PV Gap

Lillian Said:

Solar Power over natural gas?

We Answered:

Solar electricity is terribly inefficient, and I hate to say that. You don't go that route unless there's no other options. PV's are extremely expensive and only convert around 11% of the sun's energy into electricity and rest turns into wasted heat. If just a single cell on a panel gets covered in shade (leaf, or other object) the whole panels efficiency drops 50%!

As stated above, a PV panel only converts 11% to electricity and 89% into heat well, it goes without saying sunlight converts to heat very well!!! And that's where the savings happens. Instead of a Solar panel that converts sunlight to electricity, a solar panel that converts sunlight into heated hot water (that's to say a panel with copper tubes passing water or glycol through it) is 60-95% efficient at turning the suns energy into heated hot water and, they're cheap! You'd need eight or nine 4x8 PV panels to make enough electricity to heat up water as well as a single 4x8 panel!

The larger the amount of water you want to heat and the lower temperatures you want to heat them to, the more efficient solar water heating is. What has huge amounts of water that you don't want to heat to high temps like 120F? Pools!!! A pool solar hot water heating system is over 90% efficient. The link in my source says there's enough sunlight per year to rate central PA as "Good".

I'd look at solar hot water pool heating systems. The panels that will work in winter you'll need ones that are insulated & glazed and running glycol. As in the kind typically used in houses for their solar heating all year round. This site http://www.radiantsolar.com/solar_packag… has pricing for $10,198 but I calculate it will cost about $8,700 after you remove the storage tank, scalding valve, and Thermostatic slab control and you'll then have to add in freight and an exchanger... which you can contact that company or someone else if you like on how to exhange the heat from the panels and put it into your pool. It's more bang for buck if you can fit bigger panels, if you can get eight 4x10 panels instead of ten 4x8's do it. Also since panels are cheap I'd add as many as you can. The price quote above is just the equipment, if you can install it yourself go right ahead but each panel weighs about 120 for a 4x8 and about 140 lbs for a 4x10 empty. In winter, sunlight energy is about 1/3rd that of summer. If you won't be installing it yourselves factor in labor. I think solar hot water heating will pay for itself in savings.

Allison Said:

Do you have enough property to put up a windmill or enough solar panels to run your house?

We Answered:

I have plenty of property and roof space.
In most places, solar panels are an option. There is nothing wrong with an every little bit helps solution even if you don't have enough space.
Windmills are not a real option in many places because of the sporadic breeze.
With solar and wind though-the excess energy is sold back to the electric company. That way no one gets left in the dark.