Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#571

Post by jillesvangurp » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #555

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…

Any chance you could post a link to the sort of setup you mean or like? I’ve searched but the deluge of crappy systems that aren’t what you mean is overwhelming results.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/SUNNIVA-BIFAZIAL-Complete-Inverte...

"SUNNIVA 920 W Balcony Power Station BIFAZIAL Full Black Complete Socket TSUN 800 W Inverter, PV Solar System, 2 x 460 W Glass/Glass Solar Modules, Includes 5 m Cable, Bluetooth WiFi, Complete Set"

Literally the first result that comes back for "balcony solar panel kit". 239 Euros with 4.2 star rating and > 200 purchase in the last month.

I can't vouch for this brand or kit but that's what comes up on top on amazon.de. Looks like some Chinese manufacturer, as you would expect. Plenty of pretty positive reviews in German with a few deployment photos. There are indeed a lot of solar panel related products on Amazon. It seems to be a popular product category.

You might get different results from outside Germany.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#572

Post by ahartmetz » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

Asmod4n wrote: post #554

amomww wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, Dutch coal and gas plants are running overtime for electricity exports. Obviously to compensate for the German and Belgian nuclear exits. (see https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/NL/5y/monthly ) On top of that, NL govt is investing 10B EUR to prepare the construction of several new nuclear power plants, less than 300km from one of the abandoned German ones (Emsland). In conclusion the nuclear exits of…

Nuclear is the answer to no problem we face currently. It’s expensive, slow to build new plants (decades). It’s also not flexible in the way it’s useable. Solar + battery storage on the other hand is super fast and easy to build, costs virtually nothing and leaves no toxic waste which can’t be recycled. Nuclear fuel is also mostly only available from Russia, which no one wants as a trade partner.

Solar has indeed become very cheap, battery storage less so. The price of storage is still a problem.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#573

Post by micwag » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

Scea91 wrote: post #526

slightwinder wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear has no relevance in Germany, never really had. The plants barely added any value to the market. When Habeck became Minister, most Nuclear plants were already gone, and the last remaining were phasing out, lacking nuclear fuel and permits. Habeck even gave a permit for the last plants to run some more months, squeezing out even the last parts of fuel as much as they could, just so they could serve as an additi…

Right at this moment Germany's electricity mix has 364gCO2eq/kWh carbon intensity, France is at 21. That is because 37% of Germany's production comes from gas and coal. Even from an environmental standpoint, France is doing much better than Germany and that is thanks to nuclear. Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most. ht…

> Also, by closing operating power plants, Germany weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most.

Ironically that was France which needed to shut down a lot of its nuclear reactors in 2022 and 2023 due to repairs. So according to your own logic France "weakened European energy production at the time when we geopolitically need it the most."

Here in Switzerland the reason given for the "energy crisis" was also mostly France as Switzerland usually imports a lot of energy from France.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#574

Post by wcoenen » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:01 PM UTC

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…

> Too bad my balcony faces east

This is not necessarily a disadvantage. If you have a contract with pricing based on the 15-minute intervals of the day-ahead market ("dynamischer Stromtarif"), then the electricity price spikes in the morning and evening. Typically with such a contract, you also get this higher price for injecting power back into the grid. And the price will almost always be lower than a traditional contract outside of these spikes.

A vertically oriented panel is also ideal for this scenario, because the sun will be low above the horizon when the panel is producing power in the morning.

edit: after looking into a bit more, it seems in Germany you may not actually get dynamic feed-in pricing. Too bad. I assumed that this was the case, because it works like that here in Belgium.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#575

Post by eldaisfish » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #528

FredPret wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, yes. But for solar farms, it's the opposite. That's why I think we should end up with: - gas plants: easy and cheap to spin up, can provide district heating - nuclear: squeaky clean, issues are concentrated in one spot, district heating - solar panels: super cheap, decentralized, and there are lots of opportunities like rooftops and carparks where we are wasting sunlight right now I just re-read Critica…

Solar farms aren't really any worse for the grid than other types of power plants that can't be located near cities.

yes, they are worse for the grid, depending on how you define worse.

One interpretation is that solar adds variability to the generation side of the equation and managing that variability is currently a question without a clear answer.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#576

Post by sowbug » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

ssl-3 wrote: post #121

sowbug wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: is anti-islanding an actual feature, or a necessary behavior of any power source that adds power to the grid? I can't imagine how a second power source would work at all if it weren't syncing to the main source's AC phase. So it seems that if you implement the syncing, you get anti-islanding for free (assuming you handle the case of a missing main source phase by not providing power at all). This is a newbie…

If the question is "is it an 'actual feature' or is it 'necessary behavior'" then the answer is: Yes. Simple grid-tied microinverters are completely incapable of doing anything without a grid to work with, and this is necessary: A non-synchronized AC generation source can't survive long before becoming an expensive puff of smoke instead. Anti-islanding is an actual feature that is also inherent in the design of grid-…

Thanks, I think that answers my question. It seems like there is a lot of regulation to enforce a behavior that was already necessary for microinverters to work at all. But given the risk (utility worker electrocution during outages), I also understand why utilities are extra-conservative about it.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#577

Post by slow_typist » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:32 PM UTC

slow_typist wrote: post #295

kragen wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be an upper bound if energy were free , but it isn't. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e... lists China as US$0.08/kWh, but that's the residential price; industry pays a bit more. But it's a countrywide average. Intensive investigations of Chinese "subsidies" from the US Department of Commerce have come up with embarrassingly little. The current €0.100/Wp price level (12¢/Wp) com…

Process energy will still be a lot cheaper than .08 US$/kWh in China. I doubt they process glass with electric ovens. OTOH that is primary energy then, which kind of supports your argument. Still other emissions in the silicon supply chain that cause global warming are also relevant. If I find the time, I‘ll look for recent LCA.

Found these slides from Fraunhofer: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...

Energy payback time around one year (p. 8)

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#578

Post by tfourb » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #459

walthamstow wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I like the guy but compare the electricity prices in Germany to other European states, and also to China and the US. It’s about $0.15 kWh in the US vs $0.40 kWh in Germany. I personally think this is absolutely insane, but I don’t blame Habeck but the poor renewables transition execution in Germany. It is currently a failure in terms of electricity consumer prices. Edit: I just rechecked China and wow! $0.08 pe…

The average wholesale price for electricity in 2024 was close to 0.09 €/kwh.

The consumer price is about 0.3 €/kwh currently, depending on the deals you are getting. The difference between wholesale and consumer price is made up of transmission costs, taxes and markups of various middlemen.

Shutting down nuclear power had 0 impact on electricity prices, as wholesale prices are set by the most expensive producer needed to satisfy demand. That is usually a natural gas turbine. All producers get paid the rate that this marginal producer demands.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#579

Post by StopDisinfo910 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

forty wrote: post #532

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France was a net exporter of electricity all summer so no idea of what you are talking about. Slowing down some nuclear plants due to this kind of external condition is fully expected. They are not stopped by the way just slowed down. Nuclear is modulable. People barely use A/C in France by the way. > Anyway, the thing we'll need for better using solar is storage, if we can make some clean ones, it will be a solution…

People do use A/C more and more in France for obvious reasons, even in the northern part (it has been the trend in the south already for a while now). I'm not sure what I said is incompatible with being a net exporter? There was a lot of sun and heat, they had to shutdown some nuclear power plants, but the overall electricy production was doing fine, because they did not have to shutdown all the plants (but how about…

> And yes, I agree we don't have good storage yet, but then we can decide to invest in finding solutions or to try to re-learn how to make nuclear power plants in less than 12 years.

Things don’t magically stop at some point. Not in 2030, not in 2050, not even when we reach net zero.

The question now is do we think it’s easier to reach and sustain net zero using a grid composed of renewable which we have no idea how to scale, don’t know how to manage and have no good solution for the inter-seasonal variation or using nuclear for which we already know how to do all that and we just need to scale up construction.

Well, personally, I think the rational answer is clearly obvious.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#580

Post by pyrale » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 7:57 PM UTC

ivanche wrote: post #559

pyrale wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay for themeslves when compared to your bill prices. They absolutely don't pay for themselves when compared with actual market prices for electricity generation. Your bill is priced that way so that you can have predictable price for what you consume. That means sometimes markets electricity at zero, but you'll pay the full contract price. Other times, electricity is _much_ more expensive than your contract, an…

Is it even possible for a private person to pay market price instead of a fixed price?

Market price + VAT + a subscription paying for the grid and utility's benefits, yes.

I believe that already exists in Nordic countries, I had heard of it in Sweden ([1] says 10% of the population uses it) and Norway ([2] quotes 75% of the population).

[1]: https://swedenherald.com/article/so-you-should-think-about-e...

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266695522...