New Solar Tile Launched by Solarcentury
March 7th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan
Have a tiled roof? If so, you might want a solar tile, eh? Solarcentury has your back (in Europe, at least). Solar century is a UK solar company that was formed ‘way back’ in 1998. It’s been an innovator in the field, especially in its offering of solar tiles (pictures above & below).
Obviously, these solar tiles are a good fit for the UK, where there are a lot of tiled roofs. The company has also expanded into Italy and France now, after much success in the UK.
Yesterday, Solarcentury announced that it was launching a new solar tile, the C21e solar electric plain tile. The company states that “each C21e solar roof tile replaces four conventional roof tiles and is attached straight to the roof battens. C21e is recognised as one of the industry’s leading solar products and has won a host of industry awards.”
More from Solarcentury’s news release yesterday:
Its design allows the three million roofs in the UK with traditional small format plain tiles to simply integrate solar.
Solarcentury’s British designed C21e tile and slate products, provide a chance for more UK homes to go solar in style. The company first launched its Queen’s award winning C21e solar electric roof tile in 2005. Its C21e slate followed in 2008, with the products now on thousands of homes in the UK with growing demand in Italy and France.
Yes, this is quite reminiscent of solar shingles, which have been relatively slow to get off the ground here in the US.
Of course, the UK’s progressive solar feed-in tariff scheme has been a big help in getting Solarcentury’s solar tiles on UK homes, and growing the business tremendously in the process. But the company is confident it will survive the feed-in tariff cuts just fine. “The Feed-in tariff has boosted demand for solar significantly, and we see that set to continue as conventional energy prices rise,” Martin White, Product Manager at Solarcentury, says. “National and local solar installers and roofing contractors have adopted C21e, due to its design flexibility and ease of installation, and we see that set to continue in 2012 as customers seek out products that deliver good looking returns, without compromising on quality.”
The new solar tile option will be unveiled to more eyes at the UK’s largest green building conference, Ecobuild, from March 20-22 at ExCel.
For more, check out Solarcentury’s solar tiles and slates page.
All images courtesy Solarcentury
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About the Author
Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.
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