SolarEnergyAlaska.com

Solar-power heats up water at local triplex
by Jason Moore
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- It's the first solar-powered hot water system installed in Anchorage in decades, and it's at an east Anchorage triplex.

Seth Downs flies FedEx cargo planes around the world but when he's at home his interest in renewable energy got the best of him.

"I've been into renewable energy for about 15 years now been excited about it reading about it," said Downs, who's also a landlord. "I knew I had a south facing roof and knew the potential was there."

He contacted clean energy consultant Andy Baker who helped design Seth's $14,000 solar hot water system.

"This is the first system in Anchorage that is operating since the 1980's," said Baker. "There was a lot of skepticism about whether it would work it definitely does work. It has some limitations it is reducing his gas bill it's hearing his hot water very well on sunny days."

Water comes into the home at 45 degrees then the six solar panels on the roof are carefully positioned to capture maximum heat from the sun.

"Up here in Anchorage our latitude is 62 degrees and that's what you want to put the angle of the solar collector at," said Lee Bolling with Your Clean Energy.

The solar panels then warm the water before it flows on to the building's main water heater.

"So basically what the solar hot water system is doing is preheating water on its way to the final water heater which is a gas fired water heater," said Baker. "But if the solar gets it all done then Seth won't be burning any gas."

Just before two o'clock the temperature in the holding tanks topped 120 degrees.

Than means all hot showers, laundry and dishwashing come free of charge.

Downs says money wasn't the key motivator.

"It wasn't a huge motivation but I wasn't going to do it unless there was going to be a return on my money," Downs said. "I'm running it as a business so obviously I wanted to do something that was financially sensible."

The systems showed benefits February through October and then there are days like Wednesday where the long hot sun gave his tenants all the free hot water they needed.

Baker says the payback time on a system like that will change with gas prices.

The higher gas prices climb, the quicker the payback.

And the cost of the systems is coming down as they become more popular.

Contact Jason Moore at jmoore@kttu.com

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