Quote:
Originally Posted by randen
If a person installs enough solar panels (PV) you can heat and light your home for ZERO....
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A couple of points on that.
First, if you need heat, a solar thermal solution will be much more efficient than PV (in terms of both heat per buck and heat per sq foot of collector).
Second, I doubt if many people could rely completely on solar for heat unless they had low heating needs or an unusual heat storage system. I have 100 evacuated tubes supplementing my heating system. They make a significant contribution to my heating needs and paid for themselves quite quickly but there is no way I could scale that up to make solar my only heating mechanism. Solar solutions don't work at night, and it would need a really huge system to collect and store enough energy during a winter day to last through a winter night. Also for about 3 months of the year the panels produce almost nothing. This is due to the heavily overcast conditions here during autumn & early winter. Conditions elsewhere may of course be different, but during any real winter I suspect solar power will struggle in most places.
Solar thermal is a good addition to a heating system, but think carefully before making it your only heat source.