Our Gas Hot Water System is to be replaced as it has started leaking (early days and before it completely opens up). We have Solar Panels and contemplating between the below three. Please suggest the best option and any reliable places in Sydney or offers that I can use to have it replaced. Thanks.
If you have room on your roof- Solar boosted Gas Hot Water with continuous flow booster.
Higher upfront cost but best of both worlds. You also get Solar STCs rebates too.
bad advice, solar boosted is very primitive technology that should be at give away price. Coupling with gas also mean it's a inefficient combination of old tech that should be banned. For OP best would be heat pump system, or if he got excess electricity to the grid then the conventional electric still offer cheap replacement.
If you want to use continuous flow make sure your gas pipe lines have the capacity to carry the required gas flow.
Size is your solar system?
What is your FIT rate?
How much self consumption do you have?
How much water do you use per day?
Do you have gas stove? If so do you want to keep ot?
Go electric if u hv offpeak elec or can run the heater on timer during solar production
Thank heaps for all the input. Just to add some more information based on the questions above. We have Gas Cooking and do not intend to replace it anytime soon. Hence moving all-electric is not in the plan. Our Solar system is 6KW of Panels with a 5 KW Inverter. DEC-MAR Quarter, we sold 1812 KW to the Grid and Used 490 KW. FIT is 9.5c. We use about 0.6KL/Day of water (all-inclusive) and find that the current 135L system meets our needs. The electric billing is flat rate at 21c/KW.
You are exporting so much to grid that its no brainer for you to go electric hot water with a timer unless you expect usage to increase materially.
Check with Bexley appliance ( family business) they offer brand new bosch or Rennai Gas heater replacement to your current installation around $ 1K with full warranty and installation. My friend was really satisfied with thier service and cost, which was almost half then what he received quote from different plumbers around.
Seems like you are relatively low usage. I think like for like gas storage may be your best bet.
I've wonderer this myself for when my gas cylinder packs up, as I have similar setup to you.
I would like to utilise solar as the FIT is so low it makes no sense exporting.
I have just pulled up my gas bill and it costs me 20c supply and 50c usage per day (burners and HWC), so there isn't much money to be made moving away from gas in my (and probably your) situation.
Edit: 30c usage after discount
I would like to go electric with a midday heating timer, to eat up the solar production, however without diverter/smart setup any cloudy days will probably make a huge dent in the ROI compared to gas.
Heat pump is probably too expensive to justify unless you got ahigh demand household.
depending on where you live, down south gas supply is nearly $1 a day so it's very appealing to ditch gas altogether. Even with conventional electric it is still worth it to ditch gas because the way FIT goes means it won't be long until your FIT come close to zero and you want to use all that solar energy before sending it to the grid.
I'm waiting for someone to invent a bitcoin miner that heats your water.
my house was built (in 2010)with solar hot water system, after 11 years I was in the backyard saw water pissing out both side of the solar panel. Got a plumber to inspect and he said the solar panel had shattered.
Replaced with continuous gas hot water system Rinnai b26, never looked back.
ps. I had the solar panel taken down and replaced a few roof tiles.
Might want to look at electric heat pump. If you can get rid of all gas appliances you can save money on supply charge - but if there are other gas appliances still in play maybe stick with gas hot water as less hassle to just swap in a new one.