‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
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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. -
I have a sunroom, what sort of numbers are you asking for? It's a partly cloudy day, about 22C in the room, without heat. And about 7C outside.
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My dumb ass: “Is it just 1.5m Germans, or other heights too?”
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Usually not uglier than the balcony itself.
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M in million should always be capitalised for this reason.
1.5M Germans vs 1.5m Germans
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When we bought the house, that was one of the parameters on our list for "the perfect house". So the roof to the garden is also almost perfectly towards the south.
Even in January we've made 41% of our power consumption from the solar panels.
You are right that it is a bit oversized according to "normal" recommendations which are 8 kWh for a house the size of ours, but we went a bit bigger in preparation for air to water heat pump, so warming the house will be electric, (currently wood pellets), and also we plan to buy an electric car within the next 2 years.Also it was a bit for fun, because of the movie spinal tap, so our panels go to 11 instead of just 10, because we need that little bit extra.
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Home solar indicates a massive management failure of public utilities. If it is more cost effective and more pleasant to generate your own electricity without any economies of scale, something is very wrong.
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Oh boy, apparently there's a lot I don't know. It's really cool there are those cheaper options now.
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Nice numbers
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Megagermans vs milligermans
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Balcony solar is a set of diy technologies that require no utility permissions.
In Germany, NL, you can just plug it into socket and it works somehow.
In us you can use powerstations and also adapters that sync draw from battery as it charges from ac in house.
It pays for itself even with more expensive equipment, by not needed license, permission, that can lead to cheap efficient panels costing over 3$ per watt. Small systems that just offset use instead of selling back, have higher revenue offsets in high per kwh priced markets.
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couple of things to note:
- Not every balcony is southern facing
- Most older European homes don't have A/C yet, so electrical costs are more during the winter months (that trend will change though I imagine)
- I think the numbers @[email protected] was asking about involved power output, that of course depends on the size of your array, daily/monthly/yearly differences in weather, and all sorts of little nuances that's hard to say without averaging out years worth of data.
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The rent seekers making everything worse again
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I live in an area where there is a monopoly of power supply by one of the worse polluters in American history, in a small area within a county there's an existing co-op power company that was basically grandfathered in because it's been in existence for so long while no other competitors are allowed in the area.
That co-op when I lived in the area was about half the cost of the monopoly company, a relative gets actually paid to be a member because they received their fathers account when he passed away and extra funds are distributed among all the members based on how long they've been with them (a little weird, but at least better than shareholders getting the profit).
You are absolutely right that the electric companies as a whole have failed, they've been allowed to amass too much influence and coverage while squashing any kind of competition. Why electrical needs aren't considered a national resource is mind baffling to me. Our country and citizens way of life would literally grind to a halt without it.
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Microgeneration makes way more sense to me. If you generate the power where it is used without pollution, we should. The unfortunate piece is we have to many landlords who's interest are too divorced from their tenets to put up more microgeneration
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Makes sense mathematically or you think makes sense?
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Shoot, my electric is like $.0625/KWH
But there is also another 75-100 bucks tacked on as fees. Tempting to go solar and disconnect from the grid. Even without selling energy back to the grid, I would break even. (Savings over 20 years ~200 bucks)
