Re: OT: Electricity generation

["Paul Bendall" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hot water solar panels can provide 80% of your hot-water needs
(excluding space heating) through-out the year. Even in winter you
still get some radiation through cloud to generate heat. To make the
most of it you'll need a thermal store which has a couple of heat
exchangers and very well insulated (the high end ones will loose
around 1 degree in 24 hours). Benefit with a thermal store is that it
is designed to accomodate different heat source requirements and keep
them at close to optimum.

I am pretty sure that a solar hot-water panel has a relatively quick
payback period.

Paul


--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Andy Powell <ukha@...> wrote:
>
>
> On 16 Jan 2009, at 15:28, Simon Coates wrote:
> >
> >
> > Sun's irradiance is 1350 to 1400W/m2 - but that's in space!
> > Most of this is infrared - Solar hot water can collect around
1000W/
> > m2 but that's assuming the Sun is directly overhead.
> >
> >
> So steam engines might make a comeback?
>
> --
>
> Andy Powell / ScaredyCat / FuzzyCat
>
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/ScaredyCat
> Blog: http://blog.automated.it
> Site: http://www.automated.it
>



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