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The studies suggest that providing hot water to a family home accounts for nearly a third of the total monthly utlility bill. This is bad enough but it seems that this trend will continue to rise in the future as most of the fuels that are used to create hot water are fossil fuels. Fossils fuels are a finite resource that will get harder to find and pull out of the ground. This will result in higher bills been handed down to the consumers. Bills will rise to the angst of the average consumer but even the large utility corporations and governments are becoming concerned over alternatives to fossil fuels. This is partly to keep their shareholders and voters happy and to address the worries over environmental damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels. One alternative is to use solar power to heat water. It can promise savings on energy bills and a more environmentally friendly approach to creating energy. This article will talk about solar power water boiler systems and how they could be an option for your home.

Using the sun to heat water has been used for thousands of years. It is still one of the more popular ways to use solar energy even today and the basic principle remains the same. It is simply a matter of placing water in a location where it can be exposed to the suns thermal rays. There are two common approaches to doing this. They are called the flat plate collector and batch collector systems.

Flat plate collectors are better described as a system of piping that is located on the roof so that it comes into contact with direct sunlight. Water is passed through the piping from a storage tank. During this process the water is heated by the thermal heat. The piping and the backing of the system are designed to make maximum use of the thermal heat passed by the sun. The heated water can then be pased into the homes plumbing system or to another storage tanks or back to the original tank.

A batch collector system is a plain old water tank with a few modifications to, again, utilize the sun's energy to the maximum affect. The tank will be placed in a spot that gets plenty of direct contact with the sun.

The solar heated water is passed into the regular plumbing system of the home where it can be used to have hot showers or baths or wash the dishes. The home will still rely on electricity to heat the water but solar heated water will be hotter than ordinary water and this will take a lot less electricity to get it to a usage temperature. This will lower your energy bills over time.

Many people may be put off by the initial cost of installing a solar power hot water system however the costs have come down considerably over the years. If you factor in that it has very few maintenance costs and can last up to 20 years then there is a good chance that you will be saving money. The initial cost will take about 5 years to recover on saved energy bills. This leaves up to 15 years of energy savings. You are also being more environmentally responsible as there is less greenhouse gases being produced using this system.