Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

grist.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 651 posts

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#601

Post by lostlogin »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #571
lostlogin wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

> You might get different results from outside Germany.

100% this.

Thank you. This is exactly what I was after.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#602

Post by hamandcheese »

pyrale wrote: post #318
hamandcheese wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can the government or industry not build solar power at an industrial scale This seems like a false dichotomy to me. Germany is a pretty rich company. They can do both if they want to.

> Germany is a pretty rich company You're way ahead of my predicted cyberpunk timeline.

lol, I of course meant country but just got a good laugh :)

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#603

Post by driverdan »

kragen wrote: post #149
driverdan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way overpriced. An 800W solar system is easily under US$1000 now.

In the US? Where do you buy it from, and are we talking about a system that feeds power back onto the grid?

You do it yourself. No one will install such a small system, it isn't worth it to them. That's only 3-4 panels.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#604

Post by akoboldfrying »

watwut wrote: post #486
akoboldfrying wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this really only shows that the single point of failure fails quite regularly, to varying degrees. It reminds us that widespread personal solar panel deployment reduces the total amount of centrally generated energy required, but doesn't even make a dent in the max capacity, which is much more important in terms of deciding infrastructure investment.

You really do not know what single point of failure is ... do you?

It's clear from context that "failure" here means a state that is no better than if there were no solar panels at all, i.e., complete dependence on central generation.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#605

Post by pfdietz »

kragen wrote: post #582
pfdietz wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, their market is not dependent on it. Generation of power from stored thermal energy is significantly different from directly using solar: it is completely dispatchable. As such, it serves a role even in a situation where most solar energy (or most solar + wind) is used directly. It enables solar to be used in places, like at high latitudes, where it is otherwise strongly disadvantaged by seasonality (something ba…

Generally speaking, steam circuits have large thermal masses, resulting in ramp-up times measured in hours, so most thermal energy is nowhere close to "completely dispatchable". Completely dispatchable thermal power is internal combustion engines (diesel or Otto) and open-cycle gas turbines, and Standard Thermal is not targeting temperatures high enough to operate those machines. Adding Standard Thermal to a baseload…

Batteries would handle the higher frequency components of the supply-demand mismatch curve, so steam sources wouldn't have to dispatch faster than on an hours timescale.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#606

Post by rcxdude »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #581
nmehner wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On short sightedness: https://www.dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-complicated-5... "Several commentators, business leaders and academics have identified that 1970 deal as a significant fork in the road of the Cold War, as it established a mutual basis for economic cooperation between Russia and western Europe." There are certainly different opinions on that. Gas imports started long ago and in the cold war that ap…

You are entirely missing the point. The issue is what do you do when you have no renewable because it’s the winter and there is no sun and no wind. German answer to that - like it or not - is building gas fired power plants and using coal in the meanwhile. That and buying a ton of nuclear energy from France a fact you are conveniently forgetting. The ratios you quote are meaningless. The issue is that it can’t scale…

'no sun and no wind' is not actually a thing that happens. What happens is less sun during the day and more or less wind in different places in Europe. This is a problem that can be solved through a combination of excess capacity, long distance transmission of energy, and storage, affordably and with existing technology. It's been obvious for a long time that a fully renewable grid can work, and Europe is rapidly moving towards that. Gas turbines are a reasonable stop-gap which will slowly get pushed out of generation as the proportion of renewables and storage grows.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#607

Post by rcxdude »

FredPret wrote: post #437
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…

Renewables have huge hidden costs as well. Solar panels and windmills are low density sources - we need a LOT of them to get the job done, and even then you still need base load somehow. That means a huge amount of extra powerlines and future landfill of defunct panels. Not to mention the very sturdy windmill foundations scattered around the landscape. Say what you will about nuclear, but all of its negatives are con…

Nuclear and renewables do not like to share a grid. Their attributes do not complement each other at all, despite their differences, because fundamentally both of them are not dispatchable. In practice what happens is either nuclear has enough subsidies to survive or renewables completely wreck the economics of it by supplying way cheaper power most of the time.

Both forms of generation want to be paired with something dispatchable, either gas turbines or energy storage. A mix of renewables and nuclear is a mix that is weaker than the sum of its parts, not stronger.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#609

Post by adrianN »

kragen wrote: post #589
adrianN wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 800W are to prevent fires. You can’t just arbitrarily raise those limits.

What do you mean about preventing fires? 800 watts at 240 volts is only 3.3 amps. Are you saying there are German houses where you could plug a solar power system into an outlet whose wires would pose a fire risk if they carried 4 amps? Because I think the minimal rating for a German residential outlet is 16 amps, which would be 3520 watts at 220 volts. While I agree that you can't just arbitrarily raise safety-based…

That's 3.3 amps behind the breaker. So if your wiring is set up for 16 amps you can now draw 19.3 amps before the breaker kicks in. That's within the safety margin. But if you allow PV to feed in more you exceed the safety margins and can cause the wiring to overheat.

Re: Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels

#610

Post by karpik »

flohofwoe wrote: post #460
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.

If anything has become clear in the last couple of years is that Russia doesn't act rationally, and their government lies as soon as they open their mouths. E.g trying to explain Russia's actions with 'reason' is just a waste of time. Also: "if you want peace, prepare for war" has never been more true than now, as sad as that is.

Hey, I find you from another topic (about speed of js/rust calls, im really curious about best effective way of wasm 3d app with additional raycasting, etc)

However I couldnt ignore this topic since im from Voronezh, Russia. Totally agree about government’s lies and impulsiveness, however:

- when they say “X is what totally not gonna happen” actually they introduce X event to the news so 99.99% it is gonna happen later

- impulsiveness huge, they got a lot of people in jail for labeling “svo” as “war” and in last months all the government refers to the conflict as to “the war”. However(!) they kinda translate will of the nation, some basic russians, trying to create narrative that will make average russian proud and happy and from the other side praying for any luck in war (actually they need not luck but supply chains, that ones are corrupted as hell, and that shit going for three centuries at least, nothing new)

So, about prep to a war I’m afraid you’re right, I don’t think it’s reasonable to stay at Russia at all for now at least for 6 years. Also it’s risky to stay in Poland and Finland. For Baltics not that risky but really depressing though. h o w e v e r

- russia had a deal for nato not to get close to its borders, that was violated in a really bad manner, the neighbor just stopped all communication from 2020 and at beginning 2022 declared cancellation of other deal of not to place any atom weapon nearby.

- USSR, and Russia asked to get in NATO a few times and got pretty rude responses “no way”. So there is nothing else this country can do if it doesn’t want to give up. The reasoning is pretty clear and emotional, stand for national security, do not became another India for UK. But the whole thing is messy, and smells like a slavs genocide. Russia became isolated, people are really angry and tolerable to constant violence threats, that is just insane turnaround since 2018 world cup that was hosted in Moscow.

Post reply on HN