Syncing them with electricity is easy. The hard part is preventing export to the grid which requires either a compatible smart meter that can communicate with your panels or a transformer clamp installed by an electrician. My understanding is some meters measure both directions equally so if you do end up exporting power you can conceivably increase your utility bill.
Why is preventing export hard? Just shut down production when the grid is down, which is how plug-in solar systems work.
You will still export when the grid is up if your solar generates more power than you use at any moment.
There are inverters with local only monitoring and control. I have one integrated locally with home assistant. You can also add an external current transformer and monitor the production with that independent of the inverter.
Oh? Could you go into any details? I will clearly need to do some research now, but if I can save myself some time, all the better.
Not the person you responded to, but for a current monitor you could look at e.g. Shelly devices.
I have a Shelly Pro 3EM three phase current meter device on my home battery connection just to get more accurate data into Home Assistant because the battery provider doesn't provide it. (In hindsight I should've bought a different battery install but that's not something I can change after the fact...)
Ah yes, the good old "let's eat into the safety margins". This is why our motorways no longer have hard shoulders. OK, so cars break down less now. What justification is there for eating into electrical margins? The wiring in people's houses isn't getting any younger. And we still use the ridiculous ring system even in new builds in 2026.
Estimates suggest they could save U.S. consumers billions of dollars a year in electricity costs, while potentially offsetting thousands of megawatts of demand ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... ) Plus it increases equity because this primarily opens up solar for those in rented accommodation and apartments/flats who otherwise couldn't access it. Personally that feels well worth pursuin…
Great, but electricity is really quite dangerous and eating into the safety margins seems very short sighted. I've seen all kinds of horrors in home wiring. This might seem fine in a world where all wiring is completely up to standard, but in the real world it's done by busy electricians or clueless DIYers. The safety margins are there because in a real installation something will probably be not quite right. It's very common to find wires buried in insulation (the insulation installers don't know or care about electricity), wrong size breakers in use, old/worn out breakers/RCDs, loose connections, the list goes on...
Plug in solar must be zero export to bypass utility approval process.
Interesting, why? That is not the case where I live.
You must live in Europe. Not entirely sure but that's the way things are going in North America, as far as I know all the proposed legislation here is zero export. I guess one concern is local grid instability if too much power is generated this way. Also if for example you put a plug in solar on the same circuit as an appliance that uses its power then the breaker doesn't "see" this usage but it still heats up the wire just the same leading to fire risk, but not sure if this has ever been demonstrated or just theoretical. And also there's the old meters still around that don't measure bidirectionally, so those will just roll back or roll forward each way, neither desirable.
What "not really"? Electric hot water and electric heating is very common. Almost 40% of homes have electric heating and that's the top heating type [1]... [1] https://franfinance.com/les-francais-et-le-chauffage-de-leur...
> Almost 40% of homes have electric heating and that's the top heating type It's 40% of households not homes, and per your link it's 55% of rentals. That's the urban flats I mentioned, they use inefficient resistive heating because that's cheap to install (no plumbing and no vents, just the electrician adding a circuit per radiator from the box).
So, leaving aside your nitpicking about households vs homes (which are synonymous here), you agree with me then? What was the point of your comments?
> Almost 40% of homes have electric heating and that's the top heating type It's 40% of households not homes, and per your link it's 55% of rentals. That's the urban flats I mentioned, they use inefficient resistive heating because that's cheap to install (no plumbing and no vents, just the electrician adding a circuit per radiator from the box).
So, leaving aside your nitpicking about households vs homes (which are synonymous here), you agree with me then? What was the point of your comments?
> So, leaving aside your nitpicking about households vs homes (which are synonymous here)
The mistranslation gives the incorrect impression that owners have migrated their personal residences to resistive heating and that this is the normal heating method for the country.
Landlords cheaping out on heating is a completely different situation, and does not support your assertion. Especially with (again per your link) renters are significantly less satisfied with their heating situation than owners.
So, leaving aside your nitpicking about households vs homes (which are synonymous here), you agree with me then? What was the point of your comments?
> So, leaving aside your nitpicking about households vs homes (which are synonymous here) The mistranslation gives the incorrect impression that owners have migrated their personal residences to resistive heating and that this is the normal heating method for the country. Landlords cheaping out on heating is a completely different situation, and does not support your assertion. Especially with (again per your link) r…
I think you are either being argumentative for the sake of it, or you are confused about the meaning of "homes", or both.
My balcony solar produced an average of 5kWh per day in the last month. That is about as much as I consume.
and did you consume it when it was produced?
I guess I consume most of it. There are 4kWh of batteries connected to the panels. I set my dishwasher and my washing machine to run when production is high.