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Comment by rcfox | Hacker News Reader

What sort of performance could you expect by just sticking this in the wall of your house? In the winter, you've got cold air outside and you're already heating the inside. In summer, you've got hot air outside and you're cooling the inside. Does it matter which side is hot/cold?

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And waste the energy you used (via a furnace or air conditioner) to create that temperature gradient in the first place?

I like that idea - can anyone commment further? Up here in the Yukon it's regularly -30C and below for long stretches and we all have our wood stoves burning 24x7 for 4+ months.... It would not be hard to have one end touching the wood stove (200-400C) and the other end outside (-30C - -40C). Will this work?

It depends on what your power requirement is. For a 200C difference, you should be able to get around 500W to 600W with a properly built stirling engine.

Sounds nice for all the people running off-grid up here who get so little precious sunshine in the winter. Can you provide more information on where I might be able to buy such a Sterling engine? Are there any companies actively making them?

Unfortunately, there are not many companies building these engines commercially (at least at these power outputs). Most of the engines I have seen are built by hobbyists (either too tiny or crude :( ). That's changing in recent years with increased focus on solar power.

Thats what we saw and why we started the project - just not enough solutions for real world requirements. The engine itself is somewhat simple, its the thermodynamics that are tricky - There are only a few moving parts, no spark plugs, no oil, no valves and works off of any kind of heat.

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