With creative financing, commercial solar thermal users can have payback periods approaching zero years. If businesses borrow the money to cover the capital cost of the solar thermal system, the energy savings can be large enough to cover the loan payments.

With rising energy prices, and financial incentives available for commercial applications, more companies are investigating an inevitable transition to less expensive and less polluting sources of energy.

With a car wash, the load matches supply because people tend to wash cars on sunny days. There is a steady demand for hot water in apartments, and the most suitable installations are in buildings where the mechanical room and hot water equipment are in the penthouse so the solar collectors are installed in close proximity.

In farming, hot water is used to clean equipment and provide radiant floor heating, while fish farms require warm water (18°C).

The agricultural sector has many excellent applications, such as dairy farms that require hot water for cleaning milking equipment. A sick calf area could benefit from radiant floor heating. On pig farms, the creep area of the furrowing pens could be heated by radiant floor heating with energy from the sun, and on a chicken farm a concrete floor with radiant heat will benefit the poultry. The farm shop can use hot water for washups and radiant floor heating can warm up the shop space. Fish farms, fish hatcheries, and mushroom farms are also good applications.