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Westinghouse Solar Awarded Patent for Its Solar Panel Technology

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December 07, 2010

Westinghouse Solar Awarded Patent for Its Solar Panel Technology

By Anuradha Shukla
TMCnet Contributor

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded Westinghouse Solar another patent for its unique solar panel technology.


Westinghouse Solar is a manufacturer and distributor of solar power systems. The company notes that the new patent (U.S. 7,832,157) provides additional protection for the Westinghouse Solar panel's design, and expands its intellectual property portfolio in the solar panel mounting area.

These innovations, claims the company, facilitates faster and easier installation, and ensures safer and more reliable performance.

This latest patent features side electrical connections that eliminate the need to wire solar panels manually. The patent also includes a splice device that connects solar panels together in a secure and rigid fashion, grooves along the side of the solar panel to allow connection to rafters at any point along each solar panel.

Moreover, the patent includes a grounding path provided through these splice devices that eliminates the need to ground solar panels manually.

While the latest patent was awarded to the company on Nov. 16, the company's original patent covering a solar module with integrated racking, wiring and grounding was granted in 2008.

Westinghouse Solar already has over 25 patents in several stages of evaluation at the USPTO and foreign patent offices.

"This latest patent award further strengthens our intellectual property portfolio related to solar panel mounting and wiring systems, and gives us a significant competitive advantage in our continuing efforts to make solar power more mainstream," said Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Westinghouse Solar, in a press release. "As solar cell and inverter costs continue to decline, installation costs become a greater percentage of total system cost – and we believe our integrated solution reduces these installation costs significantly."

"Westinghouse Solar will continue to develop and commercialize this technology, and will continue to work with distribution and licensing partners to help make these installation benefits more accessible to residential and commercial customers everywhere," Cinnamon added. "The engineering team at Westinghouse Solar pioneered the concept of integrating the racking, wiring and grounding into the frame of the solar panel itself, and will aggressively protect our patented technology."

Read a related article at TMCnet “White House Going Green with Solar Panels.”


Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard

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