Walkable solar tile
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Checkout http://www.onyxsolar.com. They are touting walkable PV solar tile. I want to know if the walkable tile is also capable of being driven on. My driveway here in Arizona is tilted south. And, off-street parking is only mandated during the night. About half of the cost of solar is installation. The concrete substrate is already there. Basically intallation would consist of laying tile and routing wires at groumd level and I have already done a ton (literally) of doing that.
Additionally they do vented facades and make the following claim, "The thermal surrounding methods can result in a 25-40% reduction of the energy consumed by a building." I have noticed that few manufacturers talk about this obvious advantage when calculating payback. Active solar when designed and installed properly can also generate passive savings.
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Someone posted a video a while ago about a photovoltaic tile that was intended for road surfaces. The video showed the prototype being assembled and driven on as I recall. Can't recall just where I saw it though - may have been here or over on PPB.
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John, I think that someone was me. The actual roadway system is a much more industrial strength system because of the conditions that it would face from heavy loads and frequency of traffic plus the tiles were designed to project programmed messages to drivers. I am hoping the Onyx tiles will be more like ceramic tiles that I could apply to my driveway surface.
The questions are:
Cost
Can they would bear the weight
How the cable routing works
Solar efficiency -
I got an equivocal answer back from Onyx. They wouldn't say it would not work and at the same time they would not say they would recommend this usage. When I have a moment I may try to get more information out of them.
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