The first grid-tied thin-film solar in Kentucky has been installed – and by Louisville-based company RegenEn Solar:
Louisville, KY — Louisville based RegenEn Solar LLC announced today that it has kept its promise as a pioneer in the solar industry and installed the first grid-tied thin-film solar in Kentucky. The Uni-Solar brand thin-film solar strips were installed on a standing-seam metal roof on a house in the Highlands neighborhood of Louisville, KY and will convert sunlight into electricity for the home. The 26 thin-film strips blend in with the roofing while providing 3.7 kW of power and is expected to eliminate around 80-100% of the homeowner’s electric bill.
Additionally, the thin-film solar will be combined with Enphase micro-inverters that will allow the homeowner to use real-time monitoring software to not only track the output of the entire system but also the performance of the individual solar strips. According to Enphase, this is the first time their micro-inverters have been combined with thin-film solar.
Here’s a shot of the home:
You’ll be able to see the house on the Louisville Solar Tour on October 3, 2009.
Regular readers of Page One are probably already familiar with RegenEn. But if you need a refresher, click here. We’re pretty stoked to have a local business like this in our midst.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Green Driving Tips | E Energy World // Sep 28, 2009 at 7:28 pm
[...] First Thin-Film Solar Installed in Kentucky [...]
2 JasonL // Sep 28, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have solar. I wish it weren’t so cost prohibitive for the lower middle-class (like myself).
3 jake // Sep 28, 2009 at 9:13 pm
It’s cost-prohibitive for most folks.
Hopefully those prices will come down in our lifetime.
4 5 Easy Tips For Saving Money, Conserving Water | Guidance Earth // Sep 28, 2009 at 9:34 pm
[...] First Thin-Film Solar Installed in Kentucky [...]
5 The Global Warming Theory | Green Solutions for You! // Sep 29, 2009 at 5:26 am
[...] First Thin-Film Solar Installed in Kentucky [...]
6 Mark H (Not Hebert) // Sep 29, 2009 at 9:11 am
My frustration is that I think a lot of the pieces of the alternative energy puzzle are in place, but we are going about funding the research all wrong. If we were to compbine solar technology with say MIT’s recent cobalt catalyst fuel cell technology, we may actually get somewhere.
There is no argument that the fastest periods of technological growth revolve around major wars. The reason is that there is a great desire to innovate, there is an urgent time frame to innovate, and there is a huge financial award (ie defense contracts) to be had for achieved those goals.
All of these proven motivators have been ignored in the pursuit of alternative energy. We have differed research and innovation primarily to academia, whose goal is to ensure funding for as long as possible, not find an answer as soon as possible. In addition, there is nobody is there to restrict research dollars for something that isn’t ever going to be scalable. I penny shouldn’t go to ethanol, recycled cooking grease, or other alternative methods that will never solve the problem because they are energy budget negative or unscalable. By being fair, we are wasting dollars.
The government should take 50-100 Billion of the wasted stimulus dollars and give it to first private company who can produce a home fuel cell that works in Cleveland, Ohio, allowing it to unplug from the grid.
I think we will see quicker results if companies have to solve a problem to get paid, instead of getting paid for ideas and results that are unscalable. While we may miss out on a few ideas, the benefit I would hope would outweigh the loss.
Certainly the grant and study method is not working quickly or efficiently enough to get results. There is enough money out there to get this done, we just need to focus it and concentrate on results.
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