14 DAY TRIAL // A team of Swedish researchers came up with a way of connecting solar panels to the existing boiler within a house.
This means that people who wanted to do so but had to spend a lot of money, will afford to turn to solar power to heat their water.
Previous systems needed the house owners to change boilers, making the new system too expensive and discouraging the population.
This new approach allows the solar panel to be installed on the roof and directly connected to the existing boiler in the house.
Of course, this solution only works for people who have a boiler at home, especially those that are heated by electricity, which is the case for over half of million houses in Sweden.
This new method should reduce electricity bills significantly, and people will also do something to protect the environment.
Luis Ricardo Bernardo, a doctoral student in Energy and Building Design at Lund University in Sweden explained that the researchers “have built and tested the system in our lab.
“In the spring we will install a prototype in a few houses,” and “after that we hope to develop a commercial product together with industry.
“There is a lot of potential,” the doctoral student who defended his licentiate thesis on 7 January, adds.
In Sweden, heating houses with electricity is expensive and the annual electricity bill usually raises to around 25,000 Swedish Krona ($3704.56 US).
With this new method, a household should be able to save around SEK 2 000 ($296.36 US) a year, with roughly half of the water being heated by solar power and the rest in a traditional manner.
Åke Blomsterberg, a researcher in Energy and Building Design and Luis Ricardo Bernardo’s supervisor said that “we don’t yet know how much the solar panels will cost.
“However, we know that, thanks to Ricardo’s proposal, installing solar panels could now become an interesting option for those living in houses with boilers.”