Disguising solar panels as ancient Roman tiles in Pompeii

techxplore.com

4 points·davidgerard··4 comments

here's the manufacturer's page (in Italian, translate is OK): https://www-dyaqua-it.translate.goog/invisiblesolar/_it/copp...

expensive and handmade, but ideal for this particular job

The installation at Pompei happened in 2018, and it was - essentially - an experiment, in co-operation with the Ministry and CNR, nowadays there should be (but I couldn't find them) some results/reports/etc., and these roof tiles should have been much more known and "industrialized", at least for small batches, production of these tiles should have begun in 2016 and company was fouinded in 2017.

But seemingly (the same family/firm also makes some actually very nice led lamps disguised as stones/bricks/tiles, here: https://www.medealed.com/ ) business had a stop or anyway a break (maybe Covid-19 related?).

It is easy from the Partita IVA (fiscal ID) to find out the turnovers of the last few years of the firm and more than small they are tiny, even for a single family artisan firm.

Hopefully 2022 has been a good year for them.

there's a UK company that does manufactured slate solar cells in larger quantities as well https://www.gb-sol.co.uk/products/pvslates/default.htm

Good to know, though that obviously is only suitable where slates are standard, and - to be fair - it is easier to replace something that is already flat and dark/gray/black with something that is typically flat and dark/gray/black.

I have seen another couple firms doing something similar, but they were discontinued AFAIK, so it seems like there are not many alternatives, I believe also the "Tesla" ones are (still) unobtanium at the moment.

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