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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

#491

Post by krzyk »

john61 wrote: post #175

I have cut my warm water costs by 80% with balcony solar panels. I have a warm water heating pump with 600 W electrical power. My little server turns it automatically on when the solar access power is greater than 540 W (measured by the smart meter). This generates usually enough warm water for our household. Also the solar panels cover to idle power of the house of 50-100 W very easily during daytime. This pays off…

How do you connect that?

I assume balcony solar panels provide you with a power socket. How do you connect all the appliances in house to that socket(s)? Isn't it a lot of cabling?

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#492

Post by ReptileMan »

watwut wrote: post #485
ReptileMan wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>War with Russia is a real possibility No it is not because of 3 reasons: 1. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 2. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 3. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO War with russia is mostly hawks' and chicken littles' of the media wet dreams.

That assumes NATO would fight Russia. USA can not be trusted anymore to keep their obligations.

Who the fuck needs USA? EU has 4 times the population and infinity times the industrial capacity ...

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#493

Post by forty »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #482
Archelaos wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear technology is a dead end. Renewables and saving energy is the future. Nuclear and fossil are in the same boat. They are both more risky and have huge hidden costs that the general public and future generations will have to bear. The only good reason to go nuclear these days is if you want the bomb, like Iran. Interestingly, it is the same people who supported fossil in the past who are still promoting nuclear…

Nuclear and intermitent energy sources have no place in the same sentence. Germany didn't avoid nuclear by switching to renewables. It does so by burning coal and building gas-fired power plants. How to manage a grid fully on intermitent power sources is an open question. There is at this point in time no answer to this. At the moment, Germany fires up extremely dirty power generation capacity every time there is a s…

Funny story I like to tell here when nuclear chat come up: this summer (in France) they had to stop some nuclear plant because of the heat, which was causing the river used to cool the reaction to over heat. Right when people needed plenty of electricity for A/C. At least solar was there and working at it's best when we needed it ^^ (this is just for trolling the "renewable are not there when we need it" discourse ;) )

Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution for intermittentcy. But not matter what we do, we should target using less energy, because the only clean energy is the one we don't have to produce. I think that's the thing people miss (volontarily I think) when they answer anti nuclear discourse. Insulating homes and and designing cities so that people don't have to use cars, rather than producing more and more nuclear reactors doesn't seem dumb to me, no matter what's your opinion on nuclear itself.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#494

Post by blablabla123 »

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.

I would say the main political crisis of the moment isn't one about being right but about consistent plans. The plan for a Green economy is pretty clear since more than a decade and revolves around Smart Grids. Without these no decentralized energy, no storage etc. Indeed that's something that was done right and proofs actual long-term plans are worth it.

The irony is, at this point even many environmentalists don't oppose Nuclear anymore. But there's still the lack of a coherent plan. Where should the fuel come from? How is EOL of a power plant handled? How is it paid? The answers changed a lot in the last decades.

Apart from this the last 5 years were a PR disaster for the Greens. Protesters (Last Generation) have been connected to them although the LG is even protesting against the Greens. When there were these massive floods the Greens actually lost votes instead of gaining those.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#495

Post by dgroshev »

ReptileMan wrote: post #394
watwut wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) Russia is already sending drones to border countries. 2.) Russian politicians openly talk about such possibility. 3.) Russian interest in expansion is no secret. War with Russia is a real possibility. Considering NATO is not reliable anymore (due USA being less then reliable partner) , considering China seem to low key support Russia, it is not even crazy from the Russian side.

>War with Russia is a real possibility No it is not because of 3 reasons: 1. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 2. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO 3. Russia has no resources to wage war on NATO War with russia is mostly hawks' and chicken littles' of the media wet dreams.

Russia is still by far the biggest country in Europe, with tons of natural resources and support from the biggest industrial manufacturer on the planet. It has an industry that is now fully oriented to produce military goods in war-time quantities that it can't easily spin down.

Russia does have resources, it has the desire, and importantly the state it depends on (China) has a very strong motivation to have Nato distracted when it acts on its plans for Taiwan.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#496

Post by slow_typist »

nebula8804 wrote: post #304
slow_typist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

585 kWh/m^2 median energy consumption for production according to a 2013 study cited on the Wikipedia article on energy return on investment. 440 W panel has about 2 m^2. It is probably a tad better now, because lower mass of silicon per meter squared. That translates to roughly 2.5 years of energy payback time in Germany under good conditions (azimuth SE to SW and elevation about 30 to 60 degrees, no shadow). Give a…

Wow that is pretty good, lines up pretty nicely with the approx monetary break even as well. Impressive! Wonder if there is anything that can be done to lengthen the life of the panel as much as possible. I've read elsewhere that solar panels have a theoretical lifespan of 25 years with the panels slowly degrading and not failing all at once. I dont know if these specific panels are different but I wonder if the pane…

Degradation is more or less solved. Producers guarantee a maximum of .4 % power degradation per year for 25 or even 30 years. That may be offset buy rising energy costs alone. May be not if someone manages to producer cheaper batteries.

Right now owners of older rooftop photovoltaics in Germany swap functioning modules for newer ones with better efficiency.

Even if some small percentage of older modules fails it is probably not the fault of the cells but of connections in the module due to moisture. It is a system. In theory you can take the cells and build new modules. But that is too expensive compared to buying new modules.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#497

Post by V__ »

amomww wrote: post #436
V__ wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst political decision of German politics since WW2 Except the shutdown had no negative effect. There was no supply shock and prices keep trending down since (Though that of course doesn't mean because of). Let's keep it real. I can probably name worse German political decisions from this week.

[flagged]

Wait, so Germany's shutdown of three nuclear plants resulted in the EU wide energy crises and EU wide poverty? Seems almost untrue...

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#498

Post by javier123454321 »

watwut wrote: post #310
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that these things are usually hindered by the government's bureaucracy, maybe the best title would be "Germany's government removes obstacles preventing residents from outfitting..."

Insisting that every improvement must be framed as something bad about government is how USA government became downright horrible.

It's like you're saying "the outcome is good, but because it was achieved through deregulation, it is inherently bad".

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#499

Post by pyrale »

cjpearson wrote: post #283
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…

A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. The ROI doesn't look as attractive in France, the US or Norway.

Balcony solar is likely to make this worse, given Germany has low/zero electricity market prices when the sun shines.

Balcony solar production means Germans don't buy solar from their utility when utility costs are low, and they do want to buy some when utility costs are high.

Unsurprisingly, fixed contract prices are bound to be an average of electricity price at different times. With balcony solar, the times where it costs the least will be weighted less in the average, so contract price is bound to go up.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#500

Post by dgroshev »

GordonS wrote: post #376
watwut wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) Russia is already sending drones to border countries. 2.) Russian politicians openly talk about such possibility. 3.) Russian interest in expansion is no secret. War with Russia is a real possibility. Considering NATO is not reliable anymore (due USA being less then reliable partner) , considering China seem to low key support Russia, it is not even crazy from the Russian side.

On drones: there is no evidence of that. The supposed "drone ship" that was siezed by France turned out to be crewed by Chinese and had no drones or weapons on board. A Croatian citizen were arrested regarding the drone near Frankfurt airport. Three Germans were arrested regarding the drones near Oslo. Consider what Russia could possibly have to gain by randomly flying drones near civilian airports... nothing? Consid…

"The Ukraine" is offensive, please refrain from using it. Wikipedia covers some of the history behind the use of the definite article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine#English_defini...
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