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Save with Solar Hot Water

Use the sun to slash your water heating costs. Includes sources for solar domestic hot water systems.

October/November 2003
 
200-074-01
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Solar doesn't have to be unsightly: At Inn Serendipity , a bed-and-breakfast in Browntown, Wisconsin, three 4-by-8-foot flat-plate collectors sit comfortably on the south-facing rooftop. They provide up to 70 percent of the home's domestic hot water needs.
John Ivanko
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Slash your hot water heating costs.

By Greg Pahl

Hot water heating is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways of harnessing solar energy. According to the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, hot water heating accounts for one-fifth to one-quarter of an average U.S. household's energy usage. Installing a solar domestic hot water system can reduce your hot water heating bill by 60 percent to 95 percent, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars a year. Invest in a solar hot water system for $3,000 to $6,000 and, in some cases, you might recoup the costs within only four to six years.

"If someone is really interested in renewable energy, and they want to get involved somewhere, a solar hot water system is probably the best place to start," says Rod Hyatt, owner of In Hot Water Heat & Power in Eden, Utah. "It makes the biggest impact at the lowest investment." Many states, municipalities and some local utilities now offer tax incen tives; and rebates, significantly sweetening the solar deal.

Fueled by the sun (think free energy!), instead of fossil fuels, solar hot water systems emit none of the pollutants and greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides—produced when natural gas or oil is burned. And solar hot water systems can be used wherever the sun shines. (Of course, generally the sunnier your location, the more hot water you'll reap.)

Solar Swings in History

The first commercial solar water heater was patented in 1891; within five years, about 30 percent of the homes in Pasadena, California, had solar domestic hot water systems installed.

Although the solar hot water heating industry had spread to Florida by the 1930s, copper shortages during World War II (coupled with economic incentives offered by electric companies to switch to their hot water heaters) crippled the burgeoning solar hot water industry.

It was almost more than a half century later when solar hit the mainstream market again, revitalized by the OPEC oil embargo and skyrocketing fossil fuel prices. Federal and state tax credits of the early 1980s for renewable energy systems gave the solar industry a major, if short-lived, boost. Almost overnight, a huge number of companies sprang up all across the nation to serve a seemingly insatiable demand for a wide array of solar installations. Then, in 1986, the Reagan Administration pulled the plug on solar incentives.

"It almost entirely killed the industry and stopped virtually all [renewable energy] technological development in this country," says Christel Bieri, the vice president of marketing at Heliodyne, Inc., in Richmond, California. Heliodyne was one of a handful of U.S. solar manufacturers that survived the industry crash.

Today, motivated by consumer demand for environmentally friendly and economically sound technologies, the solar industry is witnessing what many hope will be a full-fledged energy revolution—a switch from a fossil-fuel based economy to a one powered by the sun, wind and water.

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