Anybody here using solar energy for heating water / power ? I cant seem to find much information on it, less than in the UK, which seems odd given the amount of sunshine there is around! I have seen the articles on the Solar City project but thats about it.
Is solar a viable option? Are there any government subsidies?
Dont know about other states but here in Vic' when you build a new house, to reach 5* energy rating you must have either, solar assisted heating or a water tank installed. We opted for the heating. Havent moved in yet so cant tell you how good it is.
Most pools here have solar heating and it work fantastically well, even here in Victoria, where apparentley it gets much colder than England!!! Lesley
BTW....ITS 101 DEGREES HERE RITE NOW AND VERY SUNNY!!
They are viable for heating water and providing lights etc but shouldn’t be your principal energy source. They can take a while to pay for themselves so it’s usually more of a long term thing, but it’s worth looking into.
Location: From Bury,Manchester To Jimboomba, Brisbane
Posts: 6,184
Solar is pretty big in Brisbane ,you can get solar kits for the pool,the house ,lighting,gates etc,,there is a rebate availble for some of the cost but im not sure of the conditions,,
Cal x
We have had solar hot water for over 20 years and it is great. We rarely need to use the hot water booster even with 4 of us in the house. We had to get it replaced about 8 years ago when the frost burst the panel but it was insured and cost us nothing to replace. Thoroughly recommend it. DH would like panels for energy and feed some back into the grid for $$ credit (I think you can do that).
It used to be the case that solar heating wasn't very cost effective for households due to the relative cheap costs of energy (could be changing fast??). My knowledge is 6 years out of date.
Hot water manufacturers weren't that interested since market demand wasn't great and in the southern and highland areas frost is a real problem. It gets bloody cold overnight in many places.
Something called MEPS (min energy performance stds) is forcing new hot water system designs to be five star and new houses in many areas are forced to use five star rated heating systems. Gas systems struggle to barely meet the standard... electricity didn't used to be able to and probably still can't? So solar energy is the only technology with growth potential as far as I know? There are ways around the frost problem but these increase costs.
If your planning to stay in your house for many years its worth thinking about... otherwise do your calcs carefully. :)
Photovoltaic Solar panels (for producing electricity) used to consume more energy in their manufacture than they will ever produce in use from sunlight so they may not be very environmentally friendly?
We have solar hot water system in the house we are in. In the almost 5 years we've lived in the house, we've only had to turn the electric heater on once and that was when we had an extra two adults and two teenagers staying with during a wet fortnight in winter 3 years ago.
The rest of the time, we never need to use anything other than the solar; sometimes during winter if it's been cloudy we might decide to leave the washing for another day when the heater had had a chance to really heat the water.
Lesley
