Has anyone done any studies on the co2 emission of manufacturing one panel like this? Curious how long it will take to offset.
Does importing a solar count against your countries co2 balance?
Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
241–250 of 651 posts
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could totally have half a dozen microinverters scattered around your household, connected to each other but temporarily not to the neighborhood distribution network.
I could have that; many homes in the world do have that. And when the grid dies, the microinverters all die with it.
Possibly you have misunderstood.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#243Balcony 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
It's only bullshit if you're certain that the electrical installation passes muster. I've seen many installations that are downright dangerous, mostly in older homes and cheap apartments. There's a reason for the 800W limit, that's a little over 3A and shouldn't cause any fires in even the flimsiest of wiring. But erring on the side of caution is not a bad idea when it comes to electrical safety.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#244It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward.
Production of electricity like production of steel makes most economical sense at scale. When the economic policy fails so hard it has to resort to backyard anything you know where it's going.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a ridiculous take. I have one of these systems and a 2kWh battery attached to it. It reduces my electricity bill by about half and will pay for itself in less than five years. I sacrifice nothing of my balcony, the panels hang outside.
Can you break down the costs and subsidies you had? Genuinely curious
Not OP, but I installed a "Balcony solar" 1.4kWp panels 2.4kWh battery system on my parents garage. The only subsidy was the tax free purchase of the components (we did file for an additional tax break with the city, but they had already run out of funds for that because it is so popular). You also save a lot of money on installation costs.
Cost breakdown:
- 400 EUR 2.4kWh 48V battery
- 320 EUR 4x 360W solar panels
- 200 EUR 800W microinverter
- ~200 EUR for helping hands when getting the panels onto the flat roof
- 160 EUR flat roof mounting equipment
- 153 EUR solar cable, connectors and crimping tool
- 115 EUR MPPT charge controller and cables
- 95 EUR electrics (e.g. fuses, dc/dc converter for OpenDTU)
- 50 EUR other assorted costs
So about 1693 EUR in total.
Total yield after 1.3 years: 1715 kWh (including power fed back into the grid)
Of that, discharged from battery: 488 kWh (battery already paid back ~146 EUR)
At the current energy costs, 1715 kWh would be ~514 EUR imported from grid
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#246Germany did one simple thing (uncharacteristically) which is removing all the bureaucracy here. Just go ahead and do it. It's fine.
Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500.
I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it saves 10% per month on my bill (7 euro), this would earn itself back within 3 years. At 5% it's 6 years. Not bad for something that costs next to nothing and is pretty much plug and play. You are not going to get very rich from this obviously. But it's kind of cool. Too bad my balcony faces east and is mostly covered by the shadow of other buildings. I can barely grow plants there.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#247> Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels A more fitting title would be "Germany's citizens outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels". The current phrasing makes it sound like it's somehow a thing done by the government, which is not the case. If anything the government is one of the many forces slowing down this progress. And yes, I am aware of things like grid security and stability…
Nitpick: Not every house owner is a citizen though.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Efficiency has improved somewhat, but also, the cost to manufacture PV is enormously lower than it was then, which means that it's using much less materials and energy to produce. Therefore the energy payback time should be much shorter.
How much shorter depends on the fraction of the energy cost in the first place then. Price is not even an upper bound for energy which is cheap in China, and also production is probably subsidised.
It wouldn't be an upper bound if energy were free, but it isn't. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e... lists China as US$0.08/kWh, but that's the residential price; industry pays a bit more. But it's a countrywide average.
Intensive investigations of Chinese "subsidies" from the US Department of Commerce have come up with embarrassingly little.
The current €0.100/Wp price level (12¢/Wp) combined with the US$0.08/kWh given above does give us an upper bound of 1500 hours of full sun for the energy payback time. At a Californian 29% capacity factor, that's 7 months of operation.
But in fact not 100% of the cost of the solar module is the cost of energy; there are some labor and raw materials costs as well, as well as capital costs and, astoundingly, some profit. So 3 months is probably a better estimate.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#249It's like the backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward. Production of electricity like production of steel makes most economical sense at scale. When the economic policy fails so hard it has to resort to backyard anything you know where it's going.
What a strange take.
This is not so much a policy applied from the top, but requested from the bottom. People want to contribute to the transition, and balcony solar installs are a cheap and simple way to do this.
Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the person you are replying to is in a thread about Germany, mentions balcony solar and said "my little server turns it automatically on" (which is how you would construct that sentence in German instead of "turns it on automatically"), so my wild guess would be Germany. ;)
Germany isn't that big, but the difference between Freiburg and Hamburg is very significant in this case I believe
Yes, there is a difference, you are right. I don't have hard numbers at the moment (typing from the phone) but from looking it up quickly, the sun's intensity varies from about 950 kWh/m² to about 1.200 kWh/m² between north and south Germany. So, what OP described will generally work in any part of Germany.