What Should You Buy First? Solar Hot Water or Solar PV?

Solar Hot Water is fast becoming the poor cousin of Solar PV (AKA Solar Electricity). Consumers just seem to prefer solar PV to solar hot water these days. In fact solar hot water has gone from almost zero to 1,000,000 roofs in about 30 years, whereas PV has gone from almost zero to 500,000 roofs in about 5 years. Soon there will be more PV than Solar HW out there! Unbelievable.

It doesn’t help that retailers prefer to sell PV over hot water – for a whole bunch of reasons that I’ll go into in a future blog post.

Here’s a video where I answer the question posed in the title: Should you buy Solar Hot Water or PV first?, But first I answer a much more fundamental question that creates an enormous amount of confusion out there:

And here’t the transcript for the video-phobes amongst you: [Read more...]

Huge Subsidies (and waiting lists) for Solar Hot Water in QLD

The Queensland Solar Hot Water program is delivering and installing $500 systems for eligible Queenslanders and $100 for pensioners. But as you might expect, there is the mother of all waiting lists.

To date more than 850 customers have been allocated to suppliers to conduct inspections and install new systems.

By the end of this week over 110 systems will have been installed in Brisbane and a further 200 have been contacted to arrange site inspections.

More than 43,000 Queenslanders have registered their interest to participate in this program with more than 10,000 completed applications received so far.”

The Queensland Solar Hot Water Program wants to make it easier and more affordable for Queenslanders to switch to solar energy to heat their water.

Under the Program, eligible people will have access to a standard installed and warranted solar water heater. The price given will be less than what is currently available in the market.

The Queensland Government has made a Standing Offer Arrangement with a number of companies. The arrangement is to supply people with high quality solar water heaters. The cost for them is a payment of $500 or $100 if they are pensioners or low-income earners.

The only payments people will have to pay are expenses for non-standard installations (e.g. Council fees, pipes, cables, additional electrical equipment or plumbing, or electrical switchboard upgrades.).

This Program will help the replacement of energy greedy electric storage how water systems for greenhouse friendly solar water heaters.

Installing a solar water heater will give your house energy savings of up to 25 per cent. It will also cut household greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 per cent.

This Program will also help transition the community towards the 2010 Electric Storage Hot Water System Phase Out.

Learn all about solar hot water systems without the sales pitch at our brand new site: www.SolarHotWaterQuotes.com.au

Which power source is the most water efficient?

As we all know Australia is a very dry country where water is one of our most valuable resources.

So how much water do we need to generate our electricity?

The generation of 1 kWh of electricity by way of nuclear power uses 2.3 litres of water.

[Read more...]

Solar Plumbers In Hot Demand

There is a large demand for trained craftsmen in Australia due to the recently announced government rebates that can be issued if a home installs a hot water heater that is run by solar energy instead of electric.

If the initiative is successful and all homes took advantage of the funding to install the solar water heaters it is estimated that green house emissions in Australia would reduce by approximately 12 million tons a year. [Read more...]