On Jan 28, 3:20 pm, "Jen" wrote:
What about central
Australia, they have super hot days, but super cold nights.

This is actually ideal from a building design perspective. What you
have is a wave cycle, with temperature peaking during the day and
bottoming out at night. Careful use of insulation in combination with
thermal mass and placement of windows will allow you to smooth
out the cycle, so that you end up with a fluctuation of a few degrees
above or below the average temperature.

It is much harder in areas where the temperature is consistently
outside the comfort zone. If the outside temperature is never
comfortable (overnight temp is too hot, or daytime temp is too
cold) then no amount of passive solar design will make the house
comfortable. You need to spend energy to bring the interior into
your comfort zone.

There are some designs which use massive thermal mass to
average temperatures over the entire year, but this is much
harder to do and can actually work against you if you get it
wrong.