A solar roof that’s working harder and smarter

Let’s face it, roofs are pretty lazy. They just lay around above us all day and night without moving an inch, and you can be sure that when winter hits won’t knock the snow off themselves. And the eavestroughs? Forget about any help with those.

Maybe that’s why a team of American scientists funded by the Department of took it upon themselves to create a bona fide “smart roof” that refracts heat during the summer and retains it during the winter.

“White” roofs are already capable of refracting sunlight, while darker roofs retain its heat. But by enabling a roof to switch between the two states at a preset temperature, researchers are hoping to create a more robust solution to so-called “passive” solar energy. Here, the change was made using a coating applied to a roof’s shingles. The developers of the coating found that they could either reduce roof temperatures by about 50 – 80 percent in warm weather, or increase roof temperatures up to 80 percent in cooler weather.

What’s more, the roof’s not just smart, it’s also responsible. Created using leftover cooking oil from fast food restaurants — a waste product that’s already being used in the production of biofuel  —  the “bio-based” material coating these new roofs wouldn’t require us to do anything more than continue to eat the fatty, fatty foods we already love.

Hey, if we’re making our roofs work harder, why shouldn’t we get to kick back a little ourselves?