Solar Space Heater experiment (Flagstaff: live in, cost, electricity)

[waltcolorado]

I live in Denver but drive to Lake Havasu fairly often during the year and usually go through Flagstaff. I think Denver and Flagstaff likely have at least somewhat similar winters so thought you might find this interesting.

In the hot areas of Arizona (like Lake Havasu), I don’t know about the cost savings.. but at least from a technical aspect, solar electricity makes a lot of sense since you have the peak need for the electricity (air conditioning) at the same time as when you get the peak output from solar panels - during the long days of summer. During the day when you get peak solar output may also be exactly when the power company is charging peak rates.

However, in Denver, you barely need AC during the summer - maybe for a few weeks only in a reasonably well insulated house. But you definitely need heat in the winter and Denver is far enough South and sunny so that solar heating is somewhat feasible. Flagstaff is even farther south so longer days in the winter and probably gets a lot of sunny winter days(?).

So... in October, my neighbor in Denver had their roof redone and were going to throw out some solar air heating panels and I snagged one of the panels and did this experiment with it..

http://analogengineering.com/project/solar_space_heater.html

I just updated this section this morning to show how it worked yesterday

http://analogengineering.com/project/solar_space_heater.html#Mid_Winter_Update