Solar Energy Systems
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Solar panels are a clean, energy-efficient way to generate domestic hot water, heat a pool, heat your home, and supplement electricity from the provincial grid. Installed on your roof or another sun-facing location, they absorb energy from the sun while consuming no fossil fuels and generating no greenhouse gases. Over time, they pay for themselves in energy savings.
In residential homes like those in Kanata, solar panels are used most commonly to heat household water and pools. On average, the solar systems provide 50-60% of annual domestic hot water needs. In most applications the solar system is used to preheat city or well water going to the conventional water heater. For a good fact sheet on solar hot water heating, click here.
Outdoor swimming pools can be entirely heated by solar systems, thus eliminating the need for any auxiliary heater. These systems have a short payback. Plumbing can be connected directly to the pool's filtration system, so there is minimum added equipment that has to be installed.
A solar hot water system for a typical family of four – comprised of roof-mounted solar collectors, a heat exchanger, a solar hot water tank, a pump, and plumping hardware – can be installed for about $6,000. It works in conjunction with your existing electric or gas hot water tank, so you always have a ready supply of hot water, even on cloudy days. Federal and provincial programs offer up to almost $1,400 to offset purchase and installation costs. Federal rebates are available through the EcoENERGY Retrofit program offered by Natural Resources Canada. The provincial incentives are offered under Ontario’s Home Energy Retrofit Program.
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For home heating, solar systems can pump solar-heated air into a room or directly into your cold-air return. This reduces the load on your furnace and thus your consumption of fuel.
For hot water heating, the panels are based on either glazed flat-plate technology or vacuum tubes. Both work well in our climate, but have different cost and performance trade-offs.
For home heating, air is circulated through a solar collector made from heat-absorbing black material. The heated air is then pumped by a fan into a room or directly into your cold air return. Several different collector types are available.
For more information, see the Solar Energy section of the Canadian Renewable Energy Network (CanREN), from the Solar Energy Society of Canada Inc. (SESCI), and from the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CANSIA). The latter has a useful directory of solar system providers.
Photos on this page courtesy of CAREarth Inc.