Water Heating

Conventional solar water heaters fall into two broad categories, active closed-loop and passive open-loop, and generally look and work like the examples shown below.

Domestic hot water (DHW) systems help supply a household’s water heating requirements, with performance typically in the 40% to 80% range (meaning that a conventional water heater is still necessary to either reach the desired water temperature or to help provide the total DHW volume needed, or both).

Installed costs for 2-3 panel systems run the gamut from do it yourself (DIY) installations and kits, falling into the under-$2,000 range, to high quality systems not unlike the example below (left) which can cost well over $9,000. One DHW application subset is optimized for swimming pools. These systems generally look and work like the example below (right).

DHW systems on the market currently tend to be small scale retrofit items, rarely capable of supplying 100% of the heating energy required, and must therefore be supplemented to some extent by conventional water heaters. This limitation lengthens payback periods significantly, sometimes even beyond the likely operational life of the system equipment.