> It seems pretty obvious that you needed more efficiency for it to be a viable rooftop solution but the guy who set this up claimed that the fact he could just stick down some velcro and stick on the cells opened up some different use cases with cheap and lean installations supporting cheap cells.
I imagine one end-case could be using this as a cladding material, you could cover buildings, and the low efficiency would be balanced by the low cost.
The major problem is that these materials are unstable and degrade quickly, if you can get the lifetime up from 5-10 years now, to 20-30 years, then it really starts to look attractive.
I don't think commercial structures typically keep their cladding beyond 10 years, unless it's a warehouse, so I'd imagine if it's anything other than. A warehouse they'd be happy to just have it reliably last 10 years then whatever from that point forward.
Also depending on who's involved and the business vertical, plus tax and policy structure, there could be a cottage industry around skinning warehouses I'd imagine, even if it needed to be re-skinned ever 10 years, but I agree that anything less than 10 years isn't sturdy enough for many applications beyond super niche.
For many use-cases, the cost is far more important than the efficiency. e.g., I have a chicken coop that's a few hundred feet from the house and not worth the trouble of running wiring out there. In the past, I used battery-powered LED lighting. I'd much rather switch to solar. Same for the unfinished shed I started building years ago.
Those of us in rural areas often have to cope with wiring difficulties that solar would solve.
I imagine one end-case could be using this as a cladding material, you could cover buildings, and the low efficiency would be balanced by the low cost.
The major problem is that these materials are unstable and degrade quickly, if you can get the lifetime up from 5-10 years now, to 20-30 years, then it really starts to look attractive.