Solar Power Home Heating

Q: Hi anyone help me here, to set or build a home heating system based on Solar Power.? Is it feasible first? The hypothical house with living area of 100'x50' (5000 sq. feet). My take is to charge an array of battries on the basement or garage and then use that power to run an hot air fan or electric base board or a oil-filled radiator. The circuit should be able to protect the battries from draining beyond its recharing capacity and be able to switch to regular power untill the battries are charged back. Appreciate for any help

A: Yes, it's feasible and the size of the house doesn't matter so much as how well insulated the house is and the amount of thermal mass inside. The better your insulation then the less solar collector area you would require. The more thermal mass then the longer it will take for the house to warm up or cool down. You will probably want and/or need some form of backup heat to comply with building codes and provide some peace of mind. You should try another take. Solar electric is very expensive. Solar heat is not. The two are very different things and until you can tell them apart you're not going to make much sense. There are plenty of web pages and books on how to heat your house from sunlight. A few minutes with almost any of them should give you the basic ideas. Try a search engine. http://www.google.com/ http://www.energy.utah.gov/solar/solarbas.htm http://www.eren.doe.gov/RE/solar_hotwater.html http://www.eren.doe.gov/erec/factsheets/passive_solar.html http://www.nyseia.org/basicst.htm http://www.courses.ait.ac.th/ED06.22/course1/faqs.html What nick saying, however rudely, is that the alt.solar.thermal is for using the sun's heat directly... not converting it to electricity. you might want to try posting to alt.solar.photovoltaic... or better yet, do some searching on google for solar collectors that capture the heat directly and use that to heat the house. If you convert to electricity then back to heat, you have two conversion losses, using the heat directly, you have none.

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