If you haven’t installed a solar panel on your rooftop so far, then some of your reasons may have been that a solar panel would ruin your home’s aesthetics and the darn thing is expensive anyway. And you don’t care about the environment that much.
Now aesthetics is less of an excuse, because Dow Solar, a division of Dow Chemical, about whom we’ve been talking about a while ago, has just launched their most expected solar shingles… in Colorado.
The company has now rallied with home-building company D.R. Horton, and want to equip 50 homes with the Powerhouse solar shingles. Each home would produce 3 kilowatts and the total investment will start at $485,950 (which translates to some $9,000 per home).
Dow Solar will expand their solar shingle empire throughout the country, starting from California and ending with states on the East Coast by the end of 2012.
About efficiency, these aren’t the most efficient solar panels you’ve ever seen. The figures provided by Dow lie somewhere around 12 percent, but their thin-film structure makes the shingles virtually indestructible by the normal action of the elements. Moreover, the company will also provide the DC to AC converter for each home.
One last green kudo that these shingles have is that they’re made locally, at a small plant in Midland, Michigan, near Dow’s own HQ.
[via cnet]
