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If you have a fairly high temperature differential, can you
effectively use a Stirling for Heating and Cooling? I could see a
solar barbeque on one side with the cool side in the house and a fan
to move the cooled air around. In the winter, snow outside might
heat the inside with the electricity produced powering a fan. If
the cooling/heating effect is too small, how many would it take?
Would it only work in very extreme locations like the antartic?

Rob

Rob Myer: It appears you have a misunderstanding of Stirling engines their operation and application(s). A Stirling engine takes heat input from a high(er) temperature source, converts a portion of that heat energy to mechinical energy, the output, and rejects the balance of the heat to a low(er) temperature sink.

To operate as a refrigerator mechanical power must drive the Stirling engine to extract heat from a low temperature source and reject it to a higher temerature region, i.e. the one you want to heat.