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water in the tank and supplies domestic hot water and in
some cases heat
s
I installed such a system at my home which had two heat
exchanger coils. One supplied most of our domestic hot
water, while the other supplied about half the heat needed
for the house. The insulated tank held
to the building. In the mid-
gallons of
water and so could supply heat for two to three days if
needed. The system functioned reliably for
years.
Until a few years ago Israel was the only country that
required such systems. Recently Spain, India, Korea,
China, and Germany have required that at least part of
domestic heat and hot water come from solar systems.
Although the United States does not require such
systems, it does extend the renewable energy tax credit
to them. California has the most aggressive
renewable
portfolio standard
in the States but only seems to include
electricity generation from renewables (excluding large
hydropower systems). Excluding hot water and heat from
a solar system from the renewable portfolio seems silly
since they also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by sub-
stituting the Sun for natural gas or electricity.
Photovoltaic (PV) systems to supply electricity are
becoming much more popular in places like California
where there is plenty of sunshine and high daytime elec-
tricity costs. The silicon solar cell was developed in the
s. The
first-generation solar cells were very expen-
sive, and their
first real application was in space systems, a
very demanding environment where cost was of little
importance because they were only a tiny fraction of the
California is running a pilot project in San Diego on solar hot water
and will decide based on results what to do about incentives.
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