Improving Your Roof By Installing Solar Shingles

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Dana

If you are an environment lover and an energy conserving person, you should consider solar shingles for your roofing improvements. Solar shingles take energy from the sun and use it as an alternate source of energy. Solar shingle roofing can be used for residential and commercial purposes. They have been in use since 1995.

Solar shingles

Solar shingle roofs are roofing materials made from solar panels. They are called building integrated photovoltaic or BIPV. These roofs act as photovoltaic cells that take sun’s energy and produce direct current or DC. For use at home you need to convert this into alternating current or AC.

Solar roofing shingles are designed just like shingles on any other roofs in their appearance. They are in high demand among people who want to do home improvement. The large solar panels on roof would give it a different and better look compared to other roofing shingles.

At home these shingles will help support a great deal of energy consumption. The solar shingles are basically used for power for the home. You can either use it along with the standard electricity or as a back up energy supply when electricity is not available. Compared to the benefits of solar roofing shingles its cost of purchase is reasonable. It also helps in reducing energy bills.

Normally, the installation of shingles takes only around ten hours. However, solar panels take 24 or more hours for installation. Hence for solar shingles the cost is significantly low. Some people prefer to install the solar panels during home construction. Since this will reduce the costs, it becomes an option to install at the time of home construction. The amount of energy you can save using solar shingles also depend on various things.

This include the positioning of the shingle, amount of sunlight it gets and the amount of energy you use per day. The more sun the roof gets the more energy it produces. The electricity production also depends on the amount of solar shingle you use on the roof too.

Solar shingles do not cause much change to an already fixed roof when installed over it. Hence they are also called “solar roof tiles”. They weigh very little, almost two thirds the weight of other roofing tiles. So if anything goes wrong a full restoration of the roof or repair is not needed.