[driftdiver]

I had a solar water heater for my pool. It worked very well. Solar has its uses but it sure isn’t going to replace power plants.

[WHBates]

I have a solar heater on my pool here in Florida and it works absolutely great in the late spring and early fall. Maybe extends the swimming season a month overall, that however will never replace an actual heater using real power. It’s a joke to think it will.

[palmer]

That worked because heating water can capture a lot more of the sun's energy (up to 70%). It's much better than electricity considering inefficient solar photovoltaic, losses feeding it back into the grid, sending it across lossy lines, then using it to drive a resistive load on the other end.

In that case imagine instead of capturing 70% of the sun's energy to heat your water we paid someone to capture 25% of the sun's energy, then convert it to A/C and feed it to the grid. We would pay them taxpayer funds to set up the system then pay them full retail for the electricity. By the time you got to use it for a heater you would get maybe 10% of the sun's energy at best but pay big bucks for that. But that is what we are subsidizing.