Related: Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47601310
Drill baby drill...
... holes into the balcony railing.
Solar Balconies Take Europe by Storm
41–42 of 42 posts
Re: Solar Balconies Take Europe by Storm
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two types of balcony solar. One is bidirectional power flow, i.e., classical balcony solar, and the other is called "zero export", in which a current flow direction sensor on your mains throttles back your inverter if you start to reverse the current flow and export power. Where I live, in the US, National Grid is okay with balcony solar as long as it's a zero-export balcony solar. Your power utility may ta…
Anything that requires an electrician to come and modify your mains connections (followed, presumably by a municipal inspection), defeats the main benefit of balcony solar, which is that it is a commodity unit that can be installed by non-experts without any red tape. Further, the utility's safety concerns do not require any shut off on the mains. Their safty concern is not a new backflow of current; but a backflow o…
The simple plug-in and go balcony solar is going to be constrained in many ways. Zero export solar is more sophisticated, yes, does require electrical inspection, but given that it lets you add extra solar panels, battery storage and keep all the power you produce on the house side of the meter. There is some win there. Additionally, if you live where there is time of day rate changes, you can store up cheap energy at night and use it during the day when it's expensive.
Net metering is common, but not everywhere and frequently there's a pricing differential between what you buy and what you sell. My mother leased her solar panels from SolarCity/Tesla. She buys electricity at $0.12 a kilowatt hour, but sells at $.09/kwh. Some of the regulatory shenanigans I've seen regarding balcony solar include no net metering. If you produce excess power, you get no credit for it.