If you heard Science Friday today you heard a lot about solar energy. If you have a south-facing section of roof, you can probably benefit from installing a solar water heating system. Note: these systems (which we have) are not the kind you hear about which will allow you to sell excess power back to the utility company; those are called Photovoltaic systems. The more common solar heating system is an array of thermal panels installed on a roof with water piped through it. As the sun heats the water it's collected in a water tank and pumped up into the house when the hot water faucet is turned on. Most systems have a backup electric heater controlled by a thermostat to augment hot water in the event of several consecutive cloudy days.
If you're looking for a contractor near you, go to Find Solar. It's got a search function by state/county as well as a humongous list of FAQs.
Posted by Linkmeister at July 18, 2008 10:56 AM | TrackBackis it only me who gets solar panels for heating water, mixed up with solar panels (photovoltaics) for generating electricity?
Posted by: RONW at July 18, 2008 09:23 PMNo. Lots of people do, until you tell them that the bare-bones heating system costs X and the photovoltaic costs Y, and how much did you pay? If you paid X, then you have a passive system which won't make your meter run backwards, cool as that sounds.
Posted by: Linkmeister at July 19, 2008 08:27 AMI listened to that show, pretty interesting. I'm fascinated by solar power.
The company I work for has been doing a solar system project for someone - I think the photovoltaic kind, because I think it involves some kind of "conversion" system, I guess to integrate it or something?
Anyway, I mention this because we have the job listed as "Solar System" and I always think that's funny because you know, like the solar system we live in. As if the company is working on the actual solar system. And when I saw this blog post's title, that's the first thing I think of, is solar systems, as in a star with planets orbiting. ha.
At any rate, do you mind sharing how much money do you estimate you save with your hot water?
Posted by: Chloe at July 21, 2008 05:14 PMChloe, it's really hard to tell, because our electric bill is way out of whack compared to the "average" bill we see mentioned in the newspapers. It drives us crazy. An average family of four (there are two of us) is somewhere around 850 kilowatt hours per month, if I remember rightly, and we're consistently above 1100 for no reason we can think of. Yes, we have a pool, but its filter runs about five hours a day, and that still shouldn't add 250-300 kwh per month.
I logged the date of the last repair to our water system (new tank and pressure regulator) on a calendar and I'm going to try to measure the impact.
Posted by: Linkmeister at July 21, 2008 07:48 PM