I'm a newby so please excuse if this posting should be in an existing Forum that I haven't discovered yet.
Approx. 30% of electricity used in this country is used in the home and approx. 30% of that is used for water heating, something like 10% of our total electricity usage.
What if every new house was required to have a small percentage ( 2-3%? )of it's roof area covered with solar water heating panels to be built into the conventional electric hot water system. I reason that most hot water is used in the daytime, coincidentally when the sun shines so reduce total electricity demand and also help with the midday and maybe evening peak loads.
As part of a new build it should keep the costs to a sensible level, will provide long term savings to the owner and won't cost the government one cent.
Any thoughts?