Yes, you can use PV solar panels to heat your home, at least indirectly. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last three months here in Littleton, Colo.
During the Summer of 2022, after our 6 kW solar system went online with Xcel Energy in mid-June, the ARE Solar installed system generated about 1,500 EXTRA kWh of electricity.
This, thanks in large part to my very low use of electricity during the summer here in our Littleton townhome, which I share part time with my two teen-aged daughters, who are with me half time and with my ex wife half time. In August 2022, for instance, we consumed just 282 kWh of electricity, well under the average of about three to four times that for most families of three (plus two pets š ) along Colorado’s Front Range.
I deliberately banked 1,500 kWh during the summer because I knew we would be heating almost exclusively with our eheat.com high efficiency heat convection wall heaters, which we also used at 4000 S. Atchison Way in Aurora, Colo. from 2009-2014 to heat our home with a 5.5 kW home solar system, albeit indirectly, via excess solar offset mostly generated during the spring and summer months that is drawn upon during the low sun but also high electric use winter months.
Of course, several years ago — I am not sure exactly when — Xcel switched its solar banking measuring method from kWh to kWh converted to a cash bank based on the rate of electricity charged during the time the excess electricity generated by one’s home solar system runs into the grid.
A monetary bank of extra kWh converted to money form is not as advantageous to the electric utility consumer as pure kWh, which was the old method used by Xcel. However, I was still able to bank about $200 worth of extra electricity in the summer of 2022 for use in the winter of 2022-23.
So far, across late October (when we first started heating again), through November, when we used the eheat Envi heaters regularly, through December, during which they are on quite a lot, we have eaten away at about 700 of those extra 1,500 kWh generated from mid-June to mid-September.
I’m not sure we are going to make it this winter, going near fossil fuel free by not using the central forced hot air gas heater thanks to the six eheat.com Envi heaters we have.
The main reason that we may fall short of my goal of heating exclusively with electric and therefore indirectly via solar offset kWh we generated earlier on is simple: Our new solar system did not go online until mid-June. That means we missed about 10 weeks of great solar production time from April 1 to June 17, 2022, during which we could have been generating possibly up to another 1,000 extra kWh!
We shall see how close we come, based on total extra kWh produced during the summer vs. in the winter using electric Envi heaters heating our townhome, to heating “fossil fuel free” in across the Winter of 2022-23.
My ultimate goal is to replace our gas hot water heater with an electric and our gas range with an electric range, or, probably, more practically speaking, an air fryer, and stop using any natural gas directly at all in our townhome. Then, ideally, across the remaining time that we/I live here, we/I will be, at least when counting total solar electricity production vs. solar electricity consumption across the calendar year, fossil fuel free.
One day, I would love to replace our natural gas forced hot air furnace with an electric heat pump. However, that is far too expensive for me to do right now, especially given that I borrowed a substantial amount of money to get our solar system installed.
All in all, it’s a pretty damn cool — well “hot” — little set up that allows me to cheaply and efficiently heat with electricity indirectly generated by solar (some of it is directly generated by solar as we do produce about 10 to 17 kWh worth of solar daily across November – January).
And it makes me happy to know that via the 16 solar panels placed on my roof (some are on the east-south roof the others on the west-south roof) are ensuring that we are producing essentially the same amount of energy that we use in the town home here at Highline Crossing Cohousing.
And my 2020 Chevy Bolt is ALSO solar-charged. It is fueled via a 9.3 kW solar system installed on community garages for which I was responsible for planting the idea seed and whose installation I worked for several years toward here at Highline Crossing — along with the help of several other neighbors š.
Indeed, there are also two first-generation Nissan LEAFs of my neighbors that are also fueled by solar/solar offset in those same community garages. In fact, so far that 9.3 kW system, which went online in December 2020, has produced about 1,300 more kWh than have been used by the three electric cars in our 40 household neighborhood and which has been used by electric garage door openers, lights, people’s small fridges in garages, etc.
That’s pretty darn cool as well!
Yes, Highline Crossing Cohousing is a very “solar” neighborhood now, thanks in large part to the initiative I took in 2018 to start getting solar going here in the community. So far, we have a total of 31 kWh of solar installed on four different roof areas in our community with at least two to three more neighbors having indicated recently that they, too, would like to add solar.
That, too, is very, very cool! āļøšāļø
