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‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

euronews.com

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Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#171
post #8

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a dec…

In the US, Utah has allowed balcony solar since May 2025 and Virginia is expected to allow it starting in January 2027 (awaiting the governor's signature).

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#172
post #8

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a dec…

British industry and standards bodies think this is an unsafe plan. Of course they would because it's work being taken away from them but it would be allowing people to plug generators into ring finals with unidirectional breakers. It's not even guaranteed that the circuit is protected by anything newer than fuse wire or an MCB. No guaranteed earth leakage detection. No guaranteed surge protection. Relying on the che…

I am not very well versed on this topic but I believe the balcony solar products market one of their safety features as "anti-islanding protection". Personally I wonder what happens if multiple balcony solar systems are connected... can each still tell when the grid is down since the other power source is active?

https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/anti-islanding-and-smart...

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Finland electricity prices can drop to under 1c/kWh due to renewables, basically every time it's sunny and/or windy electricity is practically free (the transfer costs are static though). A few times the price has actually been negative, people got paid for using electricity due to overproduction =)

In Finland you produce more electricity from nuclear energy, than from hydropower, wind, or solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... The amounts for year 2025: Nuclear 32 TWh, Wind 22 TWh, Hydro 12 TWh, Solar 1TWh.

And more from hydropower, wind, and solar, than from nuclear.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#174

Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future. Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.

Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.

I didn't downvote them, and I don't really disagree with them (that much). But I do disagree with the idea that what they're saying is "something so obvious".

I think the evidence is overwhelming that renewables plus storage will provide the bulk of our energy needs, or at least electricity needs, in the very near future. But I think the idea that it will be some sort of libertarian/individualistic utopia if we're all generating our own power and living off grid is a fallacy. This sort of widespread "off grid" living (beyond a small number of ideologues/enthusiasts) is what you only see essentially in failed states, where communal services are unreliable and the social contract is so frayed that people need to inefficiently generate their own power. One can argue the US and other Western countries are headed that way, but I don't think that's "obvious" or necessarily a good thing.

A much more "obvious" solution IMO is to invest in efficient, grid-scale renewable generation combined with robust storage tiers, as well us long overdue updates to the grid.

And to emphasize, because I'm sure it will get lost in translation, I'm in no way saying people shouldn't be self-sufficient or install rooftop solar if they want to. What I am saying is that widespread rooftop solar as the "of course that's the right answer" endgame of renewables deployment is in no way obvious, inevitable or even desirable.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it immediate? Sure, there is satisfaction that you are using 'free' electricity. But it does have an upfront cost. I calculated that it would take over 11 years to recoup the investment based on our current usage. Given we already get cheap night-time rates to charge the car and run appliances, it is hard to justify. Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more invest…

Are you talking about rooftop solar? For an 800W balcony system your background house usage is likely to be enough to self consume most of it. You'd wouldn't be able to run even a small oil heater except maybe in peak summer. It's a good match for working from home as it's a small amount of power spread over daylight hours.

There are a variety of small simple oil heaters in the UK under 800W. You're not going to heat a house with something like that, and obviously you'd be more likely to need one when it isn't sunny, but it seems the 800W balcony solar could run such an oil heater.

Yes it's probably more practical that it's powering your laptop and the coffee maker and that sort of thing.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#176

Distributed energy production / storage is the key for resiliency in the future. Every solar farm doesn't need to be China Size - it doesn't even need to be a "farm", just put them on roofs. And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces.

I'm every day more convinced that the only reasonable future of energy production is distributed solar and storage with microgrids at the neighbourhood level or so. Anything bigger in scale is prone to being shittified to the limit by public entities.

I can tell you've never dealt with an HOA or Strata before. Neighbourhood-level organizations of busybodies are way ahead of everyone else on winning the race to shittification.

Putting them in charge of your electricity won't be all sunshine and rainbows.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#177
post #127
post #5

to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable…

We just got solar panels and a battery installed on our house. I try to be hard-headed about the economics when planning, but I have to say the _experience_ of having done it is exactly as you describe. The other thing it made me is angry at the political morass that these things seem to be in. At a technical level I understand the ‘base load’ arguments, but we are throwing away _so much energy_ that’s just there for…

I’m in Canada and for 8 months of the year our residential solar net exports to the grid.

Over 30 years we’ll profit ~$25k after spending zero.

It’s crazy how my energy just hits the ground everyday.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild that you're getting downvoted for saying something so obvious. Weird.

Not weird if you’ve been participating in discussions on clean energy since the beginning of this century. The inevitability of the energy transition has been obvious for so long, and even when it’s done there will be cranks insisting that it’ll never work.

I like the transition to renewables , but there is nothing inevitable about it.

We don't produce solar panels or have the materials to produce them in Europe. So we're just as dependent on imports as before.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nations are you talking about? E.g. in Germany, you can buy up to 7kW of panels, screw them onto your roof, wire them up with controller and battery and feed up to 800W into local grid, no one is gonna stop you or anything (only thing you need to do is register online with the grid operator if you have >2kW of panels). Legislation is, in fact, specifically made so people (i.e. landlord) actually can't easily sto…

The limits in power you can install, power you can inject to the grid and power you can just directly sell to neighbours through a micro-grid (zeeo, as it's illegal) tell quite the story.

Micro grids are legal outside of Germany like in Belgium

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time they are banning wind turbines leaders (Chinese companies) from opening factories in the UK... [1][2] [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c995xjxk97mo [2] https://www.energyvoice.com/insights/energy-opinion/594763/m...

Once upon a time, Brits could build gensets and reduction gears. In Britain, even.

This factory would have employed (mostly) British staff in Britain.
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