Solar providers offering better options to buy solar geysers

Green solutions company Build It Green has partnered with solar power solutions provider Solarent to provide homeowners with the option to rent-to-own their own solar geysers.
The geysers, which are South African Bureau of Standards approved, form part of the company’s Green Starter Kits products, which aim to make green tech- nologies more accessible.

Build It Green CEO Michelle Thomas says the company thinks the starter kits are an easy way to motivate people to go green. “We have set up a few different kits, from small kits, which are used in apartments, to bigger kits for houses.

“This makes the availability of solar geysers just so much more possible for the average person. You pay it off over five years and the geyser has a five-year maintenance plan and a ten-year warranty. What you save covers the cost of the monthly repayment,” she notes.

Benefits of solar geysers include the reduced consumption of electricity, which, in turn, [slashes] the carbon output from power-generating stations such as Eskom, and affords easy and fast installation, as well as low maintenance.

“We feel it is a social responsibility to make going green as accessible to everyone as possible. Electricity bills are increasing and it is not viable for power utility Eskom to continuously upgrade its infrastructure to provide more electricity to an ever- hungry electricity absorbing population. It just amounts to exorbitant costs,” she explains.

Build It Green architect Willem Coetzee says the money people save on these utili- ties could be spent elsewhere. “The big providers of services such as water and electricity, Johannesburg Water and Eskom, are already struggling to provide citizens with these services at the moment. The products will alleviate the demand load on these utilities,” he notes.

Thomas adds that, with huge drives by Eskom to encourage people to save electricity and the promotion solar geysers and heat pumps, the power generating industry will change. “The green building industry is increasing in size and will also be driven by legislation, as is evident in a number of European countries,” she says.

The company also offers rain-harvesting products as part of the starter kits. “This is not a new technology and has been around for centuries. The strain on our natural water resources is huge and keeps on growing. Collecting your own rainwater is a matter of survival and can be used for gardening or flushing toilets. In the manufacturing sector, depending on the building’s roof area, a company could potentially harvest 65 000 kℓ of water a year ,” says Coetzee.

“We have always been a water-scarce country, but we behaved like there was never a water shortage. Big factories and big businesses now invest in rainwater harvesting so that they can use it in their manufacturing processes. We have lost the art of looking after ourselves and we have become reliant on governments to look after us. It’s not so much about being green as about self-reliance. If one becomes self-reliant and responsible, there is less strain and burden on the State to supply services such as water and electricity,” Thomas adds.

The green building industry is still facing a few challenges. “Legislation is quite a big challenge, as councils are still wary of approving certain building methods, such as lightweight steel construction. Other challenges include the relative expense of implementing and installing some tech- nologies,” Coetzee notes. However, he adds, in the long term, one saves more money because of the implemented systems.