Thursday, January 17, 2008
Solar Water Heaters
I have been in Belgaum in India for the last couple of days. Belgaum is a small sleepy city located in North Karnataka located between Mumbai and Bangalore. While visiting some of my relatives places I noticed that almost all the new houses that have been constructed within the last few years have a solar water heater installed. I was really amazed seeing almost all new houses been fitted with this renewable energy device. People in a small city like belgaum are making their own unique contribution to fight (knowingly or unknowingly) global warming. It definitely saves them money in-terms of their electricity costs. If a city like belgaum can have so many solar water heaters, I can only imagine what the volume would be like in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai. Compare this to the United States. I have not yet seen a single water heater using solar energy.
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I was in India last month and was amazed to see the solar water heaters installed in many houses in my town. I live in a small town called Yeola, in Maharashtra, which is about 30 kms from Shirdi and about 275 kms north-east of Mumbai.
ReplyDeletePlenty of sunlight all year long and load-shedding (no electricity) almost every day has given solar heaters enough attention.
One of the big problems faced by a technology savvy country like US is lack of enough sunlight year around to justify the cost of solar heaters, which would obviously be a secondary source. I say this with the experience of a mid-west resident. I am not sure about southern and western states though.
Inspite of this stated problem, projects for solar houses have been initiated in lot of cities in US.