generation and only for tradional roofs. In the USA, in France, in the Netherlands and of course also in solar panel country #1: Germany.

[Polarengineer]

Solar tiles, a wiring nightmare.
Tesla have made them, I do not know if the German units are in production, The french (picture) it a total load of fake, and the Dutch TNO tile is made using high efficiency perovskite which is nowhere near commercial production. I guess we have to wait a lot longer for the real deal.

[Blaze]

I'd rather stick to good old slates which will last more than our lifetime and need no maintenance and don't break down. I'd hate to see skilled roofers and thatchers out of a job ....
If solar panels are reckoned to have a life expectancy of, say 25 to 30 years, what will be the cost of replacing them ? And the cost of recycling the old ones ? House sales might have to reflect the cost of replacing older solar panels ....

I'm not totally against the idea but I do wonder about the cost, particularly because today you get virtually nothing back from EDF for excess electricity produced. Perhaps they will be cheaper to make (I'm sure the Chinese will do well) - but disposal of worn out ones ?

[Hotrodder]

Bah! Humbug!
Likely to be yet another ground shaking innovation likely to bring the cowboys out of the woodwork to separate the first adopters from their money.

[RobertArthur]

Look through any window, what do you see? More tech is also less. Traditional windows are more equal than others. While solar windows are promising, undergoing field and lab testing, true transparent solar windows are mostly still in their commercialization and prototype phases. Most residential and commercial options available on the market today rely on tinted or semi-transparent solar glass rather than a perfectly clear coating.

[MAD87]

I seem to remember a (terraced) house in London 25+ years ago with solar tiles.

[RobertArthur]

@Mad87, in the nineties we had an allotment including a shed: on the roof one solar panel and a DIY charger for a huge lead-acid 12 V battery. It was the talk of the town those days for some gardeners, a little bit of modern comfort. Electrical grid not available. About London: last year the BBC wrote about the first ECO-house in Oxford (1995). One of the earliest buildings in the London area to use integrated solar tiles was a community building at the Homerton Grove Adventure Playground in Hackney, built in 1995. This timber-framed, grid-connected structure utilized Swiss photovoltaic (PV) tiles designed to seamlessly hang on conventional roof battens.

After this start-up phase even the French urban landscape changed, also empty parking lots with charging stations, waiting for an EV to arrive. Even the higher powered charging stations are not very busy outside the tourist season,

[widge]

Solar tiles, a wiring nightmare.
Tesla have made them, I do not know if the German units are in production, The french (picture) it a total load of fake, and the Dutch TNO tile is made using high efficiency perovskite which is nowhere near commercial production. I guess we have to wait a lot longer for the real deal.

I agree, it sounds like a good idea, but I only have a smalish house, and it currently has 1000 roof tiles, even though it is probably only 50 to 60 square meters.
A 4.5 kw installation using 10 x 450w panels covers approximately 20m2, 10 panels = 20 connections, the same with my roof tile size would be 200 tiles, therefore 400 connections, with the best will in the world I cannot Imagine connections being that good on a mass produced item that will last 20 odd years without any issues, also if in 5 years time, panel technology changes dramatically, it should be relatively simple and cheap to swap out, existing panels, to re lay and reconnect 100's of small panels wont be.

[RobertArthur]

Is it possible to design a simple, inexpensive yet reliable connector (or connector technology) that can withstand all kinds of weather conditions? If so, you’ll soon find yourself looking at MIL specifications. That really is quite a challenge...

To make matters even more complicated, shall we add a battery to the mix? To store self-generated energy and, if possible, no longer have to worry about brownouts and short blackouts? Even in the USA – without any of the red tape associated with French bureaucracy – that alone is enough to cause quite a few headaches.

Mike Lock (ZDNet) talked to homeowners considering a battery backup - these are their biggest questions.

What about France? The Promotelec guys at the moment don’t go much beyond offering some general points for the ‘general’ public to consider. How can you get the most out of your "autoconsommation" system?

Because a standard solar installation (the inverter) automatically shuts down in the event of a power cut (blackout) to protect technicians the plot thickens. To continue using your panels and battery during a power cut, your system must include a hybrid inverter equipped with a backup function. It once used to be more simple, use an inverseur de source for your genny.

[Polarengineer]

Why you don’t want an American built house with solar roof tiles