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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

#211

Post by oezi »

jacquesm wrote: post #83
SoftTalker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 fo…

I share your take on the gas policy failure. It was hard to prevent because Russian gas was so cheap. How could the German government have forced companies to buy more expensive gas elsewhere?

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#212

Post by shellfishgene »

hshdhdhehd wrote: post #90
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?

Kerosene cookers are still very popular in Indonesia, or gas from portable bottles. I've not seen gas refrigerators, but maybe some people also have them.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#213

Post by kronicum2025 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137
kragen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balcony solar panels isn't necessarily a bad outcome. It's enormously more resilient to natural disasters and warfare than centralized power stations, it's potentially more responsive to individual power needs than an electric regulator, and it may not even be inefficient—while solar panels in a utility-scale solar farm will have a higher capacity factor than balcony solar panels, that only saves you money on solar p…

> it's getting harder and harder to justify the efficiencies of centralization. A lot of times they aren't even real to begin with. People assume that economies of scale keep going up as long as scale keeps going up, but that's almost never true. They typically have diminishing returns or thresholds past which the unit cost stops going down. If you want to build solar panels you have to build a factory. If the factor…

There are definitely economics of scale. They are just not visible in Germany due to outdated building and policy practices.

> 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.

Every single thing here is policy failure by German government.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#214

Post by aszantu »

Balcony solar is limited to 700-800 watt for safety reasons. There's also a lobby to get ppl to need an electrician for installation, which is bullshit. Rising energy prices (I paid minimum 50 bucks/Month) and sneaky corporate tactics (they give you 12 ct/kwh then after like half a year make it 60 ct/kwh) makes ppl want more price independence, which is understandable

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#215

Post by kragen »

thiago_fm wrote: post #201
kragen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could start happening if Germany's electrical energy consumption were to grow 100× or so, yeah. That might sound like I'm being sarcastic, but no, cheaper forms of energy tend to lead to more energy usage, and solar energy is cheaper, so we might see a lot more energy usage. But we're talking about problems we'll have in 20 years after we've solved global warming.

That will never happen in Germany. Most people in Germany don't live big and don't have any intentions of doing so. No AC and people have real concerns about the environment and our impact on it.

Obviously it won't happen anywhere from air conditioning. But, for example, atmospheric carbon capture (putting the CO₂ back in the ground) could use a lot of energy.

Most likely, though, it will be things we can't even imagine today.

Imagine that you're in 01980 trying to predict how people will use personal computers in 02000. Would you predict the World-Wide Web, Usenet erotica newsgroups, virtual reality, banner ads, Geocities, MUDs, and spam?

Or, in 01903 trying to predict how people will use flying machines or automobiles in 01923. Would you predict metal airplanes, women getting pilots' licenses, dogfights between forward-firing fighter planes, transatlantic airline flights, strategic bombing from the air, helium airships, and French airmail service to Morocco? Or, would you predict Henry Ford would be making two million Fords a year?

Things change. The last time we had a new cheaper source of energy like this was 250 years ago.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#216

Post by adrianN »

slow_typist wrote: post #191
adrianN wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes literally two hours to install and plug it in if you have two left hands like me.

Plus the time getting the material, driving to the hardware store another time to get something you forgot, doing the registration, plus the time needed for planning/ calculation of economical feasibility/ decision making. Even at a very moderate 50 € per hour rate (for the typical Gamer) the material cost is the smallest part of the project. Treat it as a hobby, but don’t tell me it is an investment.

You get everything you need shipped from Amazon. You open the box and install it. These things are designed to be set up by amateurs. It’s half a dozen screws per panel. To hardest part is lifting the panels outside the balcony.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#217

Post by mduerksen »

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…

It's called "NA Schutz"[1] and is required for all german micro-inverters by VDE-AR-N-4105:2018. Which in turn is national law following EU directive.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netz-_und_Anlagenschutz

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#218

Post by adrianN »

nisten69 wrote: post #198
adrianN wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard of living has been decoupled from energy consumption for quite some time now in developed countries.

Complemetely untrue. The evidence is pretty clear. There's no such thing as a low energy country with a high standard of living. If I were to pick the #1 thing that most European are literally ignorant about is exactly this fact. Data below: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$cursorMode=hand;;...

That’s why I specified „developed“. Economic growth in developed countries has been decoupled from energy use since the early aughts at least.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#219

Post by slightwinder »

plantain wrote: post #55

This is such a total failure of state capacity. Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale, and then bring it to people's homes via the existing infrastructure at a price that makes this kind of micro-scale setup completely uneconomical? It's bad enough when we have to put solar panels on actual roofs to reduce electricity bills. This is just absurd. Where are the economies of sca…

It's mainly corruption, ignorance and incompetence. Germany has a strong fossil-lobby, because of industries and ancient home-tech. Around 15 Years ago, Germany had a strong solar-industry too, until the government basically buried it and sold it out to China, because of "failures" happening. Till today, there are forces trying to feed on nuclear-power and cheap Russian gas, while simultaneously sabotaging all renewables and electrification. It's so bad, they are willing to destroy whole industries for this BS.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#220

Post by oezi »

valenterry wrote: post #37
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…

> Do these setups have auto shut off if they see no other power on the plug they are on? Yes. This is Germany we are talking here. I doubt any other country has higher (and more annoying) safety standards.

Well of course but the manufacturers of the micro inverters sure try to cheat:

https://www.heise.de/news/RelayGate-Deye-Solar-Microinverter...

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