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re: solar house heating (was: plutonium cost)
22 nov 1997
scott nudds wrote:
>: > you do realize don't you that windows can be made so well insulating
>: >that a properly designed home can literally be heated during daylight
>: >hours with solar energy alone?
>nicksanspam@ece.vill.edu wrote:
>: that's the easy part, compared to the rest of the day, or a cloudy week,
>: when those windows lose several times more heat than well-insulated walls,
>: if they are between the living space and the outdoors.
> you are comparing apples to oranges. net energy capture during
>daylight hours to relative energy loss at night compared to "well
>insulated" walls.
it's all energy flow. putting most of the solar windows in a sunspace
that gets cold at night with a well-insulated wall between sunspace and
living space keeps the same daytime gain and eliminates most night loss.
> my point is simply that something as simple as high efficiency windows
>can provide solar heat to a home. enough heat in fact to keep the
>house warm in the daylight hours without the need for burning fuel.
sure, but why suffer the extra heat losses at night, and why stop with
"daylight hours"?
> people often think of solar energy as pv electric generation only.
>diffuse heating with direct solar is quite viable.
agreed, and a lot of people use more energy for heating than electrical
energy, and they can easily cut their electrical energy usage in half,
and in the us, electrical energy prices are falling, and sunspaces can
add valuable floorspace to houses, vs pv panels, so why mess with this
electrical molehill? :-)
nick
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