MSR Innovations: muda-free solar PV!
Some ex-colleagues have started a building-integrated solar PV company, MSR Innovations. Cool stuff. The cooler thing, though, is that I found out about them through John Robb’s blog. The web: a highly circuitous way of keeping up with friends. 
Robb notes that you can eliminate much of the cost of solar panels if you build them into the roof to begin with. Having seen estimates that installation runs at about half the total cost of a PV installation, I believe it.
Being able to integrate the solar panel directly into a roofing tile, eliminates what Toyota calls muda. A Japanese word which more or less means “uselessness”, in Toyota’s context muda basically refers to anything which doesn’t add value — defects, inventory, non-value-added work, etc. In this instance, muda is the fact that people installing solar panels on their roofs:
- 1. first install the roof
- 2. then install the solar panels on top
The solution is to install the solar-panels in the roof to begin with. The solution is unfortunately limited to new buildings — but it’s still a vast improvement over the alternative for new buildings, which would have been, as above:
- 1. first install the roof
- 2. then install the solar panels on top
MSR's solution is platform-agnostic, meaning they should stand to benefit whether silicon-PV continues its dominance, or thin-film PV usurps it. Exciting stuff!