Sun Bandit solar water heater pricing?

[C_Heath]

Hey guys first post. For a while now, Duke Energy has sent these "energy performance" evaluations to me. I pay attention to them. However, I think they are bogus. I know the average home energy usage in the US is around 1000 kw/h per month but Duke says that I am using way more than I should. I average 1700 kw/h per month. My house is 40 years old, brick, 2000 sq feet with the same size unfinished basement. I have 3 daughters so yes, the shower and washer and dryer runs all the time. I have tried to be aware of usage. I have made a few changes though as of late and they are small, I am trying. Heres the upgrades so far....

Trane XL824 smart thermostat (My unit is 3 years old (trane XR15 indoor and out is new)
All LED lighting throughout.
Smart timers for all phantom products
75 foot of insulated pipe on all hot water lines in basement (its hot in 20 seconds vs 60 now for only $9)
Insulated blanket for my 15 year old electric water heater.
Blew in R19 cellulose in the attic.
New 30 year Architectural shingles.

So not much but hopefully these small changes will add up. What I dont see is the ROI of the Sun bandit Solar water heater. Has the price dropped or is it still the same? Last I saw it was $6999. In my state there is no state incentive but from what I understand there is some type of federal incentive. Maybe 35%? I may be wrong on my water heater costs per year but saving $30-$40 per month on it, wont get you out of the Sun Bandit hole for many years right?

Panels are another option but my house only has 2 areas of rooftop that faces south so I cant do more than 14 panels. I just dont think it would be cost effective to do that unless those 14 panels were the Sunpro 435 watt panels. Then it would cover but maybe 25% of my total energy bill per month. Can anyone shed some light on the sun bandit? Most videos I see are ones where people went to do panels to power the home and opted to also do the sun bandit. Not seen a review of the water heater alone.

Thanks alot!
C

[J.P.M.]

While it could always be lower, given your situation and family size, your usage doesn't seem that far out of line, or at least understandable, even after all the conservation efforts.

Most 40 yr. old houses can use some tightening up.

BTW, and FWIW, nicely done so far - now seal the building envelope more. Then, consider blown in insulation for the walls. Before all that, turn the thermostat down in winter and up in summer. After that, get low flow shower heads, a solar clothes dryer and a cattle prod to inspire more conservation efforts. My guess is you have more of a "use too much" situation rather than a bogus metering situation. Conservation retrofits or good initial design can only do so much.

Duke's measure of your usage is based on their meter. The meters are pretty accurate and probably not bogus. My guess is your usage may well be what they say it is.

You may have some loads you're unaware of. Get a Kill-a-Watt meter and start snooping around.

While solar hot water for domestic use is often a cost effective choice, using PV electricity to heat water via resistance heating is not the way to go. Suit yourself, but that SunBandit contraption you write of looks like mostly or entirely B.S. and the type of trap people's solar ignorance allows them to fall into.

If you want to heat water with the sun, and you don't have natural gas, A solar thermal water heater will be a more cost effective choice. If natural gas is not available to you, a heat pump water heater will probably be a better choice yet, depending on your climate.

If you have natural gas service, use that to heat the water and skip the solar water heating entirely. Better, cheaper, faster.

[bcroe]

Your house is much the same as mine. 2 occupants were running 417KWH a month, here in cool NW IL. If you
can break down just where your energy is going, you can better target potential improvements. Take J.P.M.s
advice, especially about your water heater. To snoop 240VAC loads I have a surplus revenue grade meter that
can be wired into any dual breaker circuit for a month or so.

I doubt 14 panels would much impact your situation. Bruce Roe ENEmeter.png

[SunEagle]

A better way to determine you power usage would be to get some type of metering that can provide a usage trend showing approximate kw and time of day. That way you can identify when your high usages are happening.

I use to have a system made by Blue Line. The WiFi portion recently failed but I got pretty good data from it for over 5 years.

Probably a better power monitor system is made by TED. Having a meter similar to what the POCO provides gets you total kWh usage but not the detail as to how much and when.

Knowing the patterns of how you use the electricity is the best way of finding a way to reduce it.

[C_Heath]

Thanks guys! As for the power company meter being incorrect, that was not what I meant, I meant, I didnt believe the "other houses in my area" where as green as they say they are. Could be tho. I have ordered a P3 kill a watt meter and may even do a Sense monitor or, TED, CURB etc. I like that techy stuff anyhow. Thanks again! Great site! Lots of helpers is always a plus!

[C_Heath]

and also, I have scheduled a free audit with Duke. Oh and I got a call from Bandit. Its $9000 installed. Im sorry, Ill have to pass.

[J.P.M.]

and also, I have scheduled a free audit with Duke. Oh and I got a call from Bandit. Its $9000 installed. Im sorry, Ill have to pass.

The bandit part of the scam is probably the only thing about it that's correct. I wouldn't consider it if it was free.

[azdave]

There was solar hot water already installed on my a home in Phoenix where natural gas was not available. What I saved over the years in electric costs was blown away in an instant when the tank failed (no warranty) and I needed a special "solar" tank at close to $850. Luckily, the system came with the home so the pain was not as bad as if I had bought it myself. I converted back to all-electric and moved not long after that. The panels are still sitting there looking like Stonehenge on the flat roof. The home I live in now has natural gas hot water and I converted the close dryer over to gas as well.

[C_Heath]

While it could always be lower, given your situation and family size, your usage doesn't seem that far out of line, or at least understandable, even after all the conservation efforts.

Most 40 yr. old houses can use some tightening up.

BTW, and FWIW, nicely done so far - now seal the building envelope more. Then, consider blown in insulation for the walls. Before all that, turn the thermostat down in winter and up in summer. After that, get low flow shower heads, a solar clothes dryer and a cattle prod to inspire more conservation efforts. My guess is you have more of a "use too much" situation rather than a bogus metering situation. Conservation retrofits or good initial design can only do so much.

Duke's measure of your usage is based on their meter. The meters are pretty accurate and probably not bogus. My guess is your usage may well be what they say it is.

You may have some loads you're unaware of. Get a Kill-a-Watt meter and start snooping around.

While solar hot water for domestic use is often a cost effective choice, using PV electricity to heat water via resistance heating is not the way to go. Suit yourself, but that SunBandit contraption you write of looks like mostly or entirely B.S. and the type of trap people's solar ignorance allows them to fall into.

If you want to heat water with the sun, and you don't have natural gas, A solar thermal water heater will be a more cost effective choice. If natural gas is not available to you, a heat pump water heater will probably be a better choice yet, depending on your climate.

If you have natural gas service, use that to heat the water and skip the solar water heating entirely. Better, cheaper, faster.

Thanks for the kind words JPM and everyone here. Seems like there is no testosterone like other forums. JPM, I do want to ask as well as any other that may want to chime in. What other items could be tightened up on my envelope as you say? My house is nice. The pella windows are 38 years old as well. Came with the house. Vinyl outside, wood inside. I did notice today that there was no caulking on the outside and there are some seems between the bricks and the vinyl. I did some poking around on pellas site as well as Google today but could not find whether or not these particular windows has or had insulation inside the window frame? They are non gas filled and double pane with the little metal blinds inside. High end back in the day. I will say this. They are quite drafty. Im sure the DUKE audit will show this. Any other things? As for the solar dryer.....I did see what I personally thought was an outstanding idea on builditsolars site. One guy ducted his dryer into the attic to pull the hot air into the dryer to dry the clothes. Is this what you meant by solar dryer?

[PNPmacnab]

Look into NYLE heat pump water heaters. These are external units that attach to the tank and electric heating costs are half of normal. These do have a longer recovery time and they generally suggest a larger tank. As a bonus the dehumidify the basement. While heating water in a tank is generally a bad idea, I do heat water with PV. With modest panel array size it is absolutely the most effective use of a PV panel in any application since 100% of the possible generated power is used. The panels would operate at power point voltage. This would connect to the lower heating element and the upper element would be still grid tied for high demand. A tempering water valve is needed to blend water down to 120F. An experiment that requires a little do it yourself.

[C_Heath]

Look into NYLE heat pump water heaters. These are external units that attach to the tank and electric heating costs are half of normal. These do have a longer recovery time and they generally suggest a larger tank. As a bonus the dehumidify the basement. While heating water in a tank is generally a bad idea, I do heat water with PV. With modest panel array size it is absolutely the most effective use of a PV panel in any application since 100% of the possible generated power is used. The panels would operate at power point voltage. This would connect to the lower heating element and the upper element would be still grid tied for high demand. A tempering water valve is needed to blend water down to 120F. An experiment that requires a little do it yourself.

Well this is what I have wondered all along. There is a video on YouTube and tho I'm not sure if I am supposed to paste a link so I won't but he has three 250 watt panels with one line coming in to a MPPT (and a very small one at that) and one line that comes off the MPPT to the bottom heating element in DC and the top one is AC into the grid for when he needs backup. Why would you need a $10,000 bandit unit if you could do this? I am lacking electrical knowledge but he's doing it why can't we?

[PNPmacnab]

That video is close to what I do. That module will work a couple years until the capacitors blow up. There is a guy that has a board that will do the same thing for about $30. If some external caps are added it will work much longer. It is sad the water heating videos you see on you tube. Some do have a kernel of an idea but haven't tied everything together. If anyone knows how to use a UNO this is a piece of cake. $6,000 for a standard water heater, what a joke. And this can be done with relatively low voltage 48V with a 2,000W 120V heating element.

[J.P.M.]

Look into NYLE heat pump water heaters. These are external units that attach to the tank and electric heating costs are half of normal. These do have a longer recovery time and they generally suggest a larger tank. As a bonus the dehumidify the basement. While heating water in a tank is generally a bad idea, I do heat water with PV. With modest panel array size it is absolutely the most effective use of a PV panel in any application since 100% of the possible generated power is used. The panels would operate at power point voltage. This would connect to the lower heating element and the upper element would be still grid tied for high demand. A tempering water valve is needed to blend water down to 120F. An experiment that requires a little do it yourself.

Using excess PV generation for resistance heating may be better than 0 $$ reimbursement at crap rates for excess generation from the POCO, but with a NEM tariff, it'll be more cost effective to not oversize the array in the first place.

Heating water in a tank is not necessarily a bad idea as long as the cost of the fuel can be kept lower or as low as the next lowest alternative means of heating the water, and the losses are kept to a minimum. Read that as use nat. gas and insulate the crap out of the tank.

For a moderate climate, using PV as the major source of electricity for resistance heating is probably a loser when compared to heat pump water heating where a C.O.P. of ~ 3.0 or so will make the L.C.O.E of the heat pump system somewhat comparable to propane or less.

Or, an efficient solar thermal water heater, if well designed, can produce an annual (out the tank /P.O.A.) of something like 30+ % annual efficiency - not as good as a heat pump water heater, but approaching 2X the efficiency of PV/electric resistance heating where the efficiency will be limited to something like 15-20 % . FWIW, my solar water heater runs at ~ 32-35 % annual efficiency and has supplied ~ 90-95 % of my hot water every year for the last 8 years or so with some, but still slight, maint. As much as I like my solar DHW system, If I did it now, it would be a heat pump with power supplied by added capacity to my PV array.

Heating H2O with electric resistance from PV generated electricity is simply cost INefficient.

[C_Heath]

That video is close to what I do. That module will work a couple years until the capacitors blow up. There is a guy that has a board that will do the same thing for about $30. If some external caps are added it will work much longer. It is sad the water heating videos you see on you tube. Some do have a kernel of an idea but haven't tied everything together. If anyone knows how to use a UNO this is a piece of cake. $6,000 for a standard water heater, what a joke. And this can be done with relatively low voltage 48V with a 2,000W 120V heating element.

$6000? Dude the sun bandit guy called me today! He just happened be running a "special" today only! Imagine that. Must be my lucky day. $9000 installed!!!! Tomorrow it goes back to $11995 installed. I swear, I just sat there on the phone. I didn't know what to say lol.

[J.P.M.]

$6000? Dude the sun bandit guy called me today! He just happened be running a "special" today only! Imagine that. Must be my lucky day. $9000 installed!!!! Tomorrow it goes back to $11995 installed. I swear, I just sat there on the phone. I didn't know what to say lol.

IMO, you said as much as was prudent - that being nothing.