In reply to Michel Jullian's message of Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:22:26 +0200: Hi, [snip] >Good point ;-) But their argument that city scale utility plants cost less per >watt than rooftop residential installations makes sense, so it might be a >win-win case. > >Michel Well it does provide a ready market for panel manufacturers. That means that they can continue to develop their product, and hopefully at some point produce "power shingles" which can substitute for ordinary shingles in new construction, at little or no extra installation cost. If the resultant power is used as an adjunct to grid supply (& fed back into the grid when in excess), then battery costs can also be avoided, keeping the overall cost to a minimum.
Granted this requires an "intelligent" inverter, but the cost of that should soon be recouped from the savings on the power bill, and as the market for them grows they will get cheaper anyway. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
