Photovoltaic Shingles

Photovoltaic shingles let homeowners go green, converting the sun’s energy into clean, usable electricity without the cumbersome, unsightly installation of traditional solar panels.

Everyone knows that the sun gives the earth all of its energy. The world has fallen in love with using solar power to keep their lights burning and heat their water. Families can now have a more energy efficient house and save a lot of money on their utility bills without making their neighbors cringe at a big ugly solar panel going up across the street.

Photovoltaic shingles are very small solar panels made of polycrystalline silicon that absorbs and converts any light-frequency matching the wavelengths of the sun to usable energy. Instead of the ping-pong, table-sized, solar panels normally associated with photovoltaic cell systems, photo voltaic shingles are smaller and more efficient. One shingle by itself could not even power a couple of lights, but several linked together over a large portion of a rooftop, hundreds of square feet of surface area, can usually cover all of a household’s energy needs.

Photovoltaic shingles are roughly the same color as the solar panels of the 1970’s, but they’re much smaller (about the same size as a normal roofing tile or shingle) and don’t require a gigantic rack to mount them. Solar or photovoltaic shingles blend seamlessly with a home’s existing asphalt shingles and are installed the same way or even right on top of a home’s existing shingle roof. Solar shingles are a form of Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPVs) that are catching on due to their being a nearly invisible way to turn a rooftop into a personal power plant.

Installing a photovoltaic shingle system doesn’t mean you have to leave the grid completely. In fact, 39 states let you sell the energy you don’t use (a normal occurrence in places like California and Arizona) back to the energy pool, so staying on the grid pays. Power lines from the grid come in handy after dark or on rainy days. Some systems abjure the grid altogether with battery backup systems, but most batteries can only power a house for up to eight hours on a full charge. Charging those batteries takes time and isn’t always possible in every location on every day, so a city’s hours per day of sunlight is a very important factor to consider when deciding to install an often costly battery system. Whether or not you choose to stay on the grid, all you need is an electrician or a trained roofer to install a photovoltaic shingle system. With federal (Energy Policy Act of 2005) and state tax incentives, you’ll have a much greener house in no time.

A photovoltaic shingles system costs about $10,000 to $15,000 for most houses, but most homeowners incorporate the cost into their mortgage payment and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides a 30 percent rebate or up to $2,000 toward the system come tax season. Coupled with a potentially humongous savings on electricity bills, depending on the home’s location, the system usually pays for itself very quickly. Many homeowners feel that the aesthetic benefits of photovoltaic shingles versus more traditional solar panels make the initial outlay worth it. Savings depend on your location because of the varying cost of utilities from city to city and the hours of sunlight per day. For example, a home with photovoltaic shingles in Albuquerque, New Mexico, although exposed to much more sun than a home in Boston, Massachusetts, might not save the owner as much money as the Boston home because of the difference in utility prices, i.e., the Boston home’s photovoltaic shingles would likely yield less energy but higher monetary savings.

Only a few companies manufacture photovoltaic shingles worldwide, but that’s likely to change as technology and demand develops. Right now, only these companies are in the BIPV Business:

• SunPower Corporation
• Solar Components Corporation
• Atlantis Energy Systems

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