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OK, but I don't see how that addresses what I was getting at?

As a thought experiment, imagine you attach a heater to the solar panels (maybe it's a sunny day in winter). Do you get free energy for heat?

Nobody said there was free energy, but heat is not the only energy available. Here if you like in your analogy visible light is turned to outside heat and inside cool. But it’s simpler just to think about the heat inside the house - heat is being transferred from inside to outside.