Solar solutions: advantages and limitations

Solar powered systems involve a large set of applications, with different efficiencies, demanding different investments and involving different paybacks, making reasoning about their advantages and disadvantages in abstract a rather theoretical exercise.

There are anyway some pro arguments and con arguments that may useful to read about.

Solar Pro Arguments

- Heating our homes with oil or natural gas or using electricity from power plants running with oil and coal is a cause of global warming and climate disruption. Solar energy, on the contrary, is clean and environmentally-friendly.

- solar hot-water heaters require little maintenance, and their initial investment can be recovered within a relatively short time. See: Solar Powered Systems Payback.

- solar hot-water heaters can work in almost any climate, even in very cold ones. You just have to choose the right system for your climate: drainback, thermosyphon, batch-ICS, etc. See: Solar heating systems

- Maintenance costs of solar powered systems are minimal and the warranties large.

- Financial incentives (USA, Canada, European states…) can reduce the cost of the initial investment in solar technologies. The U.S. government, for instance, offers tax credits for solar systems certified by by the SRCC (Solar Rating and Certification Corporation), which amount to 30 percent of the investment (2009-2016 period).

Solar Cons Arguments

- The initial investment in Solar Water Heaters or in Solar PV Electric Systems is higher than that required by conventional electric and gas heaters systems.

- The payback period of solar PV-electric systems is high, as well as those of solar space heating or solar cooling (only the solar hot water heating payback is short or relatively short).

- Solar water heating do not support a direct combination with radiators (including baseboard ones).

- Some air conditioning (solar space heating and the solar cooling systems) are expensive, and rather untested technologies: solar air conditioning isn't, till now, a truly economical option.

- The efficiency of solar powered systems is rather dependent on sunlight resources. It's in colder climates, where heating or electricity needs are higher, that the efficiency is smaller.