Consider a solar water heating system!
By tinychoices | August 27, 2008
Special Guest Blogger Bernie Frist from PHX writes with his experiences installing a solar hot water heater. Bernie is a colleague of Karina’s at her Day Job. He recently took the time to research an alternative to a traditional hot water heater and came up with a much better option - even on a purely financial basis!
Is your hot water heater approaching end of life and/or simply looking for a sustainable energy approach to producing hot water? Consider a solar water heating system!
My fifty-gallon hot water heater was twelve years old and approaching end-of-life. Living in Arizona with all of the “sustainability” buzz around the abundance of solar energy available in the Desert Southwest, I decided to investigate solar hot water heating options for replacement of my existing electric hot water heater. As I delved into my research, I started with my local Utility and discovered that they offered a solar energy program designed to help reduce the cost of installing a new solar water heating system for residences within their service territory. In specific, their program rebated a payment of $0.50 per installed kWh (kilowatt hour) of energy savings, based on the SRCC OG-300 rating (visit www.solar-rating.org for more information about the rating), for transfer of all Environmental Attributes and Environmental Attribute Reporting Rights for the renewable source to the Utility. Additionally, I ascertained through the Utility’s website and my CPA that both State and Federal tax credits (not deductions – credits!) were available for installing a renewable energy/energy efficient water heating system.
Running the numbers, I realized that my return-on-investment (ROI) was going to be pretty rapid, especially considering that my existing heater required replacement. Thus, the next step was contractor and system selection. I researched, identified and contacted a local distributor/installer and they explained that different types of solar systems are available based on regional weather and water quality conditions. Also, system performance varies as a function of the household hot water load, average ambient air temperatures, the home’s roof pitch and orientation, and seasonal intensity of solar radiation. These variables, some of which change from home to home within the same neighborhood, will determine how much energy a particular system will save on an annual basis. For my given application, the contractor guided me toward the SunEarth® solar collector with a single eighty-gallon solar storage tank.
The key components in this particular solar water heating system include a solar collector, solar storage tank with integral heat exchanger, 12-volt DC circulation pump, expansion tank, pressure gauge, and propylene glycol heat transfer fluid. The solar collector is the heart of the system; simply stated, when the sun is shining heat energy is absorbed by the solar collector’s all copper absorber plate and transferred to the heat transfer fluid circulating through the solar collector. The 12-volt DC pump efficiently circulates this heated fluid through the collector piping and integral tank heat exchanger (copper tubing wrapped around the solar storage tank). As the heated fluid passes through the heat exchanger, the heat in the fluid is transferred by conduction to the potable water within the solar storage tank. As this process is continuously repeated during the average sunny day, the temperature in the solar storage tank rises.
The result? I replaced my old fifty-gallon electric hot water heater with a state-of-the-art, eighty-gallon solar hot water heating system for less than $1,000 out-of-pocket and am realizing an abundance of hot water and energy savings of approximately $0.50 to $1.25 per day based on my historical energy comparison!
Have you recently examined a new home purchase or taken the time to crunch the dollars on a green purchasing decision?
Topics: Home |
How long do you figure it will take to make your ROI? I’m in a position where I have a little less than 5 years left in my house, and appliances are starting to fail (they’re 15 years old). So they will almost certainly fail before I leave…
During my conversations with Bernie he said that because of discounts/rebates, tax credits, and more discounts for recommending friends to his contractor, his ROI was nearly immediate. You should check in your area and see if you can see similar savings on taxes!
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