Andrew's Comments

@ John

My pleasure. I have some ideas for a new solar platform, utilizing "Weever Apps" - more on that soon. :)

Thanks John, Bill - I agree: solutions arise from necessity. We can create necessity/value in different ways; zoning would be a good start, oil/gas may help - but I'm hoping we can use social values and delivery mechanisms to speed up delivery of RE before the market is glutted/gutted by a boom/bust cycle and ineffective ad-hoc distribution.

It's never been easy to be in RE, certainly; at least we have some attention and places to get some traction these days...

@BuildHomeSolarPanel, @iq

Glad to help!

I've tried to select articles that have a minimum of direct advertising/branding so they can be useful for (most) solar hot water installers and startups in particular.

For videos, you can embed any of these into your web site. Just go to 'embed' at the video's page on Vimeo and YouTube and follow the instructions.

In terms of the articles, these are mostly 'proof points' toward residential or public sales. The Environment Maine study makes a strong case for regional/municipal SHW adoption - some of the other industry/articles should hopefully help with sales/value discussions.

On the web, sharing good, relevant info is good marketing. So I'd encourage anyone to pick out the resources that are the most relevant to your market - and then share widely.

Thanks! I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear your thoughts on the Chinese SHW market/deployment once you've returned and have had some time to settle in. - Hope the trip is going well! - Andrew H.

@GregChick @PatrickOLeary

Thanks for your comments.

I attended the Hamilton Economic Summit today where the keynote speaker was Christopher B. Leinberger of the Brookings Institution. One of the points he hit on was the rise of 'walkable urbanism' in younger generations.

Given the trend of high-density growth in urban centres, I wonder if we may see some alignment of the classic residential vs. commercial issue in solar thermal.

http://www.hamiltoneconomicsummit.ca/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/04/HES-2011-Community-Luncheon-Invite.pdf

- Andrew H.

@kimgerly

re: that was a lame attempt at sexy and cool.

Hey, I agree. It's certainly not my video - just something I ran across that seemed relevant to the discussion in the post above; for better or much more likely, for worse.

Anyway, stay tuned for part II of 'Six Weeks of Solar Hot Water' soon... and thanks for all the feedback, resources and ideas.

I'd be remiss if I didn't post this link in response:
http://vimeo.com/15585497

..perhaps a bit too literal, but SHW can probably use all the help it can get. :)

Thanks everyone - it's been an amazing week of feedback, critical insights and information on Solar Hot Water for me here. Next week, I'll be providing some 'exemplary' SHW examples at different levels; and asking more questions to build this resource for growing SHW well.

(..and my thanks again to Alpha Thermal Systems; they've been wonderfully generous to fund this six weeks of SHW blog posts; as well as the eventual production of some new tools/resources to help us all grow Solar Hot Water in a good way.)

Andrew H.

Thanks Patrick,

re: the business segment is where we will see the sort of numbers that mainstream solar.

I would agree. Are there any examples of SHW-->to-->Commercial marketing that you regard as especially effective at increasing the visibility/viability of solar hot water to that sector?

Thanks,
Andrew H.

@ SunnyMary,

Sounds interesting - Perhaps you could post that article here at REW?

@ Thomas - What do you think about the potentials for efficient solar-hot-water storage? I don't see much here, but there seem to be some sophisticated commercial/residential technologies elsewhere.

Thanks,
Andrew H.

re: Can I have a monitor that shows me how hot the solar heated water is, etc.

Absolutely. One of the advantages I see for 'plug & play' systems is that monitoring tends to be more sophisticated (and often includes pre-programmed efficiency capabilities/functions). Pretty much everything my clients at ATS sell is online-capable; beyond that there are a *lot* of online options out there in my experience. Caveat: some are great, many are terrible.

Generally speaking, areas with a longer history and greater deployment of SHW (Germany, etc.) seem to have better monitoring options; mostly only available for iOS (Apple) at this point, but I think that will change as web-based-apps grow significantly into the next few years.

Clee - thanks for your comments, quite helpful.

I think the SolarCity / community / crowd-sourced example(s) are especially interesting. I've brought up that model up with clients before, (including Alpha Thermal Systems) but as you know, some of the variables in SHW installations (especially retrofitting) can be problematic for predicting benefits/payback accurately.

That said, maybe its time to re-examine the issue. Perhaps we need a small town in (New England? The Southwest?) to be a widely-known American exemplar of municipal, residential and commercial deployment in Renewable Energy...

Maine?
http://www.environmentmaine.org/newsroom/energy/energy-program-news/as-oil-prices-soar-report-finds-solar-hot-water-would-save-mainers--oil

..and thanks for the video - the presenter put the relative PV/SHW merits out well.

I also notice that Wake Forest recently announced a SolarThermal/PV 'cell' - which might be of interest to readers here: http://www.gizmag.com/solar-thermal-cell/18346/

Clee, the sticker-marketing example is a really interesting example to me because we expect to see a critical growth in the 'physical/mobile web' over the next few years - far beyond even residential-level online monitoring.

I'm going to be giving the 'informational' questions around SHW some thought - relating to visibility (installed and on the street as Thomas mentions), accessibility, monitoring and marketing-frequency... perhaps it's time to bring these questions/benefits to the mobile/web as well..

Now my question, How come only six weeks?

- I can only write so much :)

My hope is to use these 6 weeks to create a baseline guide for growing Solar Thermal, and then modify that PDF guide over time, continuing the conversation about RE and SHW here at REW and abroad...

Thanks for your comments Thomas - quite appreciated.

In terms of 'seeing SHW system in action' - (outside of the White House) are there any notable examples you'd recommend checking out and/or broadcasting to others?

In terms of marketing against oil; I should be more clear - I"m thinking that solar hot water may benefit from a 'picking a fight' with oil heating, as mentioned here:

http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/conflict_is_good_for_business.php

What do you think?

Thanks,
Andrew H.

Nice article Tor.

Here are some other articles on the subject for REW readers:

http://boagworld.com/site-content/successful-company-blogging/

http://cartanova.ca/green-community-blog/itemlist/category/5-online-marketing-tips

@SolarEnergyConsultant

Audio and video is as important as it is relevant. If it allows you to share something useful with visitors, than it's worthwhile. But it's not an absolute requirement at all.

@ Reaching Mobile Phone Users

Having the blog presented in a mobile-friendly format will go a long way. Most web sites have some trouble in this regard towards compatibility, etc.

We have a Weever project http://www.weever.ca that should automate a mobile-app for most sites in 2011.

But the general rule is that mobile attention is the same as normal attention - be clear, be relevant, be brief.

- Hope that's helpful - Andrew H. - http://www.cartanova.ca