Home Solar Power and Thermal Mass – How it Works in Your Home
A little free heating will go a long way on reducing your utility bill, particularly over the life of a building or home. Utilizing passive solar heating is the absolute best method used to achieve this goal. Passive solar heating for home solar power, is where a home is built or upgraded in such a way as to catch and contain the maximum amount of heat from sunlight. Then, you will need to release the heat once the sun is no longer shining on your particular object. To effectively use solar for heating and thus having home solar power, thermal mass is a subject you need to understand.
Thermal mass for home solar power simply refers to any material that absorbs and then stores heat. In this case, we are talking about material that stores the heat contained in sunlight and then releases it at a later time once the sun has gone down or is no longer targeting a particular object. This may be hard for you to believe, but your home already has thermal mass producing heat. In a small way, you already have home solar power! Any material exposed to the sun, such as your furniture, floors, curtains and such, acts as thermal mass and creates home solar power. That is why some things are hot to sit or stand on during the heat of the day. Unfortunately, what occurs naturally is often on a pretty small scale.
In order to maximize thermal mass and thus utilize home solar power, you must have materials strategically placed that are efficient at absorbing and then releasing the heat. This is often called intentional thermal mass. Although this seems as if it could be complicated, it really is not. Bricks, tile, and masonry are some of the materials which would be used in creating intentional thermal mass, and thus the beginning of a home solar power system. Other materials that often function well are adobe and clay. But adobe and clay can only be used in certain situations.
In a passive solar home, the thermal mass needs to be in the interior of your home. One way to do this is to strategically place tile and brick in areas below windows that receive the most sunlight during the day. As with anything, depending on your heating requirements, the amount of thermal mass you will use to create thermal mass and have home solar power will vary. If you live in a colder climate you would want to bulk up and use as much as you can. Someone living in a warmer climate such as Texas or Arizona would only use a nominal amount.
The required color of thermal materials seems to be a common misunderstanding. It would of course make sense that you would want to use darker colors since the darker colors are known to absorb more heat. Fortunately when using passive solar for home solar power, this is not necessarily true. The deciding factor to the effectiveness of the absorption and then release ability is in the material, not the color. Bricks can be just about any light color other than white. If you like dark and gloomy, this may not sound too important. But for those who don’t like to feel closed in, knowing that the material is the deciding factor and not the color can be a great thing for those looking to use passive solar for home solar power.
If you are trying to harness the power of the sun for heating purposes and home solar power, you need to get a good grasp of the thermal products you will use. This article should give you a good head start and some things to think about.
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