You can get wood burning stoves that are completely closed as far as the interior of the home goes. All they do is radiate heat where you need it. The hatch whe

You can get wood burning stoves that are completely closed as far as the interior of the home goes. All they do is radiate heat where you need it. The hatch where you put in the fuel and the exhaust are all outside (hopefully somewhere accessible if you're in a blizzard :) ). Daily incident shortwave energy per square meter is significantly lower in the winter (about half of what it is in the summer). You're also not going to get much of a current when the solar panels are buried in snow. Wood burning stoves are cheap enough and the odds of you losing power to warrant needing one are large enough that it's a safer bet getting one. Listen to your neighbors.