Every new house built in Australia should have had, at least since the oil crisis of the seventies, a solar hot water system fitted.

I suspect that future generations will look back with amazement at our naivety and with sorrow at our waste.
As our towns and cities have sprawled, imagine the number of solar hot water systems that could have been installed, the energy that could have been saved and the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

​

To meet our ever growing demand for energy, more power stations were built (which increased our foreign debt). Yet I understand that someone in the (old) SECV calculated that by giving every household in Victoria a free solar hot water system, the SECV could have actually saved money (by saving the need to build another coal fired power station.)

Now there are those that say that solar doesn’t work in southern Australia because it gets cold in winter and dark at night! However the fact is, over the summer months, Melbourne receives more mean hours of sunlight than Sydney. Enough sunlight falls on this part of the country to make it worthwhile to harness the energy available.

​

At this point however, we recommend making a financial decision. Rather than trying to amass 100% of the solar energy needed for our daily hot water use, it is suggested that in the southern part of the country, you aim at trying to collect about 70% of your hot water needs. Of course the balance must come from somewhere, and this is usually provided by natural or LP gas, off-peak electricity or by pipes connected to a wood stove.

 

So, with a properly sized system, you should never run out of hot water and about 70% (say 30-50% in winter and 90-100% in summer) of your hot water needs would be provided by a renewable resource.
​