Shay Curran, an engineering professor at the University of Houston, is on a solar innovation roll.

In addition to a self-cleaning coating for solar panels he and a team of researchers has developed, Curran is working to commercialize a solar power generator he developed after Hurricane Ike left him and his family without electricity for days in 2007.

“I started looking into the expense of solar,” he said. “And I found that the installation and labor makes up a huge percentage of the cost of a system. So, I thought about how to eliminate that cost.”

In thinking about it, Curran decided the most elegant solution would be to develop a solar generator people can use when they need or want it that the can fold up and store in the shed when they don’t or when it’s being threatened by extreme storms.

The portable system solves for multiple issues in solar deployment, he said.

Homeowners won’t have to worry about recovering their investment when they sell, he said.

“If you’re offered a job somewhere else, you just pick it up and move it from town to town with you,” he said. “It wouldn’t even matter if you owned your house.”

In the system he developed, he used lithium-ion batteries to store power so the generator would work day and night. The 5-kilowatt generator produced enough power to keep the lights, refrigerator and air conditioner running in his Texas home.

It would make solar less risky and less of a commitment.

“Have you ever flown over Florida?” Curran asked. “I make a habit of looking for solar on roofs when I fly.”

There is very little rooftop solar in Florida, Curran said. He speculates that it’s because homeowners are afraid to install a system for fear a hurricane would wipe it away.

Beyond making solar easier to adopt in the US, he said it would be beneficial to people in developing countries, where it could be deployed cheaply to supply power for whole villages.

Curran said he’s working with several companies interested in purchasing his technology and commercializing it.