• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    There are literally some kinds of solar panel to generate heated water for things like home use.

    They’re just boxes painted in black with a pipe with water also painted in black zigzagging inside of it, rather than being photovoltaic panels.

    Were I live now - Portugal - something like that works fine even in Winter to generate hot water for things like showering.

    That said even during the Summer something like that won’t generate steam (or at least, not with enough steam pressure to drive a turbine), unlike what the meme shows, though there are solar power concentrators that use sunlight to melt salt which then boils water to generate steam for a steam turbine, but those use a ton of mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a central tower were the salt is being melted. (For example).