Solar Heat

Solar heating just makes sense and why wouldn’t it? Just sit back on the grass on a hot sunny day and feel the heat of the sun on your face. Not only does it feel good but you can quickly feel your face and your body heating up. The same with a bucket of water left standing in the sun, it heats up all the way through. So why wouldn’t solar power be an ideal heating source. First of all it already is, as a passive source of energy. Many building use passive solar heating to provide some of the heating needs. If you notice lots of schools and other public buildings have large windows on the south side of the property. This is because that side of the building will receive more sunlight than any other. The heat gets absorbed into walls and floors of the sunny side of the building and release this heat when it gets cooler after dark. Pretty smart and yet pretty simple at the same time. That’s passive solar heating. More active solar heating processes usually involve the use of solar cells and panels which contain photovoltaic cells that trap the heat of the sun in silicon packages to be released as heat later. In a building you would probably need a number of solar panels connected up to a pump, a heat exchanger and water tanks. The panels collect the heat and store it in the photovoltaic cells

which release the heat to warm up the water and power the air exchanger to send heat where it needs to go in the building. You can use this solar heating system to not only keep the building warm in the winter, but also to keep it cool in the summer. It’s just like your air conditioner at home except it costs a fraction of the cost and hardly makes any noise at all. To create an air conditioner you just need to add a piece of equipment called an evaporative cooler. That will use the energy generated and held in the solar cells into cool air that is pushed through the building by the same air exchanger that powers heat through the building during the cooler days of winter.