# Tell me about home solar **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 15, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-home-solar/1020878 "2025-07-15T17:04:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 70
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2026, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-home-solar/1020878/70 "2026-01-11T04:12:16Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The “pressure” of voltage pushes the electrons up against the air gap until there’s enough “back pressure” from that lack of ongoing conductivity that the electrons stop flowing OK, so following that analogy, the electrons get excited, but have no place to go, so new incoming photons can’t excite them anymore, and it’s no different than if the photons had just hit my roof shingles. I’m still curious about the heat thing. When a photon hits a non-connected solar panel, or just my roof, all of it’s energy (that isn’t reflected) is converted to heat. Does that mean a functioning panel is cooler, because some of that energy is instead converted to electricity? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-home-solar/1020878)._