Solar energy for residential houses is nothing new. It has just been relegated to the background in lieu of rising cost of real estate; newer more advanced building materials, design and the limitation of resources.
Since man started building homes, sunlight played a major influence in the design. In fact, even in the more advanced urban planning method of the Ancient Chinese and Greeks, the orientation of the buildings is as much as possible directed towards where it could capture the most sunlight.
The ancients might not be as intellectually sophisticated then to use catch phrases as passive solar and thermal mass but when they build, they were building in compact proportion, employing overhangs, producing insulations and building in manners that direct the airflow within the structure and producing well lit, well ventilated spaces using the relative position of the sun to the orientation of their structures.
Lately, as the conventional sources of energy became more expensive, homeowners were once again turning to the sun for energy requirements.
Since the 1950s, harnessing the suns rays has been developing and today the solar cell technology has...