Affordable Solar Panels

In an article entitled, Cutting solar panels’ high price tag, Martin LaMonica, highlights some advances in solar power cost reduction that are being announced in Long Beach this week at the Solar Power 2007 conference.

A number of companies, from installers to panel producers, are taking different routes to try to improve the economics of purchasing rooftop solar panels.

Citizenre
Citizenre’s solar rental model is mentioned briefly in the article, without a link to the corporate website, www.citizenre.com, which would be useful to readers.

Integrated Solar

Several home developers–including Centex, The Grupe Company and Lennar–have built homes with integrated solar panels. The homes have sold well, according to sales representatives for these companies. How much does it save? It’s hard to say, but contractors say it takes less time to install a system during original construction, and time in this business is directly related to cost. Developers also can get group discounts by buying and shipping in bulk. (Because they are made out of glass, solar panels are expensive to ship.)

Some of these homes have used solar roof tiles. Solar roof tiles are integrated into the roof of the home and are aesthetically pleasing. However, they aren’t particularly economical, points out John Berger, CEO of installer Standard Renewable Energy. The panels are more expensive to make and can be more complex to install.

Read the full article at ZDnet.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Citizenre, Solar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.