Hot water from Solar PV system?

Mandragorin

We have a solar panel system installed and recently received a flyer about reto fitting an intelligent hot water system.

The company have quoted us £1000 + vat
You can see the system on the aurora pv site (if you google it) under products.

Is this something worthwhile to have as I haven't been able to find any reviews about this type of system - i.e. pro's and con's having something like this fitted.

Any help and advice would be much appreciated or even just a pointer to where I can get more information (e.g. could it also contribute to powering the central heating!)

KevinG

Devices for regulating an electric immersion heater based on PV output have been discussed here before - maybe try searching for "immersion". But, you have to ask yourself, £1,200, how long would that take to pay back?

As for central heating, I guess you could have a device which switched on your electric central heating when it was sunny if you really wanted to

Cardew

You don't say what type of central heating you have installed.

If you have gas/oil then any savings will be at the cost of the gas/oil not at the rate for daytime electricity.

I doubt if many people with a house large enough to fit solar panels will have electric central heating(on daytime rates) they will have gas/oil/LPG/storage heating.

£1200 invested in a long term building society will produce £55 pa before tax. I very much doubt your savings will be close to £55.

Martyn1981

Hiya SEPPES, three posts on 3 different threads and all mentioning the same diversionary switch! You must be really pleased with it.

Any chance of a list of competing makes and models? :rotfl:

Mart.

ChopperST

I wonder what his motive could be Martyn? :think:

Would it not be useful to generate a sticky with users thoughts on the different diversion switches? The current thread on the topic is a bit cluttered.

I've just had the immersun 2 put in and its an excellent bit of kit. So much so I'm going to install an electric element to our towel radiator and run a second relay to the unit for when the immersion is hot it sends the surplus to heat the towels.