This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
For first few seconds, I deadass though they are talking about Germans with a height of 1,5 meters.
Only Germans this high have balcony solar
Makes sense, taller Germans throw too much of a shadow to make the solar worth it.
That was me.
So why won't taller Germans get solar? I don't even see the connection to height... Oh, maybe they hit their heads on the panels? No, that doesn't seem likely... I don't get it.
“Plug-in solar is part of the whole array of options,”
I don't understand how this works? For our system we need an inverter that cost about $3000.- (half if it doesn't have to handle a battery), and it needs to be installed by an authorized electrician.
For a small system as the one shown, the price of panels are peanuts, the 2 panels shown should cost less than $150 combined. While the cost of inverter and getting it connected is way way higher. There's a lot more to this than not being on the roof!?! But which isn't disclosed.
The article says nothing about how the power from those panels is made usable.
Have a look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power
OK thanks, so they are indeed complete systems including inverter, so it can be connected to the grid.
I suppose they've made some cheap low power inverters then, but the power still needs to have stable voltage an frequency and synchronization. So I wonder how cheap it's possible to make?
I also suppose it still needs an authorized electrician to connect it? Unless Germany has some fancy system that is prepared for "plug in" connection of a local power source.
In the EU, as long as it's under 800W it can be plugged directly into an outlet in your home without any kind of installation, back-feeding the grid that way.
You're not getting paid anything for the power you send back into the grid so anything you don't use you lose.
Still very cool, because selling surplus power is almost completely worthless anyway. (at least it is here)
In the summer when you can sell, prices are generally extremely low, we have sold about twice what we use, but the value of selling is only about 5-10% on average, compared to the savings of using it ourselves. That's because the price often drop to close to zero in the middle of the day, and sometimes even below.
Electricity itself is dirt cheap, the reason the prices are high are transportation and taxes, and short peak prices in the evening. Here transportation alone is more than the electricity itself during winter.
And we are only paid the pure electricity price here, which I suppose is the case most places.
It literally plugs into the wall.
That's amazing. 😀
If you pay 3000€ for an inverter then that's probably included installing and whatnot. You can get a cheap 50€ 4kW inverter on aliexpress, or an expensive 500€ 10kW one.
No the price was not including installation, We have 11.2 kW panels and 7.5 kWh batteries. Installation was almost $5000.- !! That was probably mostly the 28 panels on the roof. But we had one installer handling everything, who was also responsible for the electrician.
That's a massive installation though! Wow!
Also, you got a biig roof!
I wonder if a whole building could use one or two inverters?
I feel that'll make the cost reasonable
For apartment buildings I don't think that's possible, since electricity is a per household connection with separate meter.
In b4 nimbys complain it's an eyesore despite most people never looking up
Wait that’s a thing?
Holy shit that a thing!? That’s awesome!!
"100 million smokers can't be wrong!"
Would be nice if grid tied inverters weren’t such a regulatory PITA. Micro-deployment solar, and more importantly distributed energy storage, makes so much sense and could solve a lot of grid-related problems.
I can tell you I have a portable solar battery for emergencies and if I need to use it the right place for the panel is in my balcony, so this makes a ton of sense. In an apartment building roof space is relatively small per unit, but at least where I am every unit has a balcony. In my case even a rear-facing balcony that doesn't face the street but still gets sun for anywhere between 4-10 hours a day. If/when I am in a position to explore a solar installation this would be a good thing to look into.
