Renewable Energy

Building-Integrated Photovoltaics

Published

6 months ago

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I just had a conversation with a building contractor who specializes in eco-friendly residential improvements–in a part of the world where such a specialty is a big deal: Santa Barbara, California.

This was a great opportunity to ask questions about certain technologies that seemed to have great promise, but that, for some reason, never took off.  Among these is building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV.  As shown in the photo above, it isn’t on the roof; it is the roof.

The fellow gave me two reason for the slow adoption (failure?) of BIPV:

1) It’s very brittle, which makes roof repairs very difficult without cracking other panels,, and

2) The carbon footprint associated with making BIPV is very high.

Interesting stuff.

Building-Integrated Photovoltaics
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