Thread: solar power for home?

Originally Posted by PhilipA

On channel 2 news tonight
CSIRO woman " There is a 20-25% chance that country temperatures in Australia will rise by 5 degrees in thirty years time"
Presenter immediately afterwards
"Country temperatures will rise by 5 degrees in thirty years time"
Jeeez!
My favourite bitch at the moment is that there seems to be a vendetta without foundation against storage hot water systems. What has my poor hot water system ever done?
Off peak power is basically free. They have to keep the boilers going all night anyway, so it saves zilch nil nada coal to reduce the number of off peak hot water systems.
BUT there is a vendetta. Why?
Because Neco and others get Greenhouse credits if they convince some sucker to get rid of their $700 HWS which costs $20 a quarter to run, and replace it with a $5000 solar setup, that on dull days uses peak power to run. Peak power is soon to be "smart" metered, so if it is a dull day and you want a shower, you will pay 400% or so.
Regards Philip A

Interesting point that. Our hot water costs $45 a quarter. It's going to be hard to justify solar for that amount of money. Even if we save 80% by going solar $150 a year .....

Heat pump hot water is more efficient than solar (in low light areas, ie. vic, tas etc..)as it doesn't use a 2.4kw or 3.6kw element to boost when there is low light for the panels to work.

http://www.quantumenergy.com.au/Prod...2/Default.aspx

Originally Posted by 6.5rangie

Heat pump hot water is more efficient than solar (in low light areas, ie. vic, tas etc..)as it doesn't use a 2.4kw or 3.6kw element to boost when there is low light for the panels to work.

http://www.quantumenergy.com.au/Prod...2/Default.aspx

Problem with heat pumps for heating water (or anything else) is that compared to a heating element they are complex, expensive and prone to high maintenance (this should not be necessary - refrigerators, which are simply heat pumps, are also the most reliable household appliances, possibly because they are on all the time).

Mainly because of the cost, heat pumps for heating are very difficult to justify until electricity prices get a lot higher.

John

When I lived outside the Adelaide hill on Lake Alexandrina a local go guy had devised a method of powering his property, this wont work for all but in some circumstances if u had nothing better to do it would be fun I guess, anyway he built a small steam engine, by small I mean size of a singer electronical sewing thing, the boiler was fuelled by Red river gum, this steam engine drove an alternator which interned charged a massive bank of batteries and with the invertor he had the whole has wired around this thing, he also had 10,000 liters of hot water to play with , it was theoried that if u ran the engine for 3 hours it would provide the power until next run, he estimated u would need ten acres of red river gums to sustain it, being relatively fast growing by the time u got to the end of the 10 acres u would be ready to start felling again, this guy was a hippy dude and totally self sufficient, I remember seeing it on tv donkeys yonks ago

Why they dont have everyone on solar hot water in Canberra is beyond me, we get heaps of sun even in middle of winter the UV can be high so they would work very well,all the houses in Darwin had them going back to the early 70s, even wind generators would go well here , anything that contributes to the grid and cuts down the emmisions required to run it originally has to be worthwhile, the Governments can do more both state and federal, why dont they? whats the big deal with nuclear power?

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

Interesting point that. Our hot water costs $45 a quarter. It's going to be hard to justify solar for that amount of money. Even if we save 80% by going solar $150 a year .....

so with the talk of being 'green' should i be worried that im paying $80 - $90 each quarter for my gas, when the hot water is the only thing that we have that is gas? (currently as the cooker isnt hooked up)

Solar water is something we have been seriously looking at... it would just be nice if there was a system that could be hooked directly into an existing water heater / storage such as the one we have and use the gas on that as the booster.

thanks

Steve

Originally Posted by landyfromanuthaland

Why they dont have everyone on solar hot water in Canberra is beyond me, we get heaps of sun even in middle of winter the UV can be high so they would work very well,all the houses in Darwin had them going back to the early 70s, even wind generators would go well here , anything that contributes to the grid and cuts down the emmisions required to run it originally has to be worthwhile, the Governments can do more both state and federal, why dont they? whats the big deal with nuclear power?

The reason why (for example) people do not fit solar hot water is that the initial cost is out of all proportion to the saving in power costs in most cases. Darwin, with all fuel having to be imported, has always had high power costs. The problem with either wind or solar as far as the grid goes is that they are not available all the time, although they can obviously be used to reduce fuel useage when available - but this implies a base load system that can change power output to match fairly rapidly, not usually the case for coal fired systems. And at present the cost of electricity is too low (or interest rate projections too high) to really justify solar or wind installations.

The only real way to increase the use of non emitting energy sources, and the only real way of reducing consumption, is to substantially increase the cost of electricity, the obvious way being by a carbon tax. (The alternative of massive subsidy has very little to recommend it on any grounds). The problem with this is that it is not electorally very popular.

Also worth noting that any large scale wind or solar installation is likely to result in extremely vocal opposition under the NIMBY principle. However, my feeling is that there may well be an opportunity for large amounts of power to be generated into the grid by small household installations, but again, for there to be a significant uptake of these power costs need to go much higher than they are at present.

Probably the emission free source with most potential is geothermal, but again, expect local opposition to increase costs substantially.

From a technical point of view, it is difficult to make a case against nuclear power, but I can't see it becoming politically acceptable in the foreseeable future, although it may be remarkable what a big increase in power costs would do! As with other non-emitting power sources, nuclear power needs an increase in electricity prices be viable, but has the advantage that the costs and technology are well understood and available, and fits in well to the existing electricity distribution infrastructure and concept of central generation.

John

mmmm NIMBY

wind gens are pretty noisy, and as a 'farm' pretty ugly but they do have a place in a self sufficient system.

If it were me (hopefully, maybe someday soon) I'd like to run a micro-hydro in the creek, a wind generator in the valley above the creek and a bunch of photovoltaics on the shed roof AND plugged into the grid, that way I can sell back to the buggers when over producing during the times when I'm out of the house or asleep...