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Has anyone done any studies on the co2 emission of manufacturing one panel like this? Curious how long it will take to offset.
Hard to imagine a large scale rollout like this would have been on the low quality side (plus hey its Germany after all).
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The solar panels are on the sides of the balcony, where the safety barriers are usually opaque /solid.
Is this a German thing? My balcony has spaced metal bars and I would hate to see the state of it if there were solid barriers keeping it cool, moist, and building up debris.
I guess in many places where this is more culturally predominant, they install solid barriers on those balconies.
Usually those barriers leave a gap at the bottom for water and debris.
https://www.berlin.de/en/news/8025956-5559700-solar-power-ba...
Has anyone done any studies on the co2 emission of manufacturing one panel like this? Curious how long it will take to offset.
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?
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.
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With "mainstream" solar panels costing €0.100 per peak watt as of August (according to https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis...) it's getting harder and harder to justify the efficiencies of centralization.
That is, maybe with single-axis trackers and optimal angle, your solar farm gets a capacity factor of 15% (I think Germany's average for utility-scale solar is 10%) so an average 500-watt load requires 3300 peak watts of utility-scale generation (€330), plus 3000 additional watts of inverter capacity, 2000 additional watts of storage capacity, 1000 additional watts of transmission capacity over something like 100km, and 1000 additional watts of distribution capacity. Maybe your capacity factor on the balcony is only 7.5%, so you have to spend €660 for 6600 peak watts, and you probably still need some storage capacity, so maybe you end up spending €1000, €670 more than the solar-farm panels. Maybe you need to spend €80 on a 12-volt car inverter, too.
It's very easy for the cost of utility-scale inverters, transmission capacity, etc., to exceed the €750 savings you get in this case from centralization. Also, note that about 20% of the energy produced in utility-scale generation is lost in power conversion, transmission, etc.
Note that I'm only talking about costs here, and only about the essential costs that come from the form of production. I'm not talking about prices, which may incorporate subsidies, permitting costs, taxes such as tariffs, transaction costs, lawsuits against non-performing building contractors, and market inefficiencies such as homeowners not having access to the zero-marginal-cost excess power that can be produced on sunny days for regulatory reasons.
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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 V…
The word "diffusion" does get used in this way in English, but many native English speakers may be unfamiliar with it.
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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 V…
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Maybe these can pull 700 watts on a sunny day? And you’d need a battery to store it. Would likely make 50 cents a day or less in electricity, on perfect days. The cost for a battery, panels, and install would be ~1000 euro (or more if it’s a bureaucratic mess).
I just did some modelling with the help of claude (which can write 200LOC+ numpy code faster than I can) 300 Euros crappy setup, 600 euros mid-range setup, 1200 with storage. (Extra) regulations is zilch, it's legal to plug and play these things up to 800W nameplate capacity. I went with numbers for mid-range, vertical south orientation and offsetting 200W (without battery, any overproduction is wasted). This nets yo…
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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.
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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.
Power consumption in the EU has flatlined and is even falling. New HV transmission lines are not needed - put the solar farms next to some of the shut down nuclear plants (as we now do with big batteries in Australia and decrepit coal plants).