‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
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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)
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These microinverters aren’t made of fairy dust. Doing this stuff at utility scale uses a lot less nasty minerals and chemicals.
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Until I read this comment I was 100% certain the post was about short Germans somehow preferring having their balconies occluded by taller-than-them solar panels.
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"100 million smokers can't be wrong!"
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1.5 10^6 Germans vs 1.5 10^-3 Germans
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That kind of depends on what you're building. Standard is currently 800W (2 standard solar panels). Older models use 600W, other models are using 2000W and limit it to 800W. That doesn't make much sense, but skirts our local regulations that limits them to 800W, but of course generates more energy.
It then also depends on where you live. Can you point it to the sun? Do you live in sunny Spain or in northern Norway? In Germany a 800W system can produce 800-1200kWh per year. Our average electricity price is at 0.35€, so you'll save 280€-420€ a year. And those systems are dirt cheap, there are deals out there where you can get one for 200€. That is quite a good ROI for something that you can install in an hour.
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In Germany, NL, you can just plug it into socket and it works somehow.
This is incredibly dangerous as it will feed power into the grid even when the grid is down. You might say 'that is great!', yeah, well, the line technicians who cannot work on damaged cables because you are energizing them think otherwise.
One of the reasons solar grid-feeding systems are expensive in the US is they have extra equipment to disconnect the system from the grid if it goes down. Your house can will still have local power, but you won't be energizing powerlines technicians are trying to fix.
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Yeah I get all that, but what if I need heating in the winter and have very low consumption in the summer? That is why I'm searching for real world numbers. If you give me some for a specific place then I can at least have a ballpark number if what I might get where I live.
OTOH as you say, they start to be so cheap it's almost impossible to go wrong...
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Smart planning! Thanks for the story, are you planning to go off grid or is it just to be economically free? Any batteries in the future? Excellent reference, and implementation, I'm giving you an 11 out of ten!
