History, Design, and Applications

Solar Hot Water SystemsBen Gravely - Holocene Technologies

Blog <http://www.solarhotwater-systems.com/>

• A (very) Brief History of Solar Energy

• Residential & Commercial Solar Examples

• How it Works

• Simple Economics

Antoine Lavoisier Solar Furnace - 1774Melted Platinum at 3222ºF

Brief History

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Augustin Mouchet, Paris Exposition, 1878Solar steam engine pumped 500 gallon per hour.

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Brief History

Clarence Kemp’sBatch Solar Water Heater

1892

The Modern EraPhase 1 - The Beginning

1892 - 1950

... we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Thomas Edison - 1931

Conversation between Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

First Commercial Solar System in US

The first modern flat plate solar collector

invented by William Bailey in 1909

• used separate storage tank• company was called Day & Night

By 1941 there were 60,000 Day & Night solar water heaters in Florida

By 1900 there were 1600 solar water heaters in southern California

Panoma Valley, CA, 1911 Laundry in FL in the 1930s

California - Cheap natural gas ended the solar era by 1920

The end of Phase I

Energy Prices declined steadily until the 1970s

And Then......

Florida - Cheap electricity after WWII ended the solar era in Florida by 1950

1973 & 1979 Gas Lines

Two oil embargos occurred - in 1973 and 1979

US energy security was quickly destroyed

1979 Solar System on White House

“A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”

“It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.” Pres. Jimmy Carter

The Modern Era - Phase II - Camelot1978-1986

“The moral equivalent of war”

Pres. Jimmy Carter Goals

• Energy independence

• Reduce Pollution of fossil

fuels

• Long term energy planning

• Created the Dept of Energy

• Started renewable energy

incentives

Energy Independence