saying hello!

[ivan]

It was put in for a high temperature seasonal mushroom-growing room in a steel barn. Yes, I have heatdumps - industrial fanned radiators. Yes, I could use PV instead, but solar thermal is inherently very much more efficient and Im up to the maximum amount of PV I can put in without doing off-grid setups, which I don't particularly want to do.

[ivan]

...and the thermal store is 4000litres

[Stinsy]

It was put in for a high temperature seasonal mushroom-growing room in a steel barn. Yes, I have heatdumps - industrial fanned radiators. Yes, I could use PV instead, but solar thermal is inherently very much more efficient and Im up to the maximum amount of PV I can put in without doing off-grid setups, which I don't particularly want to do.

Interesting.

I'd have thought that an off-grid solar PV, battery, HP system would be more efficient than solar thermal!

[ivan]

Yes, you're probably right there - but the off-grid battery/inverter setup for an ASHP would be expensive and would degrade over time. Solar thermal is nice and simple which is why I went for it. It's augmented with a 200kW pellet boiler system, so that can take over in poor weather.