Solar shingles: competition ramps-up

Solar installation may be climbing but it's nothing compared to where the market is headed. As local firms Nanosolar and Miasole are racing to get their products to market the competition is not standing still. Dow is putting a stake in the ground - vying to be first to market with large scale production of solar shingles.

Dow Chemical has unveiled a residential roof shingle in the form of a solar panel designed to be integrated into asphalt-tiled roofs.

Jane Palmieri, managing director of Dow’s Solar Solutions unit, said the Powerhouse thin-film shingle slashes installation costs because it can be installed by a roofer who is already building or retrofitting a roof.

“As a roofer is nailing asphalt shingle on roof, wherever the array needs to be installed he just switches to solar shingle,” said Ms. Palmieri, who said the solar singles are similarly attached to the roof with nails.

“You don’t have to have a solar installation crew do the work or have an electrician on site,” she added. “The solar shingle can be handled like any other shingle – it can be palletized, dropped from a roof, walked on.”

An electrician is still needed to connect the completed array to an inverter and to a home’s electrical system, but unlike conventional solar panels that must be wired together, the solar shingles plug into each other to form the array.

Dow plans to begin test-marketing the solar shingle in mid-2010, initially targeting new-home construction. Ms. Palmieri said the market could be worth $5 billion by 2015 and noted that 90 percent of homes in the United States use asphalt shingles.


Dow designed the shingles, which will initially be manufactured at the company’s Midland, Mich., facility. Global Solar of Tucson, Ariz., is supplying the thin-film solar cells.

Thin film solar, while currently less efficient than conventional PV, should dramatically reduce installation costs, a significant issue with PV. There's been discussion of PV shingles for a while but this looks like the first serious commercial scale offering. Lots of other players are vying to jump in and combined with the new financing models and ramped up Chinese competition, PV may well be set to really take off.

Rafael @www.climateatbay.net