C21e solar roof tile wins Construct sustainability award
Our integrated solar photovoltaic tile, C21e wins the coveted 'Best Sustainable Product Award' at Ireland's Construct Building Exhibition. Last week, we won Best Sustainable Product Award for our C21e solar electric roof tile at Construct, Northern Ireland's major construction show. Following Secretary of State, Peter Hain's recent announcement of £59 million for the promotion of renewable energy in Northern Ireland, this product's accolade will provide the construction market with an opportunity to embrace Northern Ireland's renewables revolution without compromising the aesthetics of their development.
This latest award builds on a host of accolades for C21e including Best Exterior Product at Interbuild 2004 and Building Magazine's award for Innovation in their 2005 sustainability awards.
C21e is the most efficient (21.5%), easy to install and cost effective solar tile on the market. The latest iteration of the C21e tile blends unnoticeably with conventional concrete tiles. Our advanced C21e design has been developed with aesthetics and efficiency as the primary concern. The cells are all black in colour with electronic contacts positioned behind a black tedlar backing. This completely eliminates solar reflection, maximising energy production within the given tile area, thereby requiring less than 10 square metres of C21e to generate a quarter of an average 3 bedroom homes electricity requirements. The application of these discrete solar photovoltaic tiles provides all the benefits of a 'bolt-on' solar systems, used in eco-home schemes such as BedZED, without affecting the 'roof lines' or appearance of the development.
Major housing developers including St James and Barratts are now testing this new technology on their show houses as part of their drive to deliver more sustainable homes.
Policies such as The Merton Rule (see www.themertonrule.org ) are encouraging a massive uptake in renewable technology as over 80 councils are in the process of implementing pro-renewable planning guidelines.
The thermal version of our C21 tile (C21t) will make its debut at Interbuild 2006 (April 23-27th 2006) providing a fully integrated 'Complete Solar Roof™'. The combination of the two tiles (C21e & C21t) will deliver renewably generated heat and electricity to homeowners at a time when rising fuel prices are causing major panic in the energy industry.
The C21 product range 'future proofs' a home against such rises by fixing the prices that householders will pay for fuel over the 50 year lifetime of the product.
