A roofing company and solar developer have teamed up with plans to merge their products and develop accessible building-integrated solar.

Owens Corning Roofing and Solexel received a $13 million grant from the United States Department of Energy through its SunShot Initiative.

“Owens Corning has been in dialogue with Solexel for several years,” said Ownes Corning spokesman Matt Schroder.

Schroder said the two companies work well together though there is no formal partnership between them. They drafted and submitted this proposal for funding from the department of energy because they believe that together they can develop something significant, Schroder said.

“Owens Corning and Solexel are two innovators in their respective markets,” Schroder wrote in an e-mail. “The proposal the two companies submitted presents a unique and new approach to the solar market that could help shape the next generation of solar energy technologies and ensure that the United States remains a leader in this global market.”

He said the companies are just in the very beginning stages of working together, and they don’t know what the product of their combined efforts might look like or entail yet.

“There simply aren’t any specifics regarding products or details about the applications to talk about yet,” Schroder said.

The companies got word of their grant earlier this week and just made the announcement. In their preliminary discussions with each other, they knew only that coming together and working to develop something that merges the bet of their technologies could result in something extremely useful and marketable.

Companies have been working on developing solar shingles and other solar energy-producing building materials for years. And solar shingles do already exist. But within the industry, they are not very well regarded and most roof-top solar installations are still placed atop traditional roofing materials.

If Owens Corning and Solexel can find an affordable way to meld solar energy-producing elements into standard building materials, it could make solar more accessible to the masses and more ubiquitously applied in future construction projects.

"Owens Corning is excited about the potential to develop game-changing technology that addresses homeowner demand for reliable, high-performance, affordable and sustainable roofing solutions," Owens Corning Roofing president Sheree Bargabos said in a statement. "We have been monitoring solar roofing as a prospective market where we could provide value for our customers. This is a unique opportunity to make the technology relevant for the broader marketplace that may have been interested but never considered it a viable option due to cost."

Image courtesy of Sapa Solar.