Solar Heating Tubes and Green Energy
Environmental issues concern both landlords and their tenants, and using green energy in the form of solar panels to warm your building’s water can go a long way towards addressing potential tenants’ concerns. If you have an industrial building, residential apartments or a commercial property, your prospective clientele will appreciate the advantages of using green energy. Taking advantage of green energy sources wherever you can will give possible renters another reason to rent your building space.
The fact that it will help save the planet probably won’t appeal to your business acumen but there are other reasons to install solar panels. You can lower your gas and energy bills significantly by becoming less dependent on your gas or electric boiler. Any savings can be used to increase your profit margins, or pass the savings on to your tenants.
Solar heated water is not a new idea, of course. The idea of using solar power to heat water have been with us since the mid 1800s. However, although the technology has come a long way over the last hundred years, until recently solar power was of limited use for heating in cold or cloudy areas. And these are the places where energy bills are at their highest. The recent development of vacuum-sealed solar heating tubes, however, are making it possible for a growing number of people to make use of a solar energy system.
The cylindrical shape of solar heating tubes allows them to be positioned so that a part of their surface is continuously facing the sun, allowing them to absorb considerably more solar energy than flat solar panels. Because they can glean the sun’s rays more efficiently, they are able to harvest enough solar power to heat a building’s water even during the winter and on cold days. The fact that they are vacuum sealed further helps their efficiency as vacuums provide the perfect conditions in which to insulate the heat source. Consequently less heating power is wasted. The heating element on the center of the tube will become hot, while the outside of the tube, insulated by the vacuum, continues to be cool. All of this leads to a lot more of the solar power being retained and used to heat the water in the building.
Your building’s boiler system or hot water heater uses up a sizeable chunk of the power your building uses. You can cut your energy bills and those of your tenants significantly by installing solar heating tubes and using the sun’s energy to your advantage. You only need buy and install the solar heating tubes once, after that the savings will last a lifetime.
There has never been a better time than now to begin using green energy sources such as solar panels. Governments the world over now offer significant incentives for landlords to install a solar energy system that makes use of green energy sources. Various countries will even offer you a grant towards the installation of your solar heating tubes or solar panels. Sooner or later, every building will have to use some type of green energy. It would be much better to act now, while the government will help defray some of the costs.
Craig Axelrod is a principal for Emmy Energy, a <A href=”http://www.emmyenergy.com/index.cfm”>New York solar power</a> operation installing <A href=”http://www.emmyenergy.com/green-energy-products/solar-heating-tubes.cfm”>solar heating tube systems</a> <A href=”http://www.emmyenergy.com/green-energy-products/solar-electric-panels.cfm”>solar electricity systems</a> & green systems throughout the Northeast.
