A great way to capture some of the free energy emitted by the sun is through solar hot water panels. Solar hot water panels are made of tubes that are mounted on the roof of your home, and are designed to pick up solar radiation from the sun in the form of heat. Using a pumping system, solar hot water panels transfer the heat energy directly into water, which is pumped down into storage tanks or holding tanks in the basement of your home. The hot water in these tanks provide domestic hot water and in-floor heating for your home.
Can I Heat My Home With Solar Water Heating?
The capacity of your solar hot water panels depends on your location, the size of your solar hot water panel array, and the weather of the day. Sometimes you may not get enough sunlight to fully heat your home, and in this case, it’s important to have a back-up heat source.
Geothermal heat pumps are a great compliment to solar water heating, because in many cases they can be connected to, and provide heat to the same holding tanks that the solar water heating panels are connected to. In the event the solar water panels are unable to meet the demand of your home, your heat pump will turn on and provide supplementary clean, renewable and emission free heat from beneath your feet.
What If My Solar Panels Produce Too Much Hot Water?
There may also be situations where your solar hot water panels are producing too much heat. This could happen on a hot day when you don’t have any heating requirement. In this case, what do you do with the extra heat? It’s a shame to let it go to waste. Fortunately, if you have a geothermal heat pump system installed, you can take advantage of that heat by depositing it back into the ground loop.
Doing so will raise the overall temperature of the ground loop. That means that when the time comes to extract heat from the loop later, the entering temperature will be much higher. A higher entering temperature means the heat pump doesn’t have to work as hard to extract the same amount of heat, improving the efficiency of the system. Rather than just throwing away that extra heat, depositing it into a ground loop for later use is a great way to maximize the efficiency of your system.
