20060916
Dr. Saffa Riffat asked that we clarify on the Home Page that Sola Roof is not yet commercial or at a "market ready" stage of development. Therefore I added this paragraph:
The reader must note well that Sola Roof is at a very early stage of development with no true scientific data to support the claims that are advanced here by inventors and practitioners. Our results to date include several operational field units that show promising potential and we encourage the scientific and university based students and researchers to collaborate with our DIY community. Government program administrators should understand that this project is deserving of support for all proposals that may originate from those using the information from this website and that this community and it's members would cooperate with government initiatives to fund serious scientific investigations and studies of any kind.
If this is not a good way of saying it then we could have some discussion here. Post your suggestion below. The idea is that we what to be clear with government program administrators (who may have funding for research) that Sola Roof is at a very early stage of development, with only small, DIY type of projects in existance,widely scattered across the world. - Sola Roof Guy
We are only in an inventing stage and no seriously funded R&D is currently underway that would bring the methods forward through development phases. Therefore anyone should be able to apply for funding support. The information here at this wiki is about how to build prototypes that will work based on replication of early work by our Pioneers but we have very little scientific understanding of how the processes work at the engineering and scientific level and so it is impossible to say if a given prototype is "optimized".