31–40 of 88 posts
Every installed PV-panel is a dozen barrels of oil (eq.) less CO2 in the atmosphere. Plus, so much fun to generate your own power! Can highly recommend it, even starting small. It's addictive though. Living in the center of the city (The Hague, NL), with a home battery, I'm now 100% self-sufficient electrically for 10 months of the year.
How many barrels of oil (eq.) are required to manufacture and transport the PV panel?
Every installed PV-panel is a dozen barrels of oil (eq.) less CO2 in the atmosphere. Plus, so much fun to generate your own power! Can highly recommend it, even starting small. It's addictive though. Living in the center of the city (The Hague, NL), with a home battery, I'm now 100% self-sufficient electrically for 10 months of the year.
How many barrels of oil (eq.) are required to manufacture and transport the PV panel?
This is with today's efficiencies. They are of course improving.
Why do Europeans need permission from their governors to buy solar panels? I bet you also need to pay taxes on the energy you generate even though you alleviate the infrastructure need.
The post is about permission to plug solar panels into your main electricity.
Eg.: Small EU country, definitely not allowed and under huge fines. Without proper equipment, solar power plant license etc. etc.
Last time I bought a panel from Lidl, it worked only on very sunny day. Very Strange. Inspection revealed it had two 6 Volt 10 Watt panels in parallel and then 12V to 5V USB-converter. When panels were reconnected in series it was quite OK.
Every installed PV-panel is a dozen barrels of oil (eq.) less CO2 in the atmosphere. Plus, so much fun to generate your own power! Can highly recommend it, even starting small. It's addictive though. Living in the center of the city (The Hague, NL), with a home battery, I'm now 100% self-sufficient electrically for 10 months of the year.
- Did you need/use an electrician to set this up? - How much KWh capacity do your batteries have? - What about fire safety? Did you install outside, or inside? - I assume dec/jan are the months you're not fully self-sufficient, are you allowed to charge from grid to do arbitrage over time, or is that another can of worms?
Any dangers from plugging this in to a socket? Does it need its own earth? Will it switch off if it detects a residual current? Can it handle spikes in load?
Its even reducing your load on your main line beause the energy directly flows into the next consumer.
German socket has earth, thats fine. It has protection mechanism and shuts down if it can't sync to the powergrid. The panels only produce (in peak!) 400-800 watts. Thats not an issue.
We legalized these in Belgium last year. I bought a 1600Wc + 1.9KWh kit (Ecoflow Stream) for +/- 1300€ last summer. It took us about 2h to install (we had to setup a new plug outside), and I already saved 200€+ since July. I am expecting to save about 350€ per year. Also, as u/jstch said, it's extremely fun to setup and generate your own power!
A 3.7 year ROI would be incredible (and fairly uncommon AIUI) South facing?
How is this handled in your country? We're talking only about solar panels which plugs directly into your main. Because here, small country in EU, this is not allowed since it would mean ridiculous investment into electric infrastructure. It's heavily regulated and you need special electric meter, license, etc. and still price of electricity is negative in certain times during the day, because everyone who could, got…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many barrels of oil (eq.) are required to manufacture and transport the PV panel?
If you are curious about it, why don’t you go and find the answer and then let us know too, no?
We legalized these in Belgium last year. I bought a 1600Wc + 1.9KWh kit (Ecoflow Stream) for +/- 1300€ last summer. It took us about 2h to install (we had to setup a new plug outside), and I already saved 200€+ since July. I am expecting to save about 350€ per year. Also, as u/jstch said, it's extremely fun to setup and generate your own power!
You have special electric meter and you are distributing solar power into the grid outside of your household?
Or you don't distribute electricity into the grid?