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From Pompeii to Évora: Invisible solar panels for heritage sites

Unsightly for some, solar panels are now being disguised and designed as ancient Roman tiles to blend into historic city skylines. From Italy to Portugal, Pompeii and Évora are proving that heritage preservation and sustainability can go hand in hand.

READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2026/06/19/from-pompeii-to-evora-invisible-solar-for-heritage-sites

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00:01Each year, millions of tourists from around the world visit Pompeii.
00:05They admire its frescoes and archaeological ruins,
00:09but few of them will ever notice the solar panels
00:12installed on the roof of the ancient Roman Villa of the Mysteries.
00:30This is a small photovoltaic panel that produces energy to illuminate this villa
00:37which, a large part of the energy that is needed,
00:42comes from the roof installed here.
00:46While Pompeii is considering extending this solution to other areas of the archaeological park
00:52that are far from the electricity grid,
00:54the city of Evora in Portugal has also adopted similar technologies
00:59avoiding the visual impact of conventional solar panels like this.
01:04We have here these shingles installed on the rooftop of the city hall in Evora,
01:08but they are not normal shingles.
01:10They are made of a semi-transparent epoxy material
01:13with solar cells embedded in the middle of it,
01:16which generates electricity for the self-consumption of this building.
01:20We have around this area, around 20 kilowatt peak of PV shingles,
01:25as we call them installed,
01:26and their objective is to blend into the landscape architecture of this building
01:32to protect the heritage area aspect of Evora.
01:37Since 1986, Evora's historic center has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
01:43PV shingles are among the solutions through which a European project
01:47is helping the city reconcile heritage preservation with the modern challenges of sustainability.
01:52Evora is a city of the World Heritage Site.
01:58And as a great majority of European cities have the obligation to preserve the historical center,
02:10the heritage, the heritage.
02:13However, it cannot be stopped at the time.
02:15We also have to advance in the sense of finding solutions that allow the historical cities
02:24to go to the encounter of what we have to solve today,
02:30which is the problem of carbonization.
02:34Among the solutions developed to make this possible,
02:37is one created by a small family owned company based in North Eastern Italy.
02:43The cup is a composite of resin that is transferred to the first frame.
02:47We take the photovoltaic cells that we have already sold in the past,
02:51and we put them in it.
02:53Next, we take another frame, which is a composite made with loads of loads.
02:59The last step is to lower the stamp and finally remove the finished product,
03:06which is a composite of resin with the inside of the cells we have seen before.
03:09Solutions like this one, and the different technology adopted in Pompeii,
03:14send an encouraging message to the rest of the world.
03:18I believe that the lesson that Pompeii gives is that it can work here,
03:23in this place, so delicate, so attentive, so fragile and large,
03:29means that it can work everywhere.
03:32Glass roofs integrating photovoltaic panels and solar canopies
03:36installed in the courtyard of schools in the historic center
03:39are among the other solutions being tested in Evora.
03:42Together with Alkmaar in the Netherlands,
03:45the Portuguese city is assessing these innovations
03:47through the Positives project to evaluate their potential for replication across Europe.
03:52and the Positives project to evaluate its relevance as to theheritering of the knowledge of the unique and all species.
03:55And the Positives project to evaluate their potential for the
03:56positives and its- besides-bositives project.
03:56And that means that it is a non-positives community,
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