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Are Solar Shingles a Breakthrough Technology or Just a Passing Fad?

The solar industry is booming throughout the U.S., but still solar has yet to achieve wide acceptance that would make it more than an asterisk in the nation’s energy portfolio.  Achieving even 1% of the nation’s energy is still an elusive goal. 

The largest part of the market is on commercial buildings.  You are more likely to find solar panels on the roof of a Costco’s than on your neighbor’s home.  There have been lots of challenges, but the two that loom more than the others are financing and aesthetics.

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If your electricity bill is only $100 a month and some Johnny-come-lately solar installer wants to take $25,000 of your hard-earned money to build a solar array on your roof, you may not be very impressed. And when he tells you that it will pay for itself in 10 years, you grin and tell him that you plan on moving in five years.  

Now that the cost of solar panels has come way, way down and there are more third party financing options. You may call Johnny Installer and tell him to come back, you have decided that you want to do the environmentally friendly thing to do and put solar panels on your roof of your home. 

He then tells you that you are going to have to put them on your south facing roof, and your south facing roof is facing the street.  Aesthetics may still kill the deal because you don’t want your neighbors looking at your unsightly solar panels.  You may not care if your big black ughly boxes are facing the backyard or out of sight altogether, but if they are facing the street for the world to see, you may have some reservations. 

Still despite these concerns, installers seem to pay little attention to aesthetics.  It probably is easier if you have a rectangular roof and the solar panels can follow the roof line, but if you have any obstructions or anything out of the ordinary, then the panels may not mesh with the overall aesthetics.

One solar panel manufacturer attempted to enter the market a few years back with odd shaped panels, but the experiment was short-lived.  You will be hard-pressed now to find anything but a rectangular solar module on the market.  Some homeowners may want to consider thin film panels, which some say are much more pleasing to the eye than the crystalline panels you see on most homes.

That is what is now intriguing about Dow Chemical’s gambit on solar shingles.  Dow Solar Dow Solar, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, has been quietly rolling out the solar shingles throughout the United Staes, and they have recently become available in SolarTown’s neighborhood, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.  This has been an idea that has been percolating along for several years and they recently announced a new project. 

See related blog postThat Big Ugly Box on Your Roof

The shingles do double duty; they are both roofing material to provide a weather tight roof for shelter and they are a source of your family’s electricity needs. This is the way that Dow Solar trumpets the dual benefits: “The DOW POWERHOUSE™ Solar Shingle is a first-of-its kind solar roofing product, developed to combine the benefits of solar technology with the durability and performance of traditional roofing materials.” If it works it could be the technology that breaks the logjam for residential solar.  So what is holding it back.

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I talked with builders and they don’t like hybrid technology.  They want to build a home to last and they don’t want to get any phone calls from homeowners that are complaining about a roof leak or the panels are not providing the electricity that the homeowner  thought they would.

The solar shingles are a new technology, which means that builders would prefer to let other builders try the technology and let them deal with problems over the next ten years.

But you can’t beat the aesthetics and that is where the rubber meets the road.  If Dow can overcome the objections of builders then they may have created a new industry for meeting the needs of homeowners’ power consumption.  The big black boxes may be a quaint reminder of the early days of this fledging industry like the early brick cell phones that weighed in at almost two pounds.