But she is comparing it to heating water with electricity which most of us do.
I had a conversation with a German gentleman about generation of electricity once and he had very different numbers than I did. We finally realized that was because he heats with oil and I heat with electricity. He stated it was insane to heat with electricity, but his climate is different than mid-Atlantic US, so apples and oranges with totally different conclusions drawn.
-- Rick
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I think she was computing the payback time for switching to solar thermal v ersus staying with electric. And there's no reason why you can't pipe the s olar heated water into an electric water heater. Most thermal hot water sys tems use two tanks anyway- some of them are VERY expensive, using "stone" a s a thermal storage mass. As you pointed out in your case the monthly is so small, payback time exceeds the lifetime of the equipment.
For me. Others spend a lot more on hot water. My understanding is that the solar hot water is the most effective alternative energy investment. I've never looked at the numbers. Certainly at one time it was a
*lot* cheaper than solar cells and works pretty well even on overcast days. I don't know just how low the price of PV has gotten, so with the electric company buying your power PV may be getting close to the ROI of solar hot water.-- Rick
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