SUN POWER
If you own or live in a home that is more than a couple of years old you may be paying more than you are comfortable with to heat and cool the place. As we’ve said many times here, up until just a few years ago not much attention was paid to the energy efficiency of a building, or how much it was going to cost to heat it or cool it. Our various forms of energy, whether is was electric or gas, were so inexpensive that it was cheaper to build homes with lots of infiltration and just throw in a larger furnace to compensate. And up until the 1970’s oil crisis that worked just fine. After that we started to realize that it does in fact cost money to change the temperature of the air around us, and some people started to look for solutions. The building codes started to change but that takes time and now, forty something years later we are finally seeing building codes that force builders to construct homes that don’t waste as much energy. My point being we have a heck of a lot of houses that need help as far as energy conservation. We have a couple of good programs out there at present, and one in particular is very generous in that it is a low interest loan to help people make their homes more energy efficient, and one of the items you can borrow money to install to help your home is a solar system. We have been receiving a lot of questions about solar systems recently so I thought I’d pass along the little bit that I know about solar.
THE KINDS
When someone calls and says they want a solar system on their home the first thing we need to know is what kind they want. There are two basic types of systems that do two different things, both getting their power from the sun. The first kind and most basic and oldest is solar hot water. If you set a cup of water out in the sun to get warm you have a solar water heater. Some of the earlier systems used coils of plastic pipe run across a person’s roof which would get the water inside them hot as the sun beat down on them, and this was stored in a big storage tank. This was a pretty simple basic system with almost no moving parts. The obvious problem being if the system is not drained down in the winter the pipes freeze and bad things happen. And of course in our climate zone we don’t get enough sun to depend on solar to provide year round hot water, although I’m sure several solar guys would argue the point with me.. So the solar system is only used as a back-up to a primary system of gas or electric hot water. However, if you can get the sun to heat or even pre-heat your water for free (after purchase and installation cost) then it’s a bargain. The newer systems of course are much improved. The water no longer runs through the pipes on the roof. A fluid such as oil or an anti-freeze is used and solar powered pumps make sure the lines are drained when it gets cold and solar motors turn the panel array to follow the sun to capture every available photon. The panel designs have come a long way. The technology and improvements have made the new systems almost maintenance free, and panel size is such that a solar hot water and a solar photovoltaic system can both fit on the same roof of a standard sized home. And we still have rebates for the solar hot water systems, if you have an existing electric hot water heater the rebate can be substantial. But the Federal tax credits are the real inspiration, with a first year credit of 30% of the installed cost in a check back from the Feds. I’ve seen the first year tax credit and the rebate cover half the cost of a new system.
These new systems have very few moving parts, I would think they would be good for many years, and with the 3% loan for 15 years that is funded through a CEC grant many people are taking advantage. If a person has the correct kind of roof, facing in the correct direction, and his neighbors trees don’t block the sun (or some arrangements can be made), a decent solar hot water system may make financial sense for a lot of people. But you gotta do the math. Give it some thought and next time we’ll look at photovoltaic.
If you own or live in a home that is more than a couple of years old you may be paying more than you are comfortable with to heat and cool the place. As we’ve said many times here, up until just a few years ago not much attention was paid to the energy efficiency of a building, or how much it was going to cost to heat it or cool it. Our various forms of energy, whether is was electric or gas, were so inexpensive that it was cheaper to build homes with lots of infiltration and just throw in a larger furnace to compensate. And up until the 1970’s oil crisis that worked just fine. After that we started to realize that it does in fact cost money to change the temperature of the air around us, and some people started to look for solutions. The building codes started to change but that takes time and now, forty something years later we are finally seeing building codes that force builders to construct homes that don’t waste as much energy. My point being we have a heck of a lot of houses that need help as far as energy conservation. We have a couple of good programs out there at present, and one in particular is very generous in that it is a low interest loan to help people make their homes more energy efficient, and one of the items you can borrow money to install to help your home is a solar system. We have been receiving a lot of questions about solar systems recently so I thought I’d pass along the little bit that I know about solar.
THE KINDS
When someone calls and says they want a solar system on their home the first thing we need to know is what kind they want. There are two basic types of systems that do two different things, both getting their power from the sun. The first kind and most basic and oldest is solar hot water. If you set a cup of water out in the sun to get warm you have a solar water heater. Some of the earlier systems used coils of plastic pipe run across a person’s roof which would get the water inside them hot as the sun beat down on them, and this was stored in a big storage tank. This was a pretty simple basic system with almost no moving parts. The obvious problem being if the system is not drained down in the winter the pipes freeze and bad things happen. And of course in our climate zone we don’t get enough sun to depend on solar to provide year round hot water, although I’m sure several solar guys would argue the point with me.. So the solar system is only used as a back-up to a primary system of gas or electric hot water. However, if you can get the sun to heat or even pre-heat your water for free (after purchase and installation cost) then it’s a bargain. The newer systems of course are much improved. The water no longer runs through the pipes on the roof. A fluid such as oil or an anti-freeze is used and solar powered pumps make sure the lines are drained when it gets cold and solar motors turn the panel array to follow the sun to capture every available photon. The panel designs have come a long way. The technology and improvements have made the new systems almost maintenance free, and panel size is such that a solar hot water and a solar photovoltaic system can both fit on the same roof of a standard sized home. And we still have rebates for the solar hot water systems, if you have an existing electric hot water heater the rebate can be substantial. But the Federal tax credits are the real inspiration, with a first year credit of 30% of the installed cost in a check back from the Feds. I’ve seen the first year tax credit and the rebate cover half the cost of a new system.
These new systems have very few moving parts, I would think they would be good for many years, and with the 3% loan for 15 years that is funded through a CEC grant many people are taking advantage. If a person has the correct kind of roof, facing in the correct direction, and his neighbors trees don’t block the sun (or some arrangements can be made), a decent solar hot water system may make financial sense for a lot of people. But you gotta do the math. Give it some thought and next time we’ll look at photovoltaic.
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