Posts Tagged ‘PV’

Intersolar North America 2010

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

The SunWater Solar crew, along with thousands of exhibitors and attendees from the national and international solar industry, was in attendance this week at the Intersolar trade show in San Francisco. This event is the place to check out some of the latest and greatest products hitting the solar industry, and hear all the latest news from industry insiders.

Some of the hottest buzz at the show, however, was anything but sunny. Among the many photovoltaic (PV) industry exhibitors and attendees, there was great disappointment with the State of California’s temporary suspension last week of CSI solar incentive rebates for PV projects. The freeze halts payment of incentives to non-profit groups and public entities, such as school districts, that install PV systems.

Happily, Solar Thermal projects are unaffected by these changes and will still be eligible for CSI rebate money. At the moment, California’s entire Solar Thermal industry is waiting with baited breath for the CSI Thermal Program to release the commercial Solar Thermal rebate calculator. When these calculations are made public, commercial customers, manufacturers and installers will finally be able to see exactly how much the state will contribute to the installation cost of new commercial Solar Thermal systems.

GreenFinanceSF Program Launches

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

San Francisco has officially launched the GreenFinanceSF program which allows businesses and homeowners to finance solar thermal systems through a special assessment on their property tax.   The $150 million loan program is the largest PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program in the country and allows financing of solar and other energy efficiency projects with little upfront cost as the program is financed on the property tax over a number of years.

One of the requirements of the program is that buildings must have basic energy efficiency measures implemented before solar electricity projects (PV) can be funded.   Solar water heating is considered one of these energy efficiency measures and can help a building reach the energy efficiency requirements needed to install PV solar for electricity.

SunWater Solar applauds the efforts of San Francisco in leading the country with its new PACE program.

Solar Water Heating In Scientific American

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Hayes 2 Blog 1A blog about Solar Water Heating on the Scientific American website helps explain solar water heating technology.  It also points out near the end of the article that “some companies that used to install thermal systems, such as Borrego Solar, no longer do. Chris Anderson, Borrego’s chief technology officer, says that thermal and PV systems require contractors with different skills and juggling the two would be tricky.”

SunWater Solar agrees with that assessment which is why we specialize in solar water heating and solar thermal technology.   We don’t install PV systems and our team is focused exclusively on designing and installing solar thermal systems which sets us apart from other companies.