Residential

1985 – Chapel Hill, NC

In the mid ’80s, I worked with a builder who decided to include solar energy as a standard feature in all of his homes.  He ended up building seventy homes in Jacksonville, NC, about twelve homes in Rome, GA, and five or six in Chapel Hill.  Each house has passive and active solar systems.  The passive solar system provides space heating during the day and the active solar system provides space heating and hot water in the evening or whenever the passive was spent. Some of these homes had solar fractions as high as 80%!

During this time, solar thermal systems were becoming accepted in the housing market as standard equipment. The market was maturing with proven technology. Unfortunately, the federal government pulled the rug out from under us by repealing the solar tax credits.  Most of the marketplace collapsed as a result.

Europe was going through some energy problems of its own but continued to push for energy conservation and solar energy.  To my understanding, Germany has mandated solar hot water systems on all new construction.  Europe is now way ahead of the US in the adoption of solar therm systems and is selling their equipment to us.

1984 – Blacksburg, VA

This home in the mountains of Virginia is using sixteen flat plate solar thermal collectors to provide space heating and hot water for the entire house.  The homeowner is also benefiting from having solar energy heat an outdoor pool not shown in this image. Depending on your geographical location, you can expect a solar pool system to give you an extra month or so of warmth going into and out of the summer.

More to come…