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thin film / “solar laminates” for standing seam roof (2022)

neutral_grey | Posted in Green Products and Materials on

We’ll be replacing our roof next year.  8-12 slope, and roughly a 1000sqft unshaded southern exposure (home at ~~45degrees latitude).  We are most likely using standing seam.

I see nearly nothing written these days about Thin Film; but they do better in the heat than others, and seem to be “trivial” to install on a standing seam roof.  Nearly all homes I see with solar have not “covered” their roof (meaning, watts-per-sqft is not the limiting factor). 

As an example product, SunFlare PowerFit 20:
– 15% efficiency (I don’t have a quote, but I believe cost per watt is very competitive with monocrystaline – ignoring installation cost.
– guaranteed 80% of spec’d performance at 25 years
– peel and stick mounting on standing seam.
significantly lower embodied carbon per-installed-watt vs other options

What’s the current consensus on this PV product?  Any manufacturers to recommend?

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Replies

  1. kbentley57 | | #1

    I was involved in thin film (CdTe/Se) solar cell research, but that was ~15 years ago. They've improved quite a bit since 2011, but they've really never been better at anything, other than weight, when compared to silicon solar cells, or multi-junction cells. Multi-layerd or multi-junction as they're called are the future of solar cells, and everything else is really just waiting to lose funding, IMO.

    Here's the most recent NREL best-efficiency chart, which shows the different technologies and how they're doing relative to eachother. Thin films are way behind now, and you don't want to adhere them to something which may need removing before the cell life is up.

    link to picture: https://www.nrel.gov/pv/assets/pdfs/best-research-cell-efficiencies-rev220630.pdf

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