‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
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That's amazing.
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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. 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. -
Nah, making fun of germans is always ok, especially now that at least 1 in 5 voters are voting for literal Nazis again in Germany.
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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.
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Wait that’s a thing?
Holy shit that a thing!? That’s awesome!!
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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.
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French electricity enters the chat.
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You need a suitable electricity meter
That makes sense, we also needed new meter, and that was about €200.- with installation. Not a big deal for a big installation, but for a system that can cost only €300.- an extra 200.- would be pretty significant.
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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. -
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, rooftop panels are already on the roof. I don't get it.
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There are two main inverter approaches. One big inverter that takes the DC from a bunch of panels and converts it into AC and micro inverters where each panel gets it's own small one placed directly under the panel.
The micro inverters cost around $150 each. So you need around 10 panels before the single inverter becomes a good choice.
Installers love the micro because the install is easier. However as a owner with say 30 panels you now have 30 points of possible failure instead of the 1.
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That's a massive installation though! Wow!
Also, you got a biig roof!
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Great post! Thanks for doing the math and explaining the concepts!
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In the Northern hemisphere, in Winter the Sun is at a low angle, so vertically oriented panels might produce more. As an example, I have a sunroom and at Winter's Solstice the sunlight reaches about 3-4 meters into the room. At Summer's Solstice there is no direct sunlight in the room, as the Sun is overhead.
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Do you have any numbers
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Am Bavarian can confirm. The CSU has been in power this state since forever. Especially old people just keep voting for them cause it's the way it always was.
They had to form a coalition after the last elections. Their partner is essentially the exact same party but even more right wing. Not even kidding, I could not name a single area where they differ other than their main guy apparently handed out nazi newspapers in his younger years or smth. He blamed it on his brother and then the scandal just died off.
