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199

Archive: https://archive.today/BNENu

From the post:

>For as good as solar panels are at converting sunlight directly into usable electricity, especially for how cheap they’re becoming, they can still only gather around 20-30% of the energy that hits them. That’s fine if you have a large roof or a huge tract of land, but if you have limited space and need to do something like heat a home, there are better options available to capture more of that energy. [Greenhill Forge] has built five solar air heating panels to test this concept, and do it much more inexpensively than commercial options.

Archive: https://archive.today/BNENu From the post: >>For as good as solar panels are at converting sunlight directly into usable electricity, especially for how cheap they’re becoming, they can still only gather around 20-30% of the energy that hits them. That’s fine if you have a large roof or a huge tract of land, but if you have limited space and need to do something like heat a home, there are better options available to capture more of that energy. [Greenhill Forge] has built five solar air heating panels to test this concept, and do it much more inexpensively than commercial options.
[–] • 1 pt

Are there any solar COOLING methods?

[–] • 1 pt

Unless you are using panels to heat air to turn a turbine or something or using solar panels not so much.

Though, geothermal works pretty well. Even ancient Rome and Greece had a basic system for "air conditioning" in some structures that were more or less geo-thermal. We just sort of forgot how to passively heat/cool structures and stopped building like that.

[–] • 1 pt

Yeah. I was gonna build a thermal mass fireplace but the cost to do it was just too much.

I should have had them drop a loop of pex into my well casing…then used that for geothermal. Water comes out at about 58degres.

[–] • 0 pt

That... Is not such a bad idea in some ways. Though, I would be worried about a leak contaminating my well at some point.

Even if you just dig down around 18-ish inches and run some pex or something that can make a huge difference. If you live somewhere cold you can do it under your garden beds to keep the soil warmer for longer to improve your growing season (small scale).