Energy In the News

California's effort to draw more of its power from the sun took a new direction Friday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation to spend $250 million over the next 10 years on rebates for solar water heaters.

Less expensive and less glamorous than solar panels that generate electricity, solar water heaters do exactly what their name implies - use sunlight to warm water for a home or business.

They also cut the state's need for natural gas, a fossil fuel that fluctuates wildly in price and produces greenhouse gases when burned.

"This is huge," said Sue Kately, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. "There's been an awful lot of attention on the solar electric side, which is great. But solar heating has been sort of neglected. Now it's been raised to partnership status with solar electric."

State energy regulators now have to decide on rules for the rebates. They started a test program in San Diego County this summer, offering homeowners a one-time rebate as large as $1,500. The results of that test will help the California Public Utilities Commission design the statewide program.

The rebate money will come from a fee tacked onto the natural gas bills paid by utility customers. That will probably amount to about 13 cents per month, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, whose advocacy group, Environment California, pushed hard for the rebates.

Although solar water heating has been around for decades, it hasn't caught the public imagination the way that solar electric systems have.

Solar water heaters can take several different forms. In some systems, the water passes through pipes inside a solar collector, absorbing the heat directly through the pipe wall. In others, the solar collector heats a conducting fluid inside a closed loop of pipes. The pipes pass through a large water tank, heating the water, before sending the conducting fluid back to the solar collector to start the process again.

Solar water heating systems cost between $5,500 and $6,500, according to the NorCal Solar nonprofit group. Although not cheap, that's still far below the $24,000 price of a typical home solar electricity system. Both of those figures represent the price before federal and state incentives.

Authors of the new legislation hope to see 200,000 new solar water heating systems installed as a result of the rebates.

California's landmark "million solar roofs" initiative, a $3.3 billion program, gives rebates to homeowners who install solar electricity systems. But environmental advocates kept pushing the state to include water heaters in its solar plans.

"What's exciting (from) an environmental point of view is we're seeing a lot of policy support for all kinds of solar," Del Chiaro said.