Solar powering your house

There are three ways of solar powering the house and going off the grid (really !). They are:

# Photovoltaic cells : The most proven technology, but it would require lots of cells to generate the kind of power needed to run the house. These cells require more square area.
# Concentrated solar panels : The current favourite to power houses. These can be used on all roofs as well as sides of the building and can generate as much as 5 times the power than photovoltaic cells. The only drawback to this is they require clear skies and constant sunshine ( 2 things that are not avaiilable most of the time at TI).
# The third and most interesting method is called Dye Solar Cell. This uses a 2 stage photovoltaic process with chemical reactions with dyes as it's core. There are now glass doors and window panels avalable with this technology built in. These are trasparet glass surfaces with the dye solar cell in between. So you can haave your window (and the view) and generate electricity as you gaze out into the greenery :).

In India, there has been a settlement built in West Bengal that completely goes of the grid. What's more they are even feeding back into the grid when the load int he house is not high. They have tied up with the WB government and they get Rs 7 per kwh for the power sent back to the grid. No other state at this time allows power back into the grid from individuals.

On an average the cost of solarification (is that the right word ?) of a 3 bedroom house works out to around Rs 5.5L currently.

We at TI, in the face of teething power issues that we are facing on a daily basis, need to seriously start evaluating these technologies. Any thoughts, ideas on this would be of utmost interest.