Solar Thermal Roofing Tiles Rock The House
Want to harness the sun’s energy to heat your home? If you like the concept of solar energy but not the nuisance of installing and maintaining solar panels, look no further. A Swedish company, SolTech Energy, may have the answer. Instead of a bulky bank of solar panels on your roof, you can tile it with a product very similar to ceramic roof tiles and still heat your home efficiently.
SolTech’s innovative engineers have replaced traditional ceramic tiles with transparent modules of glass tiles designed to magnify the sun’s heat, thus raising the temperature of the air within the roof’s structure. The heated air can then be used to heat water (or air) which circulates throughout the building. The installation for this system appears to be not much different from installing a traditional tiled roof, making the product a natural fit for contractors that want to create an eco-friendly structure with a low carbon footprint- without sacrificing the aesthetics of its design. This product, a gold-medal winner at the 2010 Nordbygg trade fair in Stockholm, is one I like for its clean look and its practical, straightforward solution to a sticky problem.
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| Via Architect Magazine |
Innovators have been experimenting with solar panels for 30+ years that I know of. (Even Mike Flint tried it on his farmhouse years ago.) But this looks really promising.
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