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 Quote:
Originally posted by Curt:
Do any/many people in Japan have solar panels? I never notice any.
take a stroll around a modern upper class suburban neighbourhood with mostly houses and no apt blg.
There you will see quite a few houses with solar panels on the roofs.
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Quite a lot of houses have solar water heaters. When I first came to Japan 15 years ago I was impressed that there were so many. You can still see a lot of these about. Many big house builders offer a 'solar' model in their lineup, sometimes with solar roof tiles instead of panels. Smaller companies are increasingly offering them too.

 

One problem is that the government is phasing out financial support for solar, so it's not an option that pays for itself. So the only people who are likely to take the option are those who have the money, and care enough to take it.

 

I looked around a new house the other day that had "double glazing". There were gaps in the corners of the metal frames, and big holes at the bottoms of the window to "let the condensation out". When I pointed out that this defeats the purpose of double glazing, chirpy salesman chappy says "Don't worry, if you buy the house, we'll plug the holes so you're satisfied!" Not likely.

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solar water heaters rock, however solar panels are another thing entirely. good panels are very costly & not very efficent. not sure how it works here but in the us states vary on thier buy back system. to have your whole house rely on solar alone would be very costly & you would have to have alot of deep cycle batteries to store the power. you get a few cloudy days & then you have to go to back up generator.my place in hawaii is totally solar for refridgeration i have a propane fridge ( they suck) anyhting with a heating element you might as well forget about it (Propane stove & water heater)

solar is great enrgy source & in the future I hope we'll be able to harness it more effectivly & cheaply

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My in-laws place has a solar water heater. The house itself is 130 years old. As glider says, its middle class neighbourhoods that tend to have panels.

 

Solar panels don't like snow, and especially not snow by the meter, so you don't see any near me. You start seeing them on the road south to Matsumoto and they're fairly common around there.

 

If you have solar panels, you can sell the power to your provider at the expensive midday rate and buy back cheaper power from them when you need it. Mains sewage is still patchy in the countryside, but mains electric is pretty much everywhere, so you don't need to store solar-generated power.

 

Energy costs seem set to rise more, and solar tech is improving all the time, so we'll see more in the future, no doubt. The downside is that as energy costs rise, so will the cost of manufacturing solar panels.

 

Members of the Japanese boy band Tokio have been driving round the country in a solar van, which is a bit of a gimmick, but makes more people aware of what can be done. I don't normally watch that program, but I did see the van pass its shaken.

 

The small place I rent has three sets of south-facing patio doors, which work as passive solar heating. On sunny days in winter, the house gets nice and warm. They have "nijuu-sashu", two panes that open separately as opposed to conventional double glazing where you get two panes in a single sash, but don't keep the cold out. Even if there were no gaps, their metal frames would still do a good job of conducting away the heat.

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The Tokio van is quite impressive really - I don't know what problems it might have, apart from not working at night, but for daytime pootling about it looks great. Let's hope some government begins to see the potential value of investing more in organic solar cells .

 

I've asked several house builders about passive solar/direct gain design, and they're generally clueless, although a few understand the principle. With Japan's often bright, sunny winters, huge savings could be made. Instead, people put all sorts of weird shit like old futons over their single pane windows (especially in Suwa!).

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I've just put in an offer on land today - if it goes through, I'll be ordering a kit home from Canada. I am negotiating now to see how much extra it will cost to add solar panels to the kit. By importing the house, we are saving about 40% of the cost of building a similar sized Japanese home and we will have insulation and, well, a real house...

 

I expect by importing the panels, we will save quite a bit - should have pricing sorted out in a coupel of weeks. The land we hope to buy has its own supply of natural gas - already tapped. It should provide a free supply of heat for water and winter - nbot sure if we can reply on it for cooking yet.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by fjef:
I expect by importing the panels, we will save quite a bit
Is there any particular reason for this? It's obvious why lumber is cheaper, but why solar panels? Most electric/hi-tech goods here are not expensive and Canada strikes me as a not-especially sunny country with cheap mains electricity due to an abundance of natural gas. Japan is a sunny country with expensive electricity, which you think would ramp up the ROI on solar and produce a strong market.

Anyway, if you could tell us more about your plans, I'd be interested to know since we'd like to build our own place too. However, like the Ocean says, its incorrect to suggest that modern Japanese homes are not insulated. Every builder I've talked to insulates their homes. In fact, the least emphasis on insulation has been from the companies that import kit houses from the USA (a standard thickness/weight of plain old glass or rock wool between 2x4 studs). Not that I would pay a Japanese person to import a kit, of course.
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