Solar heating systems are designed to absorb as much of the suns’ energy as possible and store it in cells so that it can be used later to heat water or power electrical systems. The arrival of solar heating systems in South Africa was greeted by sceptics at first, because this was not the first time that South African consumers had come across solar heating systems.
Previously when the solar systems appeared on the market they were nowhere as efficient as the modern solar systems because they did not offer the same level of power storage as the current systems. The cost of the older solar heating systems was also very prohibitive.
The solar heating systems that are available today are far more advanced both in its design and it method of delivery. They need maybe 45 minutes of sunlight to gather enough power to provide hot water for the entire house. This saving is already very big as the old style geyser is probably one of the biggest users of power in the average home.
The problem that many south Africans have had with solar heating systems is that they do not trust that they will work as well as what was promised, so on days where the sky is a bit cloudy, the south African home maker will worry that the solar heating system will not work, so the he/she will switch the geyser on as well.
The kind of unnecessary expense, typifies the south African consumers approach to greener energy, because the person who fitted their solar heating system would have explained that all the system requires is an hour of daylight, and that is does not have to be brilliant sunshine, so there really is no need to use all that extra power that goes into firing up the geyser.
This naïve approach will soon fade because as more and more people have solar heating systems fitted to their homes, so South African consumers will get used to the idea, and they will realise that the South African sun is there for much more than just getting a tan.
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