fullsquare

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a664bf3d603dc3bdcf9ae47cc21e0daec706d7a5 its in that post

patched month ago

quixotic, even

Stirling engines are woefully inefficient tho, PV panels are better unless you're intending to supplement heat source with biomass or such. In a climate where most of energy is used for heating and little to none on AC, it just makes more sense to use solar collectors instead of PV because most of energy use will be in form of heat anyway, and per square meter collector will deliver much more. If you can couple excess heat production to seasonal energy storage, this gets you most or all of heat needs year round covered by solar, if you don't there's still free hot water in the summer and seriously lowered gas bill through the year. Small PV panel might make sense to keep pumps running or cover some of the rest of needs but won't shift balance heavily either way. In a place where major use of energy is AC this approach makes no sense and PV panels with daily or a bit longer lasting storage of energy, be it in batteries or thermal (tanks of cold glycol or ice or whatever) would be the way to go, because the most sunny day is also the day when you need AC the most and this way you get most of your energy needs covered

some goods and intermediates have large energy content, like, if you wanted to use energy from large pv farm in, say, morocco, then it might make more sense to ship bauxite in and aluminum bars out (it takes some 50MJ/kg to make aluminum)

simplicity of the system would be a factor in small, unattended installations like for space heating for single home

Pain

if you're interested in heating only, then geo-solar hybrid might be better for you. the point is that excess heat from solar collector gets stored in soil near borehole, which can be used for heating in winter. solar heat also gets you hot water year round, and it can be made to work with heat pump or without

all of that without heat pumps too

It is a liquid that after irradiating stores that energy while still cold and can be made to release it in form of heat on demand. but also it's low grade heat mostly useful for heating and not for electricity generation. It would be simpler to just build long range transmission lines or put energy intensive manufacturing near PV farm in sunny region

it's transparent too so you can just put pv panel underneath to capture the rest

you get 1.6MJ/kg just by irradiating this thing, nothing else is needed and its storable for months as noncorrosive room temperature liquid

to make ammonia you need to have pv to turn light to electricity then make hydrogen out of it then make ammonia in haber process, each step generates losses and none are practical on small scale