There was a time when solar thermal and its 70% efficiency made sense, because PV cost too much. But that time has passed.
I think that PV is now better than solar thermal. There are a lot of hidden costs and difficulties putting a thermal collector on one's roof. There is a bunch of piping that not everyone wants to be obvious or cobbled looking. You have to poke holes into your attic and elsewhere. It needs to be insulated and to not break in the winter. You have to have pumps and valves and drains. You need a special water heater, and it needs electric backup anyway. You have to own ladders and be able to work safely with them. You have to be more than just a little handy. There are HOA and building quality requirements for proper design and installation. It takes up space where PV could go. Or you can mount a few relativity inexpensive arrays and wire them up. There is of course where to put the wire. Much easier to do a neat and tidy job, no leaks through the roof, no fancy heater with a heat exchanger. The business of building and installing solar thermal collectors is just about done in because of the constantly falling cost of PV. Solar thermal ends up more complicated, expensive, and has more opportunity for error. I thought Robert's solutions were attractive. I provided certified and custom testing for solar thermal collectors for 5 years. I am handy enough, but I would go with PV, not thermal. Far too much trouble the thermal business. On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 1:51 PM Jan Steinman via EV <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Robert Bruninga <[email protected]> > > > > … using about 4 Solar panels > > for the bottom coil in a water heater are a good idea. You need hot > water > > every day, and so this gives you 100% effectiveness of these 4 or so > > panels. > > Seems like a horribly inefficient way of heating water! > > Direct solar hot water is a much better use of resources and solar energy. > Someone who's handy can easily cobble one up out of copper tubing, plywood, > glass, and some flat-black spray paint. > > Jan > > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > > -- Michael E. Ross (919) 585-6737 Land (919) 901-2805 Cell and Text (919) 576-0824 <https://www.google.com/voice/b/0?pli=1#phones> Tablet, Google Phone and Text -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20190717/bc73aa0e/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
