wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote:

...There are real downsides with superinsulation, as I said.

False.

...And there are real downsides with superinsulation too.

False.

...And there are real downsides with superinsulation, as I said.

False.

Just back from the Portland ASES workshop, where we had fun.

One workshopper had a bunch of small buildings in northern Greenland,
built
on 11,000 feet of ice above the soil. The ice increases by about 3' per
year,
so you have to raise your building or get buried. He'd like to replace his
buildings with one large one (2 stories with a 1000 ft^2 footprint) on
pylons
and add 3' to the pylons each year. He wants to solar heat it in
summertime
to reduce their $400,000 per year fuel bill (in winter it's dark, and -107
F,
with 75 knot winds for 2 weeks at a time. Drew doesn't like headwinds.)

I still like the idea of collecting heat and electricity from standard PV
panels. When I layed a 4' flat 4-year greenhouse polyethylene film duct
over
a horizontal PV panel and filled it with an inch of water, the electrical
output (Isc) only decreased by 6%. We might increase the electrical output
more than that by placing the panels next to a reflective north wall and
make hot water for showers all year, making a drain-down system in
wintertime
and keeping water between the poly films all summer to increase the PV
output
by keeping the panels cooler.

I know of a few installations of PVs where the underside of the PVs is
ducting with air florced through. A heat pump collects the heat from the
panels and house exhaust air. It wasn't that brilliant. I think it could
have been better thought out.

How much heat do PV cells emit on the back and front of the cells?