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Canadian Solar announced today that it will partner with the largest privately held American roofing company, PetersenDean, to improve the quality and lower the cost of rooftop solar power systems.
To many of us, solar panel installation is just the process of putting solar panels on the roof and connecting them to power lines. Unfortunately, the installation process is more complicated than that. The cost to install solar panels is nearly half the cost of an entire photovoltaic solar setup. The cost of solar panels has been decreasing, but the installation cost is still relatively high because of that.
To address this, a simpler and quicker installation process needs to be devised. One potential solution to this problem is to standardize rooftop solar panel shapes and sizes, so that all rooftop panels could fit standardized mounting equipment which could be mass-produced in a factory, which has the potential to be far cheaper than mounting brackets which are hand-built by contractors.
For example: standardize 200-watt panels to fit standard mounting equipment so that everything can be bolted together easily without constructing mounting brackets by hand. This would be very helpful to simplify installation to just bolting.
This would matter most to people installing their own panels themselves — more of them would be able to handle the job themselves and pay no labour cost. Simply putting solar panels on a roof does not have to be a complicated task!
For now, though, roofing companies with good expertise in this arena and broad reach can potentially help to drop the cost of solar installations. Regarding the announcement today, PetersenDean notes that it ”has launched a successful solar division and will actively promote the new roofing program, capitalizing on its decades of roofing experience to improve the installation quality and costs for installation of a residential solar system.”
“Canadian Solar is proud to partner with PetersenDean, a leader in bringing solar to the residential market and well known for quality workmanship and materials,” said, Alan King , general manager of Canadian Solar USA. “We are pleased to support this award-winning company in an important new program that will help make clean, renewable energy a reality for consumers nationwide.”
The new program kicks off October 19-21 at at Santana Row.
Source: PR Newswire
Photo Credit: rooftop solar panels by ICMA (Some rights reserved)
2012-10-15 13:22:21