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Scottish home renewables grants expected to close in 3 weeks
Posted by Cathy Debenham on 5th July 2010 at 10:01 am
Scottish householders are being urged to snap up grants for home renewables before the cash runs out. Grants are still available for 30% of the cost, up to a maximum of £4,000 for heating technologies like wood pellet boilers, heat pumps or solar water heating. (The LCBP grants in England is alread…
Posted in: General
Solar hot water delivered quicker and cheaper
Posted by Cathy Debenham on 20th July 2010 at 9:10 am
A system that delivers solar water heating at a lower cost, quicker installation and with no need to buy a new cylinder was one of the finalists in the 2010 Ashden Awards for sustainable energy. John Willis invented the Willis Solasyphon because he found that the cost and disruption of installing…
Posted in: Solar heat & hot water
Find out what an energy efficient home really looks like
Posted by Cathy Debenham on 7th September 2010 at 2:22 pm
SuperHome owners across the country are throwing open their doors this month to inspire others to reduce the energy needed to run their house. These aren't high tech new builds, but old homes, that the owners have renovated to reduce carbon emissions by at least 60%. Convinced that seeing is beli…
Posted in: Energy efficiency
Solar thermal panels: flat plate or evacuated tube?
Posted by Gabriel Wondrausch on 8th October 2010 at 9:08 am
Which type of solar water heating system works best. Watch this video to weigh up the pros and cons of flat panel versus evacuated tubes. The main difference comes down to the efficiency. With evacuated tubes, the vacuum provides almost perfect insulation. A fl…
Posted in: Solar heat & hot water
Servicing your solar water heating panels
Posted by Gabriel Wondrausch on 5th April 2011 at 10:56 am
With summer coming, solar thermal panels will be working harder, so if you haven't had yours serviced recently, now's the time to think about getting it done. This video talks through what a service involves for solar thermal panels: both evacuated tubes and flat plate. …
Posted in: General
Can solar panels improve the efficiency of your ground source heat pump?
Posted by John Barker-Brown on 3rd October 2011 at 5:05 am
There is a growing interest in using solar panels to deposit heat within the ground during the summer periods and then using a ground source heat pump to extract this deposited heat during the winter. These systems are commonly called inter-seasonal storage systems and can usually be classed as:- …
Posted in: Heat pumps, Solar heat & hot water
User control is vital for best performing solar water heating
Posted by Cathy Debenham on 18th October 2011 at 3:23 am
The way householders use their solar thermal system is critical to getting the best results from solar water heating systems, according to new research. The Energy Saving Trust (EST) is calling on installers to give better advice to users on how to control their solar water heating: in terms of volu…
Posted in: Solar heat & hot water
Solar hot water and the missing washing machine
Posted by Alister Scott on 9th March 2012 at 10:20 am
Ten years ago we installed solar hot water heating. It's been great, particularly as energy prices have gone up. When we did it, I had one professor of environmental policy (who shall remain nameless) look down his nose at me and say "but surely it'll never be economic?" That was te…
Posted in: Solar heat & hot water
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