Solar Water Heater Markets Up Sharply In EU - 14 Million M2 In Service

The market for solar water heaters in Europe grew by 18 percent in 2005 compared with 2004 measured by installed equipment, according to provisional figures published on Thursday by Tecsol, a French consultancy that monitors the solar energy market.
A total of 14 million square metres (150 million square feet) of solar panels for water heaters were operating in Europe at the end of last year, a rise of 18 percent or 1.9 million square metres over 2004.

Germany is by far the biggest market, accounting for 5.6 million square metres, although France saw the biggest year-on-year gain -- an increase of 134 percent in 2005 over 2004.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Market_heats_up_for_solar_in_Europe.html

They pooh-poohed the whole concept. Said the problem in Tucson was to stay cool, not warm. Since about 1/3 of home energy use is to heat water, I just didn't get their bias. PLUS, even then there was technology to create and store juice for use of electric appliances, like, oh, say evap coolers!

Did me good to go to the Plaza for Earth Day and see people bake in solar ovens. Hey, they didn't use juice and they didn't heat up the house to cook... seems like a good idea in a place where staying cool was the big problem ;)

The big problem here in the US is bias and tax codes. One of the first things Reagan admin did was cut Carter's tax credits for installation of alternative energy technology. All for the sake of keeping the money piling up in tradition power companies' coffers.... :grr:

Havocdad spend many years in Europe. He is constantly amazed at how long the US takes to adopt ideas that have been working over there for years/decades.

Wind traps on the roofs funnel cool breezes down to lower floors, where there are fountains and pools (sometimes underground). The combination of breeze and water leads to lots of cooling by evaporation.

Or you can burn coal, convert it to steam, which turns a generator for electricty, which is piped a hundred miles, which runs an electric A/C. Either way.

Mechanical A/C is where it's at. Nothing wrong with using the sun's energy to run the A/C though.

And evap cooling methods usually make negative ions which make us feel better. AC creates postitive ions which makes us feel like crap. Just what we need in heat.

Solar dessiccant wheels are fairly simple and work for humid environments. It's basically a wheel half inside the house and half outside, coated with dessiccant (there are liquid dessiccant varieties too that aren't wheels.) The water adsorbs into the dessiccant inside the house, and then is slowly rotated outside the house where the wheel absorbs sunlight (or is heated by air that has been heated by sunlight) and the water evaporates out of the dessiccant. Then the inside air is dry and easier for the AC equipment to cool.



http://www.dehutech.com/desiccant_cooling.htm

Dessicant solar can also be used in more complex systems that tackle sensible as well as just latent heat (in fact these days it's rare to find a vanilla solar "dehumidifier" as most of the systems are full AC.)

http://www.gaiagroup.org/Research/RI/solarac/

Typically, an experimenter will build their own system that does not move the heat efficiently, or will contruct a bad heat exchanger and never get good results. I think the only sure thing for an experimenter is a pre-heating tank "upstream" from the hot water tank (or tankless heater). Those are only seasonal, and need to be drained in the winter.