Easy Solar Power

With superefficient peel-and-stick PV sheets, solar power is better than ever!

October/November 2006
By Cheryl Long 
SteveHeckeroth
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Renewable energy expert Steve Heckeroth developed this building’s integrated thin-film solar roof system.
MATTHEW T. STALLBAUMER
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Installing clean, reliable, inflation-proof solar power is easier than ever, thanks to the invention of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) laminates that can be bonded directly onto metal roofing panels. Unlike crystalline PV material, there's no need for obtrusive racks and heavy, expensive glass. Instead, unbreakable thin-film PV is produced using amorphous silicon, encapsulated in Teflon and other polymers.

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Thanks to pioneering work by Steve Heckeroth, a Mother Earth News contributing editor and the director of building-integrated photovoltaics for Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics, this thin-film PV is now available in easily shippable, 16-inch-wide rolls. It's a peel-and-stick laminate. You just unroll the sheet, lay it faceup on a flat metal roofing panel and press it onto the panel while your assistant pulls the protective sheet off the sticky backing.

Invented by ECD Ovonics co-founder Stan Ovshinsky, thin-film laminates offer several advantages over crystalline PV panels. (See Meet Stan Ovshinsky, the Energy Genius for a profile of Ovshinsky and his remarkable renewable energy inventions.) Thin-film sheets perform better in high temperatures and in partly shaded conditions, and they require 100 times less silicon, which means thin-film PV is expected to become less expensive than crystalline as production capacity expands over the next few years.

We had a chance to get a firsthand look at this exciting new PV option after Heckeroth offered to install it on the new metal roof I was putting on my small barn last summer. We invited the public, and Heckeroth led a workshop about solar power. Nearly 50 folks spent an unusually hot, 100 degree May day watching and helping as Heckeroth showed volunteers how to bond the thin-film PV laminates to the metal roof panels. Then local architect and builder Kenton Knowles and his Global Homes crew installed the panels on the barn. As the sequence of photos shows, it's hard to imagine a simpler way to install grid-tied, solar-electric power on a new or replacement metal roof. It took only five to 10 minutes to apply each PV sheet to a roof panel.

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