This is a concept I never fully understood. My father even sold all kinds of renewables for ~5 years until 2016, and he just said “Thermal just isn’t worth it” but never really explained how or why. And even now when all Europe is under a strong pressure into deciding how to heat our homes this winter, it seems that no one is still considering thermal solar as a solution.
Heck some governments even decided that it was better to propose PV + Heat Pumps instead of Solar heating
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Why?
In: 4
The basic issue is that the cost pv has come down so much that for many/most locations it’s cost per unit of useful energy produced is lower than the cost for thermal. So if you are choosing how to use your roof space it almost always makes more sense to stick pv on rather than thermal.
There are hybrid pv/thermal panels which are pretty efficient but their cost is still too high to justify them over simple pv.
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