‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
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Oh, Nazi reference, how original.
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Only Germans this high have balcony solar
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Nearly 100 years on time to move on and focus on the ones that carried it on I think
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In b4 nimbys complain it's an eyesore despite most people never looking up
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Oh no! Quick! To the incinerator!
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We happily take the blame for WW2, but WW1 is on Austria!
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Germans also have 7 times the power bill
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nb4 someone laughs at us Germans for pulling out of nuclear power: No, nuclear is not cheap. It's literally the most expensive way to generate electricity. Solar is cheap and better for the environment.
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Don't know about "happily". "Readily" might be more accurate.
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“Plug-in solar is part of the whole array of options,”
I don't understand how this works, for our system the "plug in" is 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 ones shown should cost less than $150. While to the cost of inverter and getting it connected are way way higher.The article says nothing about how the power from those panels is made usable.
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I wonder if a whole building could use one or two inverters?
I feel that'll make the cost reasonable
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I blame Bavaria. If Germany had multiple price zones like other European countries instead of one giant one prices would plummet here in the north, while they'd explode in Bavaria. The state that does not want wind power, does want nuclear power, but already knows ahead of time that its geology (with lots of mountains and granite) is unsuitable for nuclear waste storage. Meanwhile, north German wind power and Scandinavian hydro dams complement each other perfectly. The Bavarians could do the same with the Austrians, they just don't. They want to eat cake and have it, too.
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No, nuclear is not cheap. It’s literally the most expensive way to generate electricity
Source?
Beats coal anytime. Or Russian gas.
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You have Trump now. It'd be our turn to make jokes, if we had any humour.
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Have a look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balcony_solar_power
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A mere drop in the bucket when 77m have decided on a much worse course of action in another country.
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The "balcony" bit isn't the defining characteristic, it shouldn't be taken literally. Some people do have their "balcony solar power" on their roofs.
What defines it is limitation to 800 W and inverters that come with a normal Euro Type F ("Schuko") plug and no legal requirement for professional installation. A layman can literally plug it in to an existing wall socket. Given that they are capped at 800 Watts, the inverters are also the simplest type and dirt cheap (although often they are literally just software-capped and identical to higher power ones, make of that what you will). Complete systems (2 panels, cabling, inverter) cost between 299€ and 800€ depending on quality. You genuinely only have to buy a fixture that suits your needs and a mate to help you install it.
Proper several-Kilowatt-systems are very expensive in Germany too.
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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. -
For apartment buildings I don't think that's possible, since electricity is a per household connection with separate meter.
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Nuclear is reliable, predictable and stable 24/7 source. Solar not so much and possibly not that great for the environment if we don't figure out what to do with used solar panels. Also their production is not exactly clean. Whereas nuclear requires a wasted fuel storage somewhere and the fuel will eventually run out of radiation in some hundreds of thousands years.
