Teams install the solar panels

In June, the Seattle Aquarium installed its first solar hot water demonstration system. The system preheats water used in the second flood cafe by way of five solar panels that are located on the building’s south facing wall.

A press release from A&R Solar Corp., the company that installed the system, says the solar system isn’t just doing well. It says the solar collectors are offsetting almost double their expected amount. Reeves Clippard, president and co-founder of the company, said if solar works this well in Seattle, “the rest of the country has no excuse not to act now.”

Honestly, I don’t really know what to make of this. It’s a good thing that the system is performing so well. But a system that produces double what the models said it would makes me wonder what exactly that baseline was. Then again, we have had an amazingly hot, bright and sunny summer.

The system has a monitoring device that will eventually allow visitors to see how it is performing in real time. It uses Heliodyne Gobi flat-plate solar hot water collectors.

An outside view of the solar and the aquarium

Looking up at the panels

My friends over at the Seattlepi.com’s reader blog Building Seattle Green have got a great new post today by Mati Bishop on solar hot water. To check it out, click here now.

Too often in the Pacific Northwest, solar technology is discounted because, well, people think we don’t have any sun. But that “fact” doesn’t always ring true. For example, with the solar battery that powers the BigBelly trash compactor (see here for a past story I did on the topic) the battery actually works better with the ambient light available when it’s cloudy out, rather than in direct sunlight.

Check out the Building Seattle Green post. It’s worth reading to learn other mythbusting solar facts! 

As for the photo, I can’t say if that’s a myth or not. It’s a farmer named Ma Yanjun of Qiqiao village in Shaanxi province China who, according to Ananova, built a solar powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes. I guess anything’s possible!