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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

#361

Post by fweimer »

kragen wrote: post #95
SoftTalker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

The installations discussed in the article switch off power generation if mains power goes away, both for technical and safety reasons. If you want mains-independent power, more devices are needed, which seems to cost about as much as a typical balcony solar panel installation (which is still needed, of course). I doubt many German deployments are like that, so it doesn't really improve resiliency of electrical power.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#362

Post by polyamid23 »

ralfd wrote: post #247
numlock86 wrote: post #238

> 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.

For this you do not need to own the property / house / flat, though.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#363

Post by herbst »

alias_neo wrote: post #346
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.

What are your most high powered appliances there? Thinking about my home (in the UK) the "worst offenders" seem to be things that heat things, washing machine when it's heating water (~2.5kW), electric oven (~2-4kW), kettle (~1-2kW), electric heater (1-2kW). Outside of those, we could have most other things on in the house and not be using much more than 1kW, though granted I've been very intentional with electrical…

Heating is always the culprit (or cooling but that's less of an issue in our area).

But one thing to realize is that the industry was just lazy and none of this is actually "needs" a full electric line.

- You don't need actual heat for washing clothes if you using washing detergent. There are no real simple "machines" available as far as I know, except simple camping washing machines

- A rice cooker can work from as low as 250w. I have a "cooking" option in mine drawing 500w taking no longer than the usual 2000w plate (better isolation, optimized heat transfer, ...) to get water cooking.

- Heaters are difficult, I've tried a lot of electric options and they all draw a lot of power when you heat something like 20°C over the outside temperature. However ex. "Ecomat 2000" (small ceramic heater) can easily heat a average room at 450 watts.

One way to get warm and way lower wattage is heating blankets. From 50 - 100w usually on for 50% you get very far with little power.

Not sure if that helps anyone. But I spent a lot of time researching efficient caravan alternatives.

Ergo. 800 watts can be a lot.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#364

Post by spankibalt »

Poisonbox wrote: post #357
tirant wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact. Yes, Habeck is an interventionist, but his biggest interventions were a direct response to... you know, the war in Ukraine. What did anyone expect? When Putin turned off the gas, was Habeck supposed to just let the free market sort it out while factories shut down and people froze? Those price caps and the Uniper buyout weren't pre-planned…

> "That post is some dangerous half-knowledge and simplifications stated as fact."

That's... putting it mildly. To call a spade a spade: The post you replied to consists of nothing more than anti-Green crankery. The kind of tedious, intellectually dishonest click-bait crap you see disseminated in the Springer-Presse, e. g. ze WELT-Plus-Commentariat, or media of even less repute.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#365

Post by a96 »

astro1138 wrote: post #29
duxup wrote: post #10

I wonder how useful those are just small panels hanging off the side of a balcony oriented poorly. They also kinda look terrible :(

When it comes to urban design, I consider balcony solar panels to be less of a nuisance than cars on the streets.

Much better than a lot of "architecture", too.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#366

Post by notTooFarGone »

weinzierl wrote: post #331
jillesvangurp wrote: post #246

Germany 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 sa…

"removing all the bureaucracy here" This is a bit strong, given that you still need to register with the Marktstammdatenregister and get a permit from your landlord (relevant bc homeownership rate I think the high electricity cost has as much to do with the relative success of this than the reduced friction. On the technical side you are also limited to 800W max and if you want a battery things get complicated quickl…

Marktstammdatenregister is online and very easy to do, Allowance from landlord is more of a formality now as they can't really deny it. Of course some try but the law is pretty clear here.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#367

Post by adrianN »

tirant wrote: post #329
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU

[flagged]

Phase out of nuclear was agreed upon after Fukushima, long before Habeck had anything to say.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#368

Post by tcfhgj »

mbeex wrote: post #352
BoredPositron wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a lot of historical revision if you blame a dude who was minister for 3.5 years about decisions made 20-30 years ago. Same for your last paragraph. Nothing even close to that happened in the years he governed. Maybe you should start showing recipes because it looks like your grievances are personal in nature and everything but factual.

> it looks like your grievances are personal Given the changing voting behavior in Germany, these personal complaints seem to be quite widespread.

> Given the changing voting behavior in Germany

therefore "the leader we needed but didn't deserve"

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#370

Post by DasIch »

walthamstow wrote: post #339
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a bad legacy for Robert Habeck (along with the wind reforms), the leader we needed but didn't deserve [1][2]. Interestingly he's recently dropped out of politics and taken a teaching role at UC Berkeley. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwVR5JF8Ok 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxnnVPO9GFU

I'm not German nor do I live there, but I would have thought the legacy of Habeck would be more negative due to his opposition to nuclear.

The current state wrt to nuclear in Germany reflects a decades long consensus in Germany that spans the majority of the population, scientists, intellectuals, politicians and even energy companies.

Any opposition you do hear on this from within Germany is usually opportunistic. People are against the Greens so they just take the opposite position on their policy. A good example of this is Markus Söder (CSU) who flip flopped on this multiple times.

Realistically speaking there is no serious politician or party with a pro-nuclear position in Germany that has a plausible plan for leveraging nuclear power at meaningful scale in an economical way. Any such plan would realistically invite massive opposition because nobody wants nuclear facilities in their vicinity.

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