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Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

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Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#81

Post by sowbug »

geor9e wrote: post #20
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #13

Great idea! Want to learn more on the safety though... > Once in place, people simply plug a micro-inverter into an available wall outlet. later >Gründinger and experts at the German Solar Industry Association noted that the devices don’t generate enough power to strain the grid, and their standardized design and safety features allow them to integrate into balconies smoothly and easily. This seem to talk to the safe…

Anti‑islanding detects the power frequency and constantly tries to shift it. If the grid is on, its frequency won't budge, so the anti‑islanding doesn't trip. If the grid is off, the frequency shifts and it shuts off. A second one would just make it shut off faster.

Curious: is anti-islanding an actual feature, or a necessary behavior of any power source that adds power to the grid? I can't imagine how a second power source would work at all if it weren't syncing to the main source's AC phase. So it seems that if you implement the syncing, you get anti-islanding for free (assuming you handle the case of a missing main source phase by not providing power at all).

This is a newbie question, and I look forward to learning how it's more complex than this.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#82

Post by GaggiX »

plantain wrote: post #68
GaggiX wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar power is fundamentally different from traditional power plants because it's modular. Since the panel is the basic unit, a network of rooftop systems is as effective as a single large installation. A rooftop installation makes perfect sense.

Paying contractors to climb on rooftops one at a time and cable up a million distinct houses is clearly not comparable to an industrial installation. Similarly the generation from a balcony on a bad angle, and from walking around Germany, typically shaded, makes no sense.

You are completely ignoring the biggest cost: land. In a dense country like Germany, using millions of existing, "free" rooftops is vastly more efficient and economical than buying and dedicating scarce, expensive land for an industrial-scale farm. Also rooftop solar generates power at the point of consumption. This significantly reduces the need for new, expensive high-voltage transmission lines.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#83

Post by jacquesm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #63
melasadra wrote: post #19

Some people laugh at the 800W output. However, in Indonesia, roughly half of the 300 million people live in homes with an electricity capacity of 900W or less. Wish these kind of panels were available at that price here. We have pretty much 12 hours of sunlight every single day but household solar panel is discouraged by the state owned utilities.

[flagged]

This is a ridiculous take. Germany did not screw up their energy policy, they had a transition plan that ended up not working due to one of the partners in that plan starting a war and believing that they had Germany by the short hairs to stop them from interfering.

For individuals in Europe that have the possibility to spend a few hundred (or even a few thousand) bucks up front to lower their energy bill is a win for everybody, it lowers emissions, decentralizes energy production and generates ROI. My own system (which is a little bit larger) paid for itself in the first three years and has allowed me to do all kinds of things that I would not have been able to do otherwise if I had had to pay for the electricity. The surplus that I don't use I sell at a discount to the grid and that's fine by me.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#84

Post by renewiltord »

chihuahua wrote: post #73
renewiltord wrote: post #46

This is cool. One annoying thing with much of San Francisco is that renting means you can't put things on the outside of the building usually (not a law just common lease language) but I have a little solar panel that I use to charge a phone that I can leave outside. This is wonderful. Power from the sun and no consumables!

A typical phone battery has a capacity of about 13.5 Wh. Assuming a converter efficiency of 90%, it takes 15 Wh (0.0015 kWh) to charge your phone from an outlet. Assuming an electricity cost of $0.39 per kWh in San Francisco, that's 0.58 cents ($0.0058) every time you charge your phone using the solar panel. By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings.

haha it's not the savings. It's the accessibility! This phone is out on a balcony by a herb garden. The big annoyance with electric devices is that they need to be connected to an outlet. PVs have saved this.

We have our blinds on PVs which is very convenient. No charging required and no wires required. Same thing applies here. The PVs allow battery recharge for places where power cables are inconvenient. The phone is a convenient tailscale device with a battery that can webcam!

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#85

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gpm wrote: post #57
lucb1e wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you can do what you want within your own home, so long as you don't hook it up to the grid? I'm also not sure if this fits with the price restriction they mentioned. Prohibitions can't be bypassed by paying a higher price, unless it were to refer to bribes

The systems in the article are hooked up to the grid though. They're hooked up in an extremely safe and responsible manner, but it's understandable that there are regulations about what can be hooked up, and simply not surprising that they haven't been updated to say "yeah, this is ok".

A lot of solar systems are set up to sell excess power back to the grid. It makes sense that these systems would have some regulatory criteria because you wouldn't want e.g. home solar systems putting power on the lines when the utility company has the power off because of a downed wire or active work.

It's also possible to have a solar system that doesn't do this. Either you have a battery system and if you generate excess power you only put it into your own batteries or the system is small relative to the load of the house so you're rarely if ever generating more than you're actively using and configure the system so the grid is only ever attached to the input side. This should not be any more dangerous to the grid than using a UPS or charging an electric car and if the regulations make it more difficult than that they should be suspected of malicious intent.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#86

Post by Kim_Bruning »

plantain wrote: post #65
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, that's an interesting position. I'm really curious to hear where you live and/or from what background you say this? Btw, this article is about putting a solar panel not on your roof, but on your balcony. People do it because it's cheap and saves money on electricity. Think of it like growing herbs on your balcony. Sure, industrial farms have economies of scale, but you still save money growing your own basil…

You grow herbs at home because it's kitsch, fun, or even convenient, not to save money. Store harvested herbs die in the fridge, electricity does not. In Australia, our government massively subsidizes putting solar panels on our roof, and batteries in our garages, for a $/kWh price wildly higher than could be achieved with economies of scale in an industrial installation. Batteries are even more egregious than solar,…

The subsidy question is interesting, but in Germany these balcony panels are ~ €600 unsubsidized (depending on the exact kit; see my numbers elsewhere in this discussion) and still pay back in 5 years. The economics work with and/or without government help.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#88

Post by slow_typist »

wheels wrote: post #62
lucb1e wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by 'that price'? Are there heavy import tariffs or another artificial reason why you can't order from the same chinese manufacturers as germany does? I would have thought that the issue is purchasing power inequality between germany and indonesia, not that they're not available globally at a similar price

They're actually actively subsidized in Germany to make them artificially cheap.

True, the cut of 19% VAT on panels, inverters (which is applicable to any household PV installation, not only on the balcony) are a subsidy but in the meantime prices came down so much that it’s not really relevant anymore. (440 Wp panels go for 60 EURO a piece and a 800 W Hoymiles inverter for around 120 so total subsidy is around 50 EURO.) Other subsidies paid for by the communal bodies are long gone. Cutting the VAT helped to accelerate diffusion but that is what subsidies are made for. Probably the simplification of the registration process is by far more important. And last but not least the VAT cut for solar is a rounding error compared to the subsidies of ICE car traffic.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#89

Post by gpm »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85
gpm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The systems in the article are hooked up to the grid though. They're hooked up in an extremely safe and responsible manner, but it's understandable that there are regulations about what can be hooked up, and simply not surprising that they haven't been updated to say "yeah, this is ok".

A lot of solar systems are set up to sell excess power back to the grid. It makes sense that these systems would have some regulatory criteria because you wouldn't want e.g. home solar systems putting power on the lines when the utility company has the power off because of a downed wire or active work. It's also possible to have a solar system that doesn't do this. Either you have a battery system and if you generate…

The systems discussed in the article aren't necessarily selling excess power back to the grid, but they are sending it back to the grid (possibly for free). Because they work by pumping power into a wall socket.

They do so responsibly (fancy electronics that turn them off when the grid goes down). But it is the case where you are acknowledging that extra regulatory criteria make sense.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#90

Post by hshdhdhehd »

melasadra wrote: post #19

Some people laugh at the 800W output. However, in Indonesia, roughly half of the 300 million people live in homes with an electricity capacity of 900W or less. Wish these kind of panels were available at that price here. We have pretty much 12 hours of sunlight every single day but household solar panel is discouraged by the state owned utilities.

Most powerful draw is going to be on heating and cooling things which can also be done using gas. Is Indonesia using a lot of gas (or even wood) or they just not cooking?
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