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Entire Neighborhood Has Shared Solar Heating
- jrockway 18y agoThis is a good idea. In the past, we got by with just giving everyone electricity and having them turn that into whatever they needed, but since it's inefficient to convert sunlight -> electricity, it's now more economical [1] to just pipe hot water to people's homes. Hopefully they system can be enhanced with the ability to carry cooling water to the houses also. [1] Actually, this probably costs a lot more than electricity right now, but it's the most economical way to get solar heat. Some day there won't be cheap energy, but there will always be sunlight.
- jws 18y agoI find this technology interesting because it won't work well for an individual, you must cooperate to make it work. The heat is stored using boreholes to heat a volume of the earth underground. The surface area/volume ratio is against a single user, but becomes more favorable as the number of participants increases.