If I ever found myself building a home and money was little to know object, I would love to go green. The thing that always bugged me about solar panels was that they don’t really meld with most roofs; in some situations, they can look quite hideous. The alternative is a wind turbine, which suffers from similar problems. A wind turbine is great if you have the space for it, but within urban confines is not really practical. Enter SRS energy with their patented SRS roofing system.

What SRS Energy has done is to create individual tile-shaped solar cells. They look like regular roofing tiles. They can be built into a conventional tiled roof and are easily installed. SRS Energy not only provide electricity generating Active tiles, they also provide inactive tiles which are identical in appearance but that do not generate electricity; making it possible to blend your Active tiles into the roof of your home.

The patented SRS connection system eliminates the complex system wiring normally found on solar roofs, and makes installing tiles with and without solar an easy “hammer and nails” process.

While I am sure that there are more efficient solar systems out there, this is a very nice idea. It would be nice to have a 3kW or 4kW system without a massive solar array bootstrapped to the roof.

At an estimated $17,500 for a 3kW system, they are not exactly cheap, but if you consider the rising cost of energy, they would likely pay for themselves over a few short years.

Sources: SRS Energy, Tree Hugger, Crunch Gear, Gizmodo

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