BIPV & architectural solar — the panels you can't see, for the buildings that need them.

In plain English: imagine an asphalt shingle roof, but each shingle is also generating electricity. Solar shingles look like a slightly-thicker premium asphalt or slate roof; from the curb they're almost invisible as solar. Best fit for new builds, full re-roofs, or heritage homes where visible rooftop panels aren't allowed.

Real examples: Tesla Solar Roof, GAF Timberline Solar, CertainTeed Solstice, Mitrex solar shingles. Photovoltaic skylights (from Onyx Solar and others) sit in the same category — a skylight that also generates power while letting filtered light through.

In plain English: picture a modern glass office tower with acres of window. Traditional windows are just glass. Semi-transparent PV glazing has photovoltaic cells embedded in a thin film across the glass — the window looks slightly tinted from inside, but generates electricity from the same sunlight it's letting through. You still see out; the sunlight passing through is doing double duty.

Real examples: Onyx Solar photovoltaic glass, Polysolar / Polysolar-adjacent glazing systems, Ubiquitous Energy transparent PV. Atrium roofs, greenhouse walls, and building envelope glass are the primary applications.

In plain English: a curtain wall is the modern facade system on most office and condo towers — a lightweight aluminum-framed skin hung on the outside of the building's structure, usually a mix of window glass and opaque panels (called spandrel panels — the strip covering the floor slab between windows). Solar curtain wall replaces those spandrel panels with photovoltaic panels of the same size + colour, so the facade generates electricity without changing the building's look.

Real examples: the University of Toronto Myron & Berna Garron Health Sciences Complex Mitrex facade (see our U of T case study), the Taza Marketing Centre in Calgary, and multiple mid-rise Toronto Green Standard Tier 2/3 projects.

In plain English: traditional cladding is the material on the outside of a building — brick, metal, stone, wood. It weatherproofs and looks nice, but doesn't generate anything. PV cladding is a solid opaque panel that hangs on the wall the same way conventional cladding does, but the panel itself contains photovoltaic cells behind a coloured or patterned finish. You can specify grey, bronze, terracotta, blue, or custom colours — the trade-off is slightly lower output vs a plain black panel of the same size.

Real examples: Mitrex coloured facade panels on the SunRise Retrofit (Alberta) and multiple Toronto MURB projects, Onyx Solar opaque cladding in institutional buildings, Metsolar custom-colour panels in luxury residential.