Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

theartnewspaper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 143 posts

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#81

Post by steffen84 »

drusenko wrote: post #50
xoa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Tesla Solar Roof tiles, and they did get some tiny number (thousands or something like that?) installed. I actually had ordered one and was in line to get it installed last year. But the company cancelled it, and then Tesla started cancelling all of them apparently. The reason the installer gave was that the v1/v2 were too labor intensive to be worth it, and they were waiting for the v3, but from reports I r…

Did you ever end up finding any other company making any tiles that resembled slate, out of curiosity?

The Swiss company Meyerburger will bring solar tiles this year to the market https://www.meyerburger.com/de/solar-tiles-intersolar-lp

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#82

Post by cmarschner »

positr0n wrote: post #69
kristopolous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, they look great. Realizing we've got stuff looking like that that generates freakin' electricity is amazing.

Given the poorer efficiency, wouldn't it be better use of limited money and resources to put regular tiles on houses and normal solar panels somewhere else? (Honest question. I've always wondered why residential rooftop solar, especially since it's usually government subsidized, makes sense anywhere in the world.)

It makes sense to put nicer looking tiles on rooftops if you value the looks of them. You would then find normal looking tiles a tax. That‘s why it could make sense to put solar panels on roofs that don‘t impose this tax on you even if their efficiency is lower.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#84

Post by cmarschner »

bruce511 wrote: post #72
galangalalgol wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean that in high intensity regions you'd need active cooling or is that not a problem?

So for those not in the know, fun fact, solar panels work better when they don't get hot. So things like airflow for passive cooling do matter. I'm aware of several large-scale solar situated in hot regions with no active cooling, so I guess my answer to your question is no, high effeciency panels in hot environments do not need active cooling. Roof tiles are a different question. There's no airflow underneath them.…

Would one be able to extract energy out of the hot tiles as electricity? With a heat exchanger?

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#85

Post by jnsaff2 »

causi wrote: post #6

They can be designed to appear like stone, wood, concrete or brick, so can be hidden on walls and floors, as well as on roofs, Somebody wanna run the numbers and tell me how many decades it will take for one of these things to offset its manufacturing & installation carbon footprint? I'm betting it's a while.

The last I looked (2019-ish) the carbon footprint offset for the whole installation I was planning was 1.9 years. The lifetime is ~20-25 years.

I tried to include everything, panels, inverters, aluminium rails, transport etc.

Things have evolved significantly so my guess is that this has come down a lot.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#86

Post by mattlondon »

This would be great if they can do more styles and not just terracotta. E.g. I own an "old" UK home that has a "normal" tiled roof, but as it is in a conservation area so any attempt at solar will be met with literal outrage. These would be great even if they are only 10% efficient - something is better than nothing and I have this big old roof sitting there and the whole thing could be one huge solar panel.

Where can I buy these that match UK 100-150 year old standard UK housing styles? I have my credit card ready.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#87

Post by cmarschner »

midoridensha wrote: post #66
maxwell wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficiently advanced civilizations seem likely to integrate energy generation technology to the point of invisibility, optimizing for aesthetics and potentially going classical and opting for something that looks like ancient Rome or Egypt. It seems unlikely that the pyramids were power plants and obelisks energy receivers [1], but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers lik…

>but maybe power plants of the future will look like the pyramids and energy receivers like obelisks. Unless people in the future become religious nuts even worse than today's, I don't see why they'd waste so much space and resources on power-generating burial mounds. The pyramids may be impressive for a primitive civilization to build, but they were functionally completely useless and just a collosal waste of manpow…

People built 1000s of churches and cathedrals which, at face value, was a collossal waste of manpower, materials, and space.

And yet we admire them and keep them around for 100s or 1000s of years, because of their greatness. The same for the pyramids. Of course, the effort served a function as well: to establish and maintain a power structure, to give people whose lives hung on strings far more often than ours do a sense of safety and hope.

Man needs greatness. A glimpse of the divine. Our civilization has lost this, and the hyperfunctionalism has taken over our cities. We have removed even ornament and other signs of beauty from our buildings. And it has made them worse.

But these trends come in waves. 50 years from now and we might again spend extra money on whatever will be the equivalent of neogothic or classicist buildings.

And I‘m looking forward to it.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#88

Post by Maakuth »

aitchnyu wrote: post #83

But a youtuber told me a shade of an ivy leaf on a solar car will bring the whole array to a trickle, so any installation should be spotless and free from shadows. Any truth to this, since the tiles are going to be stacked and maybe under shade partially?

The are that's going to covered by the next tile when stacked is well known in advance. Obviously solar cells are not installed in this area. As for the shading from leaves or something, typically diodes are installed in solar panels to prevent current flow into the shaded parts. This helps mitigate the power loss from shades.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#89

Post by TheCapeGreek »

positr0n wrote: post #69
kristopolous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, they look great. Realizing we've got stuff looking like that that generates freakin' electricity is amazing.

Given the poorer efficiency, wouldn't it be better use of limited money and resources to put regular tiles on houses and normal solar panels somewhere else? (Honest question. I've always wondered why residential rooftop solar, especially since it's usually government subsidized, makes sense anywhere in the world.)

It's useful for the NIMBYs and historical conservation areas.

Re: Solar panels disguised as terracotta tiles in Pompeii

#90

Post by hgomersall »

positr0n wrote: post #69
kristopolous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, they look great. Realizing we've got stuff looking like that that generates freakin' electricity is amazing.

Given the poorer efficiency, wouldn't it be better use of limited money and resources to put regular tiles on houses and normal solar panels somewhere else? (Honest question. I've always wondered why residential rooftop solar, especially since it's usually government subsidized, makes sense anywhere in the world.)

A properly designed house with solar can be energy neutral over the year in the UK (not notable for its sunny climate).
Post reply on HN