Petaluma R&D Lab Granted $1m Federal Grant to Scale Solar Nationally

The R&D Lab Co, an engineering consulting company that designs products and processes to scale solar and sustainable building, announced that it was selected to receive a $1,000,000 award from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to pursue their innovative idea to support photovoltaic (PV) industry growth. This project will refine, manufacture, and commercialize a new roofing-integrated solar mounting system to reduce costs and for scaling adoption.

With this Federal funding, The R&D Lab will bring manufacturing to the US, further refine their product, answer fundamental questions about the solar roofing business model and system wire management, in service to integration of roofing and solar so every homeowner is offered solar when seeking a roof.

“We have 5 million re-roofs in the US every year and last year only 700,000 people got solar. We think that if everyone is offered solar at the time of re-roof, we can grow the solar market because it makes financial sense. Why get a roof when you can get a roof that pays for itself? ” says Amy Atchley, co-founder of the r&d lab and owner of Amy’s Roofing and Solar, a solar installer based in Petaluma, CA.

“We are trying to help roofers become solar roofers by giving them an integrated product and supporting them to develop their processes. Our mission is to scale solar massively in the US. This grant will boost our efforts,” Atchley says.

Max Vera, C.O.O. of Wine Country Roofing, based in Santa Rosa, is a roofing contractor that also offers solar roofing solutions. Vera says “integrating solar into our work has a transformative impact. By offering solar roofs, we not only contribute to sustainable energy production but also pave the way for our community to reduce our carbon footprint and energy costs. Our partnership with StarlingRFS enables us to further these goals, accelerating the adoption of clean energy and setting new benchmarks for the solar roofing sector."

The r&d lab was selected as a part of the SETO Silicon Solar Manufacturing and Dual-use Photovoltaics Incubator Funding Program. Projects in this funding program will enable continued solar cost reductions while developing next-generation solar technologies and boosting American solar manufacturing.

If 30% of re-roof customers in the US choose a solar roof instead of a roof, the country would double annual solar installs. At Amy’s Roofing and Solar, Atchley says about 60% of homeowners choose a solar roofing option over a roof alone: an optimistic number for the future of clean energy.

r&d lab co | www.therdlab.com