The money you save with a solar system
There are some positively misleading reports about what solar water heating does and what it saves. In the Telegraph on Saturday one “expert” who turns out to be a builder claiming to “give it to you straight, Jeff Howell, claims that the annual savings are less than £70 per year and that at this time of the year the solar system will only slightly warm the water, in an advice column published on 12th April 2008.
It is positively wrong. I do not know why the Daily Telegraph thinks it right to hold out a builder with the knowledge and expertise of a thermal solar engineer, but they do and as a result Mr Howell misleads the Telegraph readership. Mr Howell may be an excellent repository of advice about building but he knows little about solar.
Firstly, let us deal with the performance of solar at this time of the year. In January 2006 Genersys supplied two solar panels to the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) in Bligh, Northumberland, who wanted to carry out some tests for the National Energy Action charity. We offered to show them how to install the panels but they wanted to tests to be independent of us, and I understood that.
NaREC are an independent laboratory with a great deal of expertise, but in the UK there is not too much solar thermal expertise and they wanted to test, learn about it and assess our product without our input in the first instance.
After the installation our engineer, Michaela Sadovska, reviewed their test site and found that they had used high quality heat resistant plastic pipe to connect up to the panel. In our view the temperatures generated by our panels would cause the heat resistant pipe to melt. They should have used copper pipe which was brazed, not soldered.
We predicted that the pipe would melt on the first sunny day in March.
It did. On 1st March 2006 the panels generated enough heat to melt the pipe which resists temperatures around boiling point, as you can see from the picture, which was sent to us by NaREC.
So much for Mr Howell’s advice about heat generated by a solar system in April.
As far as Mr Howell’s claim about savings is concerned, he fails to appreciate that water heating, according to the government, accounts for 24% of your household energy, on average. If you use electricity for heat and water heating the calculation is simple. If you use heating oil or gas, then according to government statistics, about a third of the gas or heating oil is spent on water heating.
Virtually all modern solar systems cover between a half and 70% of the water heating in the United Kingdom, so you can calculate the basic savings. Once you have done that you should factor in the fact that you have pre-purchased your energy with a solar system so you are insulated from a proportion of the energy price rises, and that your boiler will suffer less wear a tear, which means lower repair bills. Modern solar systems do not require any significant maintenance, except inspections and possibly changing the heat fluid every ten years or so.
We constantly get feedback from customers, as do Genersys installers. One installer reported that one lady told him how pleased she was with her solar system (not one of ours) which saved her one oil fill a year which for her meant £500 savings this year.
It is difficult to provide averages for savings on hot water bills because everyone has different experiences; I heard on the BBC’s Radio 4 of a lady whose heating oil bill had risen to £260 every six weeks, not an uncommon experience. She would save around £520 a year with a Genersys system. The savings for electricity will be higher but lower for gas. So much depends on individual systems, individual use and lifestyle and we can only give guidelines but they will all be much more than £70 a year!
I did run across Mr Howell’s web site some months ago which had misleading information on it. I wrote to him and offered him our facilities, to talk with our engineers and evidence so that he could change his views. He closed his mind to my offer, preferring to retain his misguided inaccurate opinions, which is a shame, especially when they are published in a quality newspaper which has a Saturday readership of over 2.6 million people.
I expect you know that you should not believe everything that you read in the papers, and when it comes to solar it is better to get your advice from a qualified solar thermal engineer, not a builder.
Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, electricity, energy, energy statistics, gas, heat, microgeneration, oil, solar, solar energy, solar panels | Tagged: calculation of solar savings, Jeff Howell, NaREC, proportion of household energy on water heating, savings when solar displaces oil, solar system payback, the daily telegraph
Hi
in my role as the chair of ISES (UK) i am preparing a robost reply to the telegraph. may i quote some of the above…..
regards
Tony
ps where’s the sta response to all this!?!?!?
Tony
Please feel free to quote as much as you want. I hope that the Telegraph publsihes your response.
Robert
Ok well try to make a reply in “The Times”, “The Guardian” , & “The Independent” etc competition between Newspapers is healthy. I read these other newspapers and often change the newspaper I read to get different perspectives and I am sure that these others are saying something different!
Maybe the Luddite Jeff Howell thinks that you can only build a house with bricks and mortar because he hasn’t seen any different materials and method. Or maybe he has got shares in British Gas…..don’t forget to tell Sid….!
Typical of the British Media, get the opinion of someone who knows nothing about the industry concerned, Jeff Howell is a Bricklayer, yes tell us how to build a wal straight and level, even tell us how best to insulate walls, but don’t tell us about an industry you have never worked in, how many solar panels has Mr Howell installed, what tests did Mr Howell carry out over a twelve month period to come to this conclusion, none, his opinion is based on building site tea room chat, I’ve been there, sit down at 10am have a cup with your work collegues, read the papers then discuss the issues at hand, normally coming to the wrong conclusions, stick to building walls Mr Howell, leave the solar industry to the experts.
Most of the bricklayers in this country cannot even lay a straight brick wall because they are too intoxicated anyway. A plumber might have a better chance of evaluating solar water heaters.
Still I suppose it sells newsparers!
Robert
Rob,
Can you publish the exact formula or process how Genersys calculate the saving if you do know please?
Let us say, 150 litres daily usage in London, with two of genersys panels, for a year?
We are engineers with master degree of thermal computing and electrical engineering. Our calculation seems only can get more than 60 pounds for gas.
below is our calculation. We would like to know if we got it wrong.
http://legatoenergy.no-ip.com/web_release/insert_price_v1_sm.pdf
Fair question - I will post something about this soon.
I think you are grossly under estimating the financial benefits on your website. I agree that we must not exaggerate the financial performance but it is just as bad to under state it.
In essence your figures do not allow for heat losses and boiler and system inefficiencies. You also fail to take account of future fuel price rises; your figures assume none or at least in line with the money the system cost could earn you at the bank.
Also wear and tear on boilers?
I am trying to develop a standard that I hope the industry will adopt and that will also be adopted by the EST and Government.
Robert
Regarding “In essence your figures do not allow for heat losses and boiler and system inefficiencies. You also fail to take account of future fuel price rises; your figures assume none or at least in line with the money the system cost could earn you at the bank.”
that is true. we will correct it accordingly.
regarding boiler’s wear and tear. we are sure the panels has wear and tear too but maybe minimum comparing to boiler. However, installing the solar panels not really removing the boiler though, therefore the wear and tear of boiler still there.
We do really NOT suggest we put it as saving as it is too subjective.
Dont you think?
Quite obviously the wear and tear on the boiler would be drastically reduced with the addition of Solar thermal paels. A boiler has many parts that are subject to wear and tear. Maybe you are really only considering Solar panels as a retrofit to an older building with an existing gas boiler? A new build house constructed from Insulated Concrete Former with a concrete core, for example Ecoblock, could have no boiler or a much smaller back up boiler, because being ultra-insulated it would not require the space heating capacity of houses that are being upgraded to have Solar thermal panels. Another improvement to the design of new homes to reduce energy loss would be Fibre Optic light pipes allowing lots of natural light into homes thus allowing window apertures to be reduced, where heat can escape faster than ultra insulated walls or also be gained in the summer and reduce use of electricity for lighting, natural daylight is much nicer than that from carbon saving low energy lights.
On days when we get lots of energy from the sun then the boiler would hardly be used at all. On other days the Solar panel would reduce the load on the boiler by helping to pre-heat water, then the time the boiler takes to heat up water to the required temperature would be much shorter.
Robert Kyriakides is not offering you a panacea (Πανάκεια) to magicaly solve all problems, but a way that you can drastically reduce energy costs which are mainly related to using Fossil fuel to heat up water and the space of a building. You really need to include in your calculations the hidden financial costs of Fossil fuels because of production and distribution system losses, for Gas and Electricity, well obviously Electricity has the greatest of these two losses.
How much you can earn in the bank, is quite interesting because you must think that the interest you earn at the bank struggles to match infation and another point is that now that the pound is at its lowest exchange rate to the Euro well you are fighting another factor that increases your energy costs. Also please can you think that the money in the bank now is at risk to greater inflation because of the removal of the 10p Tax band, people affected by a reduction in their take home pay will demand an increase in their salary. Solar Thermal Panels kinda buffer you from the volatile unpredictability of the market, and the inevitable price rises of Fossil fuel.
If you have a solar system and a boiler most Genersys users find that they can switch off the boiler for at least six months of the year. that means that there is less wear and tear on the boiler; the heat exchanger lasts longer and the flues need cleaning less frequently because the boiler is not being used.
That is another financial benefit of a solar system and should be taken into account because the money saved is just as real as the fuel money saved.
The boiler would also last longer.
Robert
[...] http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-money-you-save-with-a-solar-system/After the installation our engineer, Michaela Sadovska, reviewed their test site and found that they had used high quality heat resistant plastic pipe to connect up to the panel. BP Card In our view the temperatures generated by our panels … [...]
[...] http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-money-you-save-with-a-solar-system/After the installation our engineer, Michaela Sadovska, reviewed their test site and found that they had used high quality heat resistant plastic pipe to connect up to the panel. St. George Credit Card In our view the temperatures generated by our panels … [...]
[...] out to be a builder claiming to ???give it to you straight, Jeff Howell, claims that the annualhttp://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-money-you-save-with-a-solar-system/Green Machines Cape Cod Times Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich will join forces Saturday with [...]
Go back 3 years and Jeff Howell was spouting similar claptrap about water supply pipes and the nature of Homeserve and similar insurance packages. Basically misrepresenting the nature of the agreement between OFWAT and the water industry that water companies would provide a free leak repair.
As with this pretty stupid attack on solar thermal, its just hype to sell newspapers, The Telegraph should know better as this misrepresentation undermines the trust in their other more professional journalists.
Interesting the comment further above about March the 1st.
see: http://www.solarkent.co.uk/images/march%203%202005.jpg
Not quite boiling point but it rather gets the point across!
Yes Simon, not quite boiling point but very useful hot water nevertheless - hot enough for Mr Howell to shower in!
Robert