[Dad was my hero]

apparently it works off the "coolant". It is called solar thermal air conditioning. (I'm quoting from the article I first saw about it) The collector superheats your AC system's additional refrigerant which reduces the workload f the compressor. This increases the system's efficiency rating and lowers the overall power consupmtion.

I can say that we hooked up the system late August last year and our September elec bill dropped by almost 75%. Of course at the same time we also went live with the solar hot water heater but I attribute most of the drop to the solar AC system.

[thackney]

Thank you, I’ll read up to learn more.

[mrsmith]

If you have an old bill from when the electric company supplied ALL your power the solar HW pre-heater saves about 10% (I assume it’s a pre-heater and you still have the regular HW heater. AW full duty solar HW heater would save about 15%). It would be a greater proportion after installing the panels of course.

I’m curious what the payback period is for the solar HW heater including installation