Running a thermostat 15-30 minutes before the hot water is needed would only consume electricity if the water is not already hot. You probably want a well insulated accumulator tank with one of these systems to not lose the energy produced as well.
So I actually have experience with these in the north of Sweden - they are definitely more efficient in summer, but do provide some amount of hot water as well in winter on days with clear sky (of which there are few).
On the topic of using this for heating in the Mediterranean - I don’t think that’s where you want to invest, installing underfloor heating in one of those houses. That will cost some serious money. It’s probably wiser to spend it making the home less prone to get cold/hot using insulation in that case. I will admit to being out of my depth when it comes to optimizing buildings for hot climates though
Wouldn’t places with good conditions for solar heating generally not need the underfloor heating for the season when the solar heating is most effective?
This has been my impression, and why solar heating is most useful for heating water.
Are you suffering from an acute case of brain damage?
so, we take something that has the same size as a van,
The footprint of a cargo bike is at most a fourth of your average delivery van
and is at least 10 times slower
Cargo bikes are usually e-bikes, giving them a speed of at least 25 km/h. If you’re driving a van at 250 km/h in a city, that’s going to put you behind bars.
Baffling levels of ignorance.
Retractable awnings should be able to cope with this issue, right? At the expense of having to be actively managed, unless you go all in and get a motorized one with IoT-controls.
It’s still unlikely to pencil out to do this given the opportunity cost of actually going through the effort of building, buying and connecting these things, to be honest.
I’m fascinated by the idea but it’s important to remain realistic.
Here’s a good article on the concept of bicycle generators: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-practical-household-bike-generator/
Personally, I think the best application of this concept is probably direct use of the mechanical energy, without converting the energy to electricity at all. See the bicimaquinas-concept: http://www.mayapedal.org/index.en
One of the wonderful things about bicycles is how extraordinarily efficient they are - very little energy is required in relation to how much transportation work you get out of it. This works against us in the case of power generation, though - little power going in means little power going out.
Price is unfortunately not a reliable proxy for quality. That’s kind of why communities like BuyItForLife exist.
Granted, the marketers are catching up to this and as such they are losing their usefulness, but yeah.
This sounds like Glenn-propaganda if I ever heard it!
On a more serious note, where did Göteborg get this award?