INVENTOR’S BRIGHT IDEA FOR CHEAPER HOT WATER
A GOLD Coast inventor is hoping to heat up the market for solar hot water after creating a device for cheaply converting water tanks to run on solar power.
Stapylton-based Sharp Energy Investments owner Geoff Hourigan, with business partner Troy Norris, has spent three years and $150,000 on inventing the Sun Flux systems. The devices work via a controller that converts the energy generated from photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to heat a standard electric hot water tank.
Mr Hourigan said by using PV rather than thermal panels, which use the sun’s light rather than the sun’s heat to produce hot water, the need and expense of hiring a plumber was avoided.
“With this system you only need an electrician and it is much faster to install,” Mr Hourigan said.
He said the system, which retails for $1290, worked at up to 96 per cent efficiency, and could slash the cost of running a hot water system.
“A lot of people have tried to do what we have done but no one has come up with this level of efficiency,” he said.
Mr Hourigan said he had a patent pending in Australia and 149 other countries for a hot water controller attached to PV panels, which delivers a modified DC output to any electric hot water tank.
He said the system, which he claimed costs half as much as thermal systems, had generated interest from companies in the US, Europe, South Africa and New Zealand.
“There is nothing else on the market that is as reliable and affordable for everyday people,” he said.
He received his first order for 2000 units from a manufacturer in China recently and has appointed Burleigh Heads-based Array Energy as the Australian distributer. Array Energy owner Campbell Medcalf said the product was at the cutting-edge of the solar power industry.
“We have been installing the old thermal systems for the past 12 months but they are expensive and full of problems,” he said. “We want people to understand there is a cheaper alternative.”