The Gift of Free Solar Power

by Christian Henry
chenry@capesystemslimited.com

What’s better than free? 

The Bahamas has been blessed with gifts of sun, sand and sea.  Because these gifts are free, we take them for granted. But how can we honour these gifts? 

We are given stewardship of the Earth, and the greatest gift in the Bahamas is our people. So when you see your neighbours saving energy by harnessing the free sun to heat their water, what do you do?  If you are following the pack these days, you are turning free sun into cash savings with solar hot water.

A teacher of mine always told us to KISS: “Keep it simple, stupid.”  But when it comes to hot water right now, we have it complicated.

We choose every day to pull oil out of the ground in a foreign land, refine it into diesel fuel, ship it to the islands, burn it in a generator, make electricity, send electricity down the line, to heat a 30 gallon tank of water all 24 hours of every day, so that when we want to take a shower, or wash the dishes, we have hot water. 

And all the while free energy from the sun is hitting the roof. It’s like someone left a stack of $20 bills on top of the roof. Who is taking advantage of this tremendous opportunity?

In South Eleuthera there is a town called Deep Creek, where Mrs. Thompson lives. She is a chef at a local tourist establishment, and when she comes home, she wants a hot shower after a long shift. She takes pride in the ways she saves money on her household bills by packing tomatoes, making baked crab and running the air conditioning only when she really needs it. She saves a little money aside now and again, to fix her car, to support her kids’ education, and to pay unexpected bills. And she is considering investing in a solar hot water heater.

Does this make sense?  Well, Mrs Thompson isn’t rich, but she is thinking ahead. When her existing electric hot water heater breaks or rusts away, there are two options: replace it with another one, or install a solar hot water heater. 

Mrs Thompson doesn’t think only about the up-front cost: an electric hot water heater costs much less to buy at the store, but the up-front cost is much less than the operating cost. This is true for most renewable energy solutions: 95% of the total cost of ownership comes up front, and the inputs (sun or wind) are basically free.

One popular model of solar hot water heater costs about $3,500 installed. You can choose to use it as a pre-heat input to your electric heater (keeping it from turning on) or you can eliminate your electric heater altogether. 

What you save depends on the cost of electricity (recently in the $0.25 per kWh range) and the total amount of hot water you use (more water equals more savings). Usually the up-front cost of the solar heater is paid for in electricity savings within six years. After that you can get free hot water for the life of the heater (15-25 years).

After three days of cold, overcast winter weather, it’s good to have a propane-fueled on-demand hot water heater installed as well.  But on sunny days the insulation in the solar hot water storage keeps the water piping hot even 36 hours later.  In fact, you’ll need to use copper piping from the solar hot water heater to your house and a mixing valve to keep from scalding yourself.   

A unit that collects solar energy and stores hot water can be installed on the ground facing south, or on your south-facing roof, to catch the most sun.

And there are import duty concessions being considered for these solar hot water heaters and other renewable energy technologies. So keep your eye out, and ask your local representatives to think about how the Bahamas is going to support itself as basic costs of living are increasingly subject to the cost of foreign oil.

The people of the Bahamas are resilient and have lived through previous boom and bust eras. While some treasure hunters are still digging down into the sand looking for gold and pieces of eight, others are looking up toward the sky these days to find their treasure, and making sure they have a little put away for the next rainy day.

Comments

[Angel]

Thanks for this great inspirational and informative article. I learned so much, especially "But on sunny days the insulation in the solar hot water storage keeps the water piping hot even 36 hours later. ". Great work! Thanks.

[dexter]

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