Buyer's Guide to Solar Heating
(Page 3 of 5)
December 2006/January 2007
By Dan Chiras
As part of my research for this article, I tested the SolarSheat 1500G, a closed-loop collector, and found it consistently raised the temperature of 68-degree indoor air that entered it by 40 degrees on sunny but cold winter days. (For more information about the SolarSheat and other commercially available panels, see “Seven Solar Heaters at a Glance.”)
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Marken recommends one 4-by-8-foot collector per 500 to 1,000 square feet of heated space, depending on the location and energy efficiency of your home. A 2,000-square-foot home with unobstructed southern exposure might require two to four collectors. Separate collectors may be required for each room. For larger rooms, two or more collectors may be needed, with a more powerful fan to ensure adequate air flow. If collectors are shaded during part of the day, more will be needed.
Making Cents of Solar Hot Air
How much can a solar hot-air system save you? Bill Hurrle of Bay Area Home Performance, a company in Wisconsin that installs solar hot-air systems, says they’re able to achieve a 25 percent to 35 percent annual reduction in heat bills, or about $200 to $270 per year, when retrofitting homes—not bad in his cold, cloudy climate.
Greater savings will be achievable in cold areas that receive more sunlight. As a rule, active solar heating systems are most cost-effective in cold climates with good solar resources, but they make sense in other locations as well. Many solar installers will help you determine the cost-effectiveness of a solar hot-air system, or you can run the numbers yourself.
One way is to calculate payback—or how long it will take to reclaim the cost of the system, plus installation, through annual fuel savings. Divide the cost of the system plus installation by the anticipated annual fuel savings. If a $2,100 system will save $300 per year in heating bills, simple payback is seven years. Manufacturers estimate paybacks of four to eight years, based on current energy prices.
To calculate payback accurately, consider rising fuel costs, interest paid on money borrowed to buy the system (or lost interest, if you withdraw money from savings to buy it), and maintenance costs. Fortunately, these systems have just two moving parts, a fan and a backdraft damper, and both should give many years of trouble-free service. The rest of the system should last 50 years or longer. Let’s see: $300 saved per year, for 50 years, is $15,000!
When calculating payback, don’t forget financial incentives from utilities and state and local governments.
You also can use payback to calculate your return on investment (ROI) by dividing the payback into one. A system that pays for itself in five years has an impressive ROI of one-fifth, or 20 percent.
Shopper’s Guide
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