Solar Roof Tiles - should every building generate its own power? | 100% Independent, 100% Electric

so i've driven all the way to high wickham in buckinghamshire to come and look at a roof that roof behind me it's just a roof on a building it's still being built it's got scaffolding it's a building site so that's a roof this is a mug standing on another roof and this is fully charged when i look at that roof chris it's just a roof it you know it's like i've come all this way and all i'm looking at is a building site with a roof it doesn't look that special so what is special about that roof what's special about that roof is the point you're making it's invisible solar as an industry the solar industry is used to put in big sheets of glass on roofs that are either in your face or dynamic loading the roof this is of invisible solar it adds to the aesthetics of the building um it increases the performance of the building without any detriments in terms of aesthetics right in 2011 when the industry was going mad for solar products uh a derby engineer looked at what we were doing which was putting a roof on a building and then bolting modules yeah so he researched what's the world's most popular roof tile and it's very simple it's a 10 to the square meter large flat slab of concrete right so he designed a solar module that was exactly the same size so as always we do because we drill a hole in it for the connections and we bolt on an etfe mineral polymer cell this is a 15 watt cell with connectors on the back which are male and female connectors right the same as you see on your fields full of solar when you're driving around and you end up with that wow so as you say this one's come straight off the building so there's the connectors in the rear so we connect male and female across the roof exactly the same as everybody else and then you tile it in as a roof tile so that and that the reason there's a gap at the top is because that's where the the next tile goes over it so yes the next file sits here right so this this is the the overlap that makes it watertight yeah i'm assuming those tiles are produced in their tens of millions they're relatively cheap the actual concrete tile yes that's right i mean the beauty about the concept of this is we can ship very very lightweight modules around the world and then we buy like we buy the concrete in the country where we're going to install right so so you don't have to make those here and then put them on a truck and then on a ship no because that's heavy each one weighs four and a half kilos right so we're saving four and a half kilos in shipping yeah just to ship modules right and then assemble around the world [Music] clients are coming to us now that are building their their own individual house yeah so it's all about self-built and they have existing solar with the feeding tariff yeah and they they've had their 55 pence a unit for generating well i haven't got that from 2011 but now they're coming to build their own property it's we like the benefits of solar you know we're not so much worried about not getting a feeding tariff anymore but we don't like the aesthetics of it yes so if we're going to do a forever property with our own money we're going to put the most aesthetic solar product on it rather than just in the feeding tariff race it was almost the cheapest four kilowatt system everyone bought now it's i want the most aesthetic four kilowatt system five kilowatt six kilowatt system yeah and about three and you know and the pack ground sources heat pump air source heat pumps yeah and you know the whole renewable package right which makes so much more sense if you're building from scratch i mean now it really does it makes a huge you know retrofittings that is expensive and painful yes it is but building it in is much much easier isn't it although our existing housing stock that the councils and housing associations own they have a 30 to 40 pack scheme right okay so while you're re-roofing yeah we're doing all these housing upgrades with insulation and windows and kitchens and bathrooms when you do roofing why wouldn't you put solar roofing on the whole roof yes if you're going to do it anyway yeah if you're putting up the scaffolding for goodness sake put some solar tiles on it yes so here's the thing that i'm confused about so when i've had my roof that's got tiles on and then a big little framework that's put on top of that and then solar panels put on that and then they wire them all together it's still actually only 16 panels they have to wear together whereas you've got here literally hundreds of tiles that you're wearing together but you don't need extra wiring that's in the roof does that do they just plug into each other and at the end it all plugs into one they plug into each other in series right and once we've got 45 tiles together in series we connect them in parallel so we get a high voltage system going into the roof with only two wires per elevation right so on the roof is we've got three elevations so we have six cables going into the building right because it's a low hand pitch high voltage system right so it works on much much higher voltage solar than your glass modules do so we get very very early start up we get very late finish because we've got a bigger operating voltage right so we need to start the inverters at above 300 volts so by having a high voltage system it means we're in that 300 plus right sweet spot for longer in the day longer in the day so in this particular instance are these is there a battery in this building or is this just a feed into this is just a feed-in on this right um for the same client we've done a project in west sussex which is for uh 4.8 kilowatt hours of batteries as well right so you know it's a technology they've already used yeah on that one because it's a chiropractor's surgery right they wanted the battery storage for evenings whereas on here the it was more a planning led yeah that they needed renewable options so this is a direct with no batteries right but then but then you told what you were telling me about a a like a big apartment building in london that was going to have that was having batteries and roof tiles very much though yeah that one in london will actually have a community battery for the whole apartment block so they will actually design it so every flat can use the power from the batteries right even though some of them are on ground floor it's a seven story block right now let's share the what's on the roof throughout the 167 apartments it's just so obvious isn't it i think i mean do you know what your total capacity is on that on this one this building behind us yeah we put 900 tiles on this building that's 13 and a half kilowatts right which is chunky the industry from 2011 to 2016 was putting 16 250 watt modules on that's that was four kilowatts yeah um because that would hit the 3.68 kilowatt maximum yes for the grid could cope with yeah so that's why everyone's got 16 panels yeah whereas with this with it being eight flats and a landlord supply we've got a much bigger building a much higher uh electrical demand yeah which is why we've got 13 and a half kilowatts this is my argument about new buildings i mean they should all be using these tiles shouldn't they ever all over the country there's new buildings going on there's now you know and i think these put solar panels on them which they don't but at least put these tiles on so there's the so the argument then is what is the extra cost if that was just the the cement tiles as they are around the edge with no solar on yes what's the cost differential to do this a standard concrete roof tile that you're looking at is a pound ten pounder square meter right the solar tile is about 30 pounds each ah the actual individual unit is 30 pounds wow okay but when if we go back to your 16 panels your 5 kilowatt system yeah um a 5 kilowatt system today is around about seven and a half eight thousand pounds right a five kilowatt roof would be about 11 to 12 000 pounds it's about a 50 50 premium right but you have a roof you don't have a roof and then something on top of it and you don't have the associated engineering problems yeah of having two two i mean it's going to be cheaper to install in terms of construction man hours or however you measure that you know yes because you're just putting tiles on but also you haven't got to worry about the engineering of having the increased load over the roof right yeah because solar panels act as a dynamic there's a dead load with the extra weight on the roof but because they have a an airflow below them they act as a dynamic load as well which roofs were rarely designed for yeah it does take a bit longer for them to put those tiles on i mean it does yeah because there's an extra operation yeah you know the the tiles have the connector snapped on on site right and then once when you're laying it on the roof you've then got to connect each cell as you go yeah so there is an extra it's not actually a good deal no it's not no no a roof behind us i think it took the lads about an extra hour per elevation okay yeah that's not very long no it's not very long yeah no and then in terms of because a lot of our viewers will be aware of the you know with huge amounts of publicity the tesla tiles is that essentially the same technology they're using or is that something different there because we haven't seen a tesla tile in this country yet we don't really know my my colleagues in north america um find the tesla product is a toughened glass module right with a hologram on the back which collects the solar so when you come to the balance of the roof as you rightly pointed out behind us the balance of the roof is standard concrete roof tiles and each for a tesla roof the balance of the roof tiles have to be non-solar tesla roof tiles which is so where they can't fit them so they've got to do something else the other issue that we think is coming is the roof behind us has got hips on it yeah and and on the other side it's got a roof window every image we've seen for a tesla roof is a perfect mono pitch rectangle flat rectangle yeah because it's quite common in american buildings you can't cut top and glass no so on this roof all of the diagonals are all cut tiles yes where with tesla you can't cut a glass right so we think you know it's going to be a nice product to see when it gets here yeah but we don't think it can do english vernacular roofs in the way that we're used to yeah i mean you know when you when people start to see this stuff and you know is beginning to change the building industry is beginning to say that we could do this and it does make a difference i mean a thousand developments like this in the country would make you know a measurable difference the national grid engineers would see that very much at the end of the day i mean having supplied roof tiles for 25 years now you know we see this as a no-brainer product yeah you've got to put a roof on a building why not solarize your roof so that roof is amazing and i stand up on this roof which has no solar on it of course and i look at all the roofs around here just the houses the industrial units there is one industrial unit there that's got solar on it one and you do see it occasionally you're seeing it more now and they're okay okay i'm going to be generous there are companies big companies who have got big box warehouses that are finally in 2020 putting a bit of solar on the roof but loads of them haven't but this is great so i'm really glad we came to see this i want to thank chris for for showing us and allowing us to come and have a look at what he's doing here this is brilliant we're going to be looking at more solar roofing things in the near future the only reason we could come here today was because of the wonderful support of our patreon supporters who allow us to make this series so please do have a look at the patreon link if you are feeling in any way fractionally micro generous we'd 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Channel: Fully Charged Show

Views: 464,489

Keywords: robert llew, electric car youtube channel, why should i buy an electric car, green energy comment, grid storage technology, renewable energy youtube, new transport ideas, renewable energy electric vehicles, electric vs ice cars, latest news on renewable energy, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged, battery storage, solar, solar roof tiles, tesla tiles, solar tiles, tesla energy, solar panels, batteries, energy storage

Id: kQC2HDjkDCk

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020