Making residential solar PV more affordable by improving installation
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008My Clean Break column on Monday takes a look at a Vancouver-based company called MSR Innovations that has developed an interesting way of reducing the cost of installing solar on residential rooftops.
Analysts talk about the likelihood that solar PV module costs will fall 35 per cent in 2009 because of competition from thin-film technologies and an oversupply of polysilicon. This is good news for those contemplating solar, particularly developers with multi-megawatt projects on the drawing board. But in the residential market, even in Ontario where a 42-cent feed-in tariff is offered, solar PV is still too expensive and the payback too far off.
MSR Innovations has come up with a new type of roofing system designed specifically as an enabler of solar PV. (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
