How Cyprus Became a World Leader In Solar Heating (theguardian.com) 28
The republic of Cyprus "has outstripped all other EU member states in embracing hot-water solar systems," reports the Guardian, "with an estimated 93.5 % of households exploiting the alternative energy form for domestic needs."
EU figures show the eastern Mediterranean island exceeding renewable energy targets set in the heating and cooling of buildings thanks to the widespread use of the solar thermal technology... [First introduced in the late 1960s], the solar thermal systems not only collected solar energy as heat — usually generated through electricity and the burning of fossil fuels — they were extremely cost-effective and had helped spawn an entire industry [says Charalampos Theopemptou, the island's first environment commissioner and the head of the Cypriot parliament's environment committee].
"It's been great for low-income families and then there's the jobs: so many have been generated," the MP says. "There are the local manufacturers who produce the parts and then all the people who are trained to install them. It's big business." In his role as environment commissioner, Theopemptou pushed hard to make the solar systems obligatory on all newly constructed residential and commercial buildings... The popularity of the water heaters is such that a union of local solar thermal industrialists was established in 1977. Since then, more than 962,564 square cubic metres of "solar [panel] collectors" have been installed, the union says. Increasingly, the country's vibrant tourist industry has also resorted to the green solution with solar-powered hot water systems deployed in, they say, close to 100% of hotels...
For Demetra Asprou, a retired engineer, it's obvious that a region blessed with more than 300 days of sunshine a year should embrace solar energy. "It reduces electricity costs, increases the efficiency with which hot water is provided and is kind to the environment," she says. "Why would anyone use other, more traditional means to heat up water when only a few hours of sunlight, between 11am and 2pm, is enough for a 200-litre [44-gallon] tank to be filled with warm water that will last 48 hours? On days when there is no sunlight, which is rare, you always have electricity as a backup if necessary... Installation costs may be three times higher today, but there are EU-funded grants that the government hands out and within a year it's all paid off," she says. "After that, you basically have free hot water and see your electricity bills greatly reduced. In a country like Cyprus, it's a no-brainer."
Thanks to Slashdot reader votsalo for sharing the article.
"It's been great for low-income families and then there's the jobs: so many have been generated," the MP says. "There are the local manufacturers who produce the parts and then all the people who are trained to install them. It's big business." In his role as environment commissioner, Theopemptou pushed hard to make the solar systems obligatory on all newly constructed residential and commercial buildings... The popularity of the water heaters is such that a union of local solar thermal industrialists was established in 1977. Since then, more than 962,564 square cubic metres of "solar [panel] collectors" have been installed, the union says. Increasingly, the country's vibrant tourist industry has also resorted to the green solution with solar-powered hot water systems deployed in, they say, close to 100% of hotels...
For Demetra Asprou, a retired engineer, it's obvious that a region blessed with more than 300 days of sunshine a year should embrace solar energy. "It reduces electricity costs, increases the efficiency with which hot water is provided and is kind to the environment," she says. "Why would anyone use other, more traditional means to heat up water when only a few hours of sunlight, between 11am and 2pm, is enough for a 200-litre [44-gallon] tank to be filled with warm water that will last 48 hours? On days when there is no sunlight, which is rare, you always have electricity as a backup if necessary... Installation costs may be three times higher today, but there are EU-funded grants that the government hands out and within a year it's all paid off," she says. "After that, you basically have free hot water and see your electricity bills greatly reduced. In a country like Cyprus, it's a no-brainer."
Thanks to Slashdot reader votsalo for sharing the article.
WTF (Score:3)
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five dimensional meters
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no - six.
Re:WTF (Score:4, Informative)
When you square a linear measurement, you add another axis taking it from describing segment of line to a segment of a plane.
It follows that if you have a three dimensional measurement and 'square' it, you only have to add one additional dimension orthagonal to first three.
Therefore a squared square would be a cube, and a squared cubic meter would be a hypercube of four dimensions.
Well if we had that... (Score:1)
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Uh .. live in California .. pretty sure most of this state has that. Also multiple other states have that .. if solar'd a few dozen square miles of Arizona or New Mexico, and made corresponding distributed battery banks, we could power the whole USA with solar. Reference: https://landartgenerator.org/b... [landartgenerator.org]
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More like around 8900 square miles to provide all the electrical power for the US. A bit more than a few dozen. That's a little under 8% of Arizona. A pretty big area, but doable. On the other hand, if you wanted to replace all energy usage. That means all electricity, but also all oil, coal, natural gas and anything else combined, you would need about 61,000 square miles of solar panels. That gets a little tricky though, because if you replaced all that with electricity, there would probably be significant
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P.S. The numbers I provided are assuming an average of about 20 Watts per square meter, which is around the range a good solar farm typically works out to. That may seem low, but peak sunlight for solar power only lasts a small part of the day. when you consider 1000 Watts per square meter on a perfect day and a solar panel efficiency of about 20% and divide by the fraction of time during the day it will produce peak power, that's about what it works out to. Now, if we can get 40% efficient solar panels, w
One line answer - Government mandates (Score:2)
Skeptical of these 2 fact + 2 person's quotations shovel ready news stories. Just report the 2 lines lots of sunny days and mandated by government law.
Have to read about a thousand words before the "mandated by government laws" comes in.
>In his role as environment commissioner, Theopemptou pushed hard to make the solar systems obligatory on all newly constructed residential and commercial buildings – a move instituted by Israel back in the 1970s.
Sunny countries with lots of sun use the sun (Score:4, Informative)
Cyprus is a sunny country with 320 days of sunshine and an arid climate with few clouds.
It should surprise no one that water heaters make more sense there than in, say, Finland.
Also, electricity is 34 euros/kwh in Cyprus.
Warm, sunny countries all over the world use solar water heaters.
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1) Move your entire country as far south as you practically can.
2) ???
3) Profit!
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34 Euros per kWh is ridiculous. Seems like they have some work to do.
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Whenever I hear numbers on cost per kWh somewhere, I always wonder if that's the delivered cost or not. In a lot of places, delivery charges can be just as high as supply charges.
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Hopefully so! 0.34 Euros per kWh is cheaper than some parts of the US. 34 Euros per kWh means that anyone able to import solar panels would be incredibly wealthy.
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That's likely because of all of the solar panels, because they need to subsidize spinning reserve + night power if they have too many. Because of its location, Cyprus is not meaningfully interconnected, and so it has to actually produce the power itself rather than be like Denmark and pretend to have a self sufficient grid while outsourcing its maintenance to Norwegian and Swedish hydropower. This is why their official renewable numbers are low in spite of a lot of solar panels installed which you'll see if
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For those who don't know what a "solar water heater" is, it's a water tank on the roof of a building that's painted black.
The main problem with them is weight. Water is heavy. You need to overprovision the building carrying capacity by a significant margin to mount water tank on top of it safely. One of the biggest emitters of CO2 is concrete manufacturing. So you shouldn't do this unless you live in a very dry and sunny climate that is otherwise fairly hot in terms of outside temperatures (no need for acti
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For those who don't know what a "solar water heater" is, it's a water tank on the roof of a building that's painted black.
No, it really isn't. The tank is only up there so you don't have to spend energy pumping water up from a tank at ground level. The heater itself is a flat surface, not unlike a PV panel, that has pipes running across it through which water is circulated. You can either use pumps or creative plumbing (e.g. a thermosiphon) to keep the water flowing.
Just sticking a big tank up there would be stupidly ineffective thanks to the square-cube law. That's not to say no-one does it this way - it's much simpler and he
Ripped mine out recently (Score:5, Interesting)
I am in a sunny spot and the system worked great for ~14 years. Then it leaked. Replacing it was about 5x the cost of a heat pump unit, so I went the HPWH route. A single 100W solar panel is enough to offset its energy use on an annual basis; a 400W panel and 12V/100Ah battery could run it off-grid year-round.
Why can't we? (Score:2)
Why can't we double down on solar? You realize that once you spend the capital expenditure to get solar, well water, EV, and a house. Your family can live while you're virtually jobless? There'll be no such thing as an economic downturn as you can live on savings of a few hundred bucks a month (mostly for internet/Starlink), and maybe food if you don't wanna grow your own food (possible in most of the US if you have 2 acres). You only need to get (free) Obamacare and life insurance for your family. Public s
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I think I understand what you mean, but this idea of being "virtually jobless" suggests that farming and teaching aren't jobs...
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Yeah, I dunno about the whole off grid-but, but I do agree with the overall principle. I want the US at least to go bonkers on solar, and wind, nuclear too if people could get their . I really, really do not understand this fetish with oil ("energy" if you believe the petroleum propagandist lobby). If we can max out renewables, then we don't have to deal with these gawd-awful petrostates. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Texas (jk) , the list goes on.
Even though the US produces a ton of the
Cyprus? Try Israel (Score:2)
Lovely (Score:2)
If only their banks worked so well.