Genuine question. Have seen lots of videos of people putting just one or two solar panels in their garden, on a shed or even on a van and using tech called a grid-tie inverter to plum it into the mains electric. Its started to make me wonder if we should all do this. Just a few hundred watts each from a percentage of homes around the average town or city would surely make a dent into carbon, meaning less oil and gas were burnt.
Obviously there are people who cant afford the tech or the space, but from just looking online the inverter is a couple of hundred quid, a 2-300w solar panel is 150 quid each. Cables not much. Talking to an electrician friend most homes have fuses here that can take a maximum of 30-50amps (in and out), so if your set up is small its not going to blow the electrics out.
Thoughts?
It irritates me that solar water heating isn't standard in the US. Your hot water should be routed through a heat exchanger on your roof prior to going through the water heater. When it's hot enough, the heater won't kick on. When it's not, the heater will kick on as normal. It would cut down on a lot of energy consumption without impacting hot water availability