‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
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will the sun powered line hop over to another one
This is why you need a new meter, at least that was the situation for us. If we didn't get a new meter, we would only be able to use one line, and the surplus would go to the grid.
They actually forgot to tell us that, so after some very confusing analyzing of what the fuck was wrong, I complained that the system didn't work, most of our generated power was sold, and then we had to pay to sort of buy it back!!
This was all down to the meter not being replaced for one that was meant for handling local production properly. We basically lost 3 months of production on that account. After we got the new meter, it worked perfectly, and production is as advertised, and I was very happy to see that production in winter was almost exactly as I'd calculated:
Although obviously you can't calculate the number of sunny days in advance.Something that surprised me, was that in the summer, production is still reasonably good even on days where the sky is completely overclouded, as long as the clouds are white, enough light penetrates so we can still achieve almost half the full capacity.
Another fun story IMO, is that we switched electricity supplier February last year, and they work with advance payments, and since we were new customers, we got a bill for 3 months of normal use. We just received the "bill" for 2nd quarter, with negative payment amount, because there is still money left from our advance payment!
AND that is without sales, which is a separate account, but is only about €15 per month on average. (for selling 7844 kWh for the year 2024) So about 2 cent per kWh on average. -
To be a positive impact, they just need to be less carbon intensive thans the energy they displace. According to the first results on google, (presumably utility-scale) solar is about 12 times less carbon intensive than natural gas and 20 times compared to coal. So as long as you're replacing base load and not utility solar, balcony solar could be as much as 10 times less efficient and still come out a net positive.
Keep in mind also that these numbers keep improving as solar panel manufacturing becomes more efficient and starts using more green energy itself over the coming decades
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Reducing the money spent on DC-AC conversion is my main thoughts. If my power generated is all DC, my battery storage is all DC, my servers are DC, my lights, and water pumps can be DC, my car is DC, then switching from AC to just switch back to DC 20-40 feet just doesn't make sense to me.
I would like to actually find a better formula then the napkin math I've done to say when it does and doesn't have benefit.
Really want to get my hands on a Open compute Rack for my next server build and have the UPS and power rail be all 48v too (as per spec). Again why have another component to possibly fail and use power if I don't need it.
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im pretty sure most of the will do a yearly breakout over the months? A really big reason to use them is to figure out maximum and minimum production throughout the year, so idk what calculator you're using, but any good ones should be able to calculate that.
I've used PVwatts before, and it does spit out monthly data, though it can also bring in some more complex data, it's a whole field of research, and it's worth investing time into if you're curious about it.
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uh, you clean the panels for one. Outside of that, you import external energy, or use other generation sources.
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i can understand the thought process, especially if you're going to do a full DC and no AC at all setup. The problem that i have is that switching from AC mains, to DC mains is such an incredibly tall order that you have to think about literally everything you integrate fairly significantly, otherwise you're going to end up implementing AC mains as well, and then you're not in a much better spot, even though you may now have more losses, chances are you could just offset them with more production and storage, or better inversion.
It's an interesting project for sure, just not likely to be one i would ever invest time into lol.
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And at that point you need a power grid and at that point you may as well centralize the generation to utilize economies of scale.
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If using million as a multiplier, one ought to use capital "M" (to be consistent with the metric prefix mega, which is also for 10^6^), change my mind.
1.5M Germans, if you will.
1.5 MegaGermans
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Honestly the micro inverter on a small circuit level seems like an interesting middle to me. So I can have the ac outlets here and there, but just for non DC appliances.
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Hey thank you! I re-checked out PVwatts (the link was used
️I probably avoided it because you have to put your address in, I don't want calls etc. Turns out the city is enough) it's exactly what I needed, thanks! -
it requires you to put in your address to locate your lat and long so it can properly calculate your energy production, especially throughout the year. It may still do some tracking on that, but it's unlikely to be anything significant unless you have an account and money tied to it somehow.
But yes, a place close by you will work just as fine. Though you can expect some level of inaccuracy, it's probably not that significant if you're reasonably close.
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there's definitely an interesting way to do it, i just don't think it would be something i want, though i'm always up for some theory crafting, so who knows, maybe there is a good way of doing it.
Maybe the trick is just doing like 1 AC outlet per wall, and then using DC outlets for most other receptacles, since most devices are going to be low draw.
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Yes and thanks again, there are soo many crap sites out there I just gave up!
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It was a quote from Norm Macdonald, comedy - look it up if German search engines lower themselves with such humourous returns. The Germans are what they are, today they fought against appeasement and led a European announcement of greatly increased defense spending to support Ukraine and the world more widely, a difficult and noble decision. Filling the gap left as the US falls ever further into shame.
