Canada startup aims to smoke asphalt shingles

Canada’s Tectusol solar roofing system looks like a typical clay tile roof, but it could potentially generate hundreds of watts of solar power.

Founder and President Colin Stanger told the Cleantech Group details about his stealthy company’s technology—a next-generation solar roofing system the company claims is low cost and simple to construct. This company is seeking an initial equity investment of $3 million, followed by $5 million, to finance the construction of a production line and cover sales and marketing costs. Stanger said he thinks the company could begin commercial manufacturing about a year from now, reaching cash-flow positive in its second year of production.

Stanger has invested about $2 million of his own funds in the company, which has also raised $50,000 from a private investor to cover its prototype manufacturing. A prototype of the Toronto-based company’s system has undergone successful performance testing at Canada’s National Solar Testing facility, he said.

The roofing market represents a $1 billion per year opportunity in North America alone, Stanger said.

The company's worldwide patent-pending technology involves outdoor metal panels that have the potential to offer coverage, insulation, solar heat collection and photovoltaic electricity generation all in one. The technology has applications in residential, commercial and institutional buildings, he said.

“We would look to provide our product to the end user and work through the design to eliminate the middle man,” he said.

Air is to be used as the heat transfer medium. Air introduced under the panels apparently rises and heat is collected on top, where it meets a heat pump that converts it to hot water in a heat storage device intended to direct heat into the building. The heat pump boosts of the temperature of air coming into the unit by a factor of three or four, Stanger said.

“You don’t have to spend a lot of money to collect heat out of the roof,” he said. “The roof is also a solar collector.”

Electric power appears to come from photovoltaic laminates enclosed within frameless plastic panels, which attach to the metal roofing panels. Stanger said this prevents the need for costly racking systems or other hardware. The system incorporates cable-less mounting technology, allowing the panels to be connected electrically and mechanically in one operation.

The plastic panels are similar in dimension to the metal roofing panels, which are 10 feet by 1 foot, and fit close to the roof’s surface creating minimal visual disturbance, according to the company. Each panel is capable of returning 100 watts, he said.

The panels can be made with different tile impressions and come in various colors, offering an improved and environmentally-friendlier alternative to traditional asphalt shingles, he said. About 10 million tons of discarded shingles are dumped into landfills each year, he said.

“The shingle is something I just don’t like,” he said.

Tectusol customers could also benefit from Ontario’s proposed feed-in tariff system under the Green Energy Act (see Ontario casts green shadow on U.S.). The program is expected to encourage the development and establishment of renewable energy projects.

The proposal would establish a renewable energy feed-in tariff for decades for wind, solar, hydro biomass and biogas, mimicking FITs in Denmark, Germany and Spain (see German feed-in tariff reductions delayed till 2010 and Extra solar panels in Spain driving down prices). Additionally, owners of renewable energy systems would be given a guarantee they could connect projects to the grid.

Tectusol could face competition in the space from Japan’s OM Solar, which has a similar method of air sourced heat collection but is focused on the Japanese market. The company has completed more than 25,000 installations.

Canada’s Conserval Engineering manufactures a transpired hot air collector called the “Solarwall” as well as a roofing system where PV collectors are positioned above thermal collectors to provide electric power.

Tectusol is one of 30 potential new investment opportunities the Cleantech Group added to its innovation pipeline this week, available exclusively to members of the Cleantech Network. Members can click here to search the database.

Interested in emerging cleantech innovations? Here are two new international companies added to the Cleantech Group's database this week also looking for funding:

• Germany’s Heliatek is raising a $28 million follow-on round of venture capital funding to further expand and commercialize. The company, founded in 2006, produces organic, thin-film technology used to make solar cells. The company’s CEO is Andreas Rueckemann.
• Jakarta, Indonesia-based New World Energy is raising $27 million to develop additional plantations and crushing facilities. The company implements large scale jatropha curcas and castor oil seed plantations as well as crushing facilities, and is working to produce jatropha oil for the biodiesel industry in Indonesia and globally.

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