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By the way, this was the thesis of the unfairly* maligned Solyndra: their collectors were extremely light and encased in tubes. The idea was that they were lig
by gumby 4y ago
By the way, this was the thesis of the unfairly* maligned Solyndra: their collectors were extremely light and encased in tubes. The idea was that they were light and could be anchored without through holes to joists (every through hole in a roof is a leak opportunity for a leak, especially when it’s a retrofit; with the weight of panels on a flat industrial roof you often have to anchor them to a structural member). Also the tube structure permitted airflow so there wasn’t a heat build up nor risk of a “wing” phenomenon.
* one political party chose to use Solyndra as a cudgel against a reasonable industrial program. I was always dubious that their thin film approach would pan out, and indeed it didn’t which was what killed the company. But admired their basic thesis, which I still think was sound.
- myself248 4y agoFor a while, Batteryhookup was selling pallets of Solyndra modules for unbelievably cheap. I think it's difficult to use them on buildings now because the NEC's new rapid-shutdown requirements effectively made decades of solar stuff obsolete (welp so much for the environment), and they're not useful for making solar carports and stuff. But maybe someone with a lot of land...? Anyway, it's a shame. They were a really neat concept and sidestepped a lot of issues that raise the cost of other systems.