PieFedGermans Combat Climate Change From Their Balconies: Plug-and-play solar panels are popping up in yards and on balcony railings across Germany, driven by bargain prices and looser regulations.
www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/business/germany-sol…
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These plugin systems are quite interesting, they allow renters for example to get some benefits of Solar without having to make permanent installs. The systems a lot cheaper than a full setup but obviously don't produce the same amount of power. I first saw them appearing in France and then since Germany changed the law to allow them its good to see it flourishing there too. This isn't going to save the planet but its a little step of improvement.
400 Euro isn't bad for all the fittings and inverter and the big benefit of these DIY systems is you just put them together and connect them to a standard wall socket. Constantly just saves you money on your bills when there is sunshine. Its also not enough power that its worth dealing with export tariffs but in countries where smart meters already exist it could be part of the mix.
You just plug them into an outlet? Is there no safety concern about backfeeding power, especially if someone turns off the breaker and expects a circuit to be de-energized?
They're not supposed to be grid-forming and should turn off if there's no grid voltage. And if you turn off a breaker you should always check that there's no voltage, you might've turned off the wrong breaker.
That's good then. Although I hope they also considered what happens if there's two of them on a circuit, because if the mains power goes off, but there's another panel on the same circuit, they'd each see the other's voltage on the line, right?
And yeah, you should verify that a circuit is de-energized after you flip the breaker, but I've seen both some real weird electrical work, and some electricians who aren't that careful.
They generate no frequency so the situation you fear is not possible.
The panels themselves are DC, but there's an inverter feeding 120V 60Hz (or whatever) into the wall, right?
Yes, but it's a system that is designed to sync with the frequency of whatever other electricity is out there, and it shuts of if the main shuts off. Almost all rooftop systems without a battery in the US are set up the same way.
Still, it's important to check that things you think are disconnected do not have current flowing through them. And this makes it more important.
Yeah that would worry me, plugging a power source into a wall socket.
I would much rather build an independent little cart with panels and a battery and a charge controller and an inverter and use it the way you would a generator. I would rather pay the power company full price to run my refrigerator and nothing at all to recharge my lawnmower than 98.3% for both.
How does that work with the fuse box? Like mine has a 100A fuse for the whole house, but a bunch of smaller fuses for e.g. downstairs, upstairs, lights, etc. Does it only work on the circuit it's connected to or what?
I put a small flexible light weight one up last year. Secured with steel washcloth line (it doesn't have glass or anything, just a plastic sheet with cells on it), the city replaced the meter to account for feeding in (not needed, I work home office and use up all of it in my apartment) cost me 600 or so last year, plugs into regular wall socket and has already lowered consumption by about 1/10th which is a solid chunk of money with current prices. I am very happy I get to do something as a renter, even if it will take years to pay for itself.
Not mentioned in the article is that these systems are still illegal in the US.
do you know why they're illegal? is there some danger to them?
They are VERY DANGEROUS to conservatives and the flawed ideological rafts they're still clinging to.
FTA:
The so-called plug-in systems involve routing the direct current generated by the panels to an inverter, which converts it to an alternating current. They can then be plugged into a conventional wall socket to feed power to a home.
So, yeah, almost certainly illegal in pretty much any grid-powered home in the US.
The basic problem is that if the grid power goes down the inverter can back-feed the grid enough to electrocute the people who are working to fix it.
Utilities require an approved isolation system of some kind that prevents that happening. They are pretty strict about this for various other technical and political reasons too, but evidently it is mostly a safety concern.
I've got some good locations at home for panels, and about 500W in panels that I use for camping, but the equipment I'd need to handle easily and safely consuming the power at home is kind of expensive (just running an inverter and a battery for an isolated system is easy enough, I've got all that, but it's not cheap to seamlessly connect it to my home power system). Would love to have a safe and approved system like what is described in the article.
Houses in Europe are connected to the grid too.
These systems are approved in Europe by utilities because they have failsafes implemented to prevent back feeding electricity in the grid.
The fact that these systems are still illegal in the US is a political issue, not a technical one.
[European utilities] have failsafes implemented to prevent back feeding electricity in the grid
Yeah but imagine if you could save money by not doing that? What are the odds that there's going to be cheap(er) personal mass power generation in the next few decades.
While it seems like they’d have to, the article makes no mention of such a fail safe. What does it do and how could it work?
From what it sounds like, the safety is in the device not the grid. In case you haven’t noticed, there is a far lesser sense of personal responsibility to those around you in the US than Europe and I don’t know that I’d trust that nobody over here would fudge some bypass to power their house in an outage
These systems are approved in Europe by utilities because they have failsafes implemented to prevent back feeding electricity in the grid.
Sounds like Big Government Regulation of my God Damned Rights to do something on my house as I see fit! Europe's full o' damn communists and their stupid sun grabbin' electro-gibbits. That's why they'll never be the Greatest Bestest Country on da face a dis here Earf.
Individuals owning their own means of energy production is obviously unamerican.
Because fuck us apparently.
No, because you can kill a lineman working on the downed line, who mistakenly thinks the line is dead and has no idea that you're feeding power into it from your solar panel.
The inverters are built with an automatic shut off during grid outages, specifically for lineman safety.
I really feel like one of these store-bought solar panels wouldn't put out enough electricity to kill someone
They have enough energy, but they automatically turn off once the grid goes down because they need the grid to synchronize. Balcony solar panels are not able to work in "island mode", so no lineman is at risk.
You really don't need a lot of power to kill someone, especially with AC you really don't need much to induce ventricular fibrillation.
Not everything in the world should be revolving around your stupid default country
This article is from the New York Times, a prominent US newspaper which writes primarily for a US audience. It's relevant for them to bring it up.
Largely illegal by way of import. The Americans don't want cheap foreign panels dominating their still-nascent domestic solar industry.
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Bro the article headline even says balcony railings. We're talking single solar panel + plug in micro inverter type setups. That's like $200 if you shop around.
And not sure if you're aware, but after the "usable age" the system produces at like 80% capacity, so unless you disconnected from the grid and really really need that last 20%, you don't need to change a thing and can keep using it way past the warranty period. Or you can add a couple extra panels. Why replace the whole thing lol.
You can get a 800Wp (max allowed Wp for a balcony solar) kit in austria for around 500€, germany is currently limited to 600Wp so it should be about the same price or cheaper. And you just need to plug them into a schuko outlet, so most people should be able to do it themselve.
Edit: Fixed units
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if thousands of physics teachers suddenly cringed and started yelling "Get your units right!".
Wh is a unit of energy (1 Wh = 3.6 kJ) and by nature cumulative. And cumulative units can't peak, so Whp [sic] is impossible as a unit. What you really meant is Wp, as W is a unit of power (1 W = 1 J/s), which is a momentary value and momentary values *can* peak.spoiler
Luckily I'm not in school anymore xD
But thx for correcting me, edited my post, should be correct now :)
I'm sure the original comment had incorrect units as used, but this explanation that cumulative units "can't peak" seems wrong.
If you consider the total stored energy (Wh) over time of a solar-battery system under load, there certainly will be peaks or, in other words, maximal excess capacity of the system.
So no, it's not impossible to define a unit of Whp as such. "Cumulative" and "momentary" values are not exclusive and also do not have any bearing on whether a function of such values has maxima and minima.
New VDE recommendations say 800W on Schuko is tolerated. Wieland is of course better. That's btw not solar panel capacity but inverter capacity, you can have 2kW on your balcony as long as you're not feeding more than 800W into the net you don't need any permits no need to contact your utility no nothing.
What you should pay attention to as a renter without already existing balcony outlet though is your landlord: They generally don't like it when you drill holes through exterior walls, window frames, whatnot. Use window feed-through cables (for the PV connections, not the 220V), or dish out (quite a bit) of money to have it done properly (after talking to the landlord). At which point yes you want a Wieland outlet they're maybe 20 bucks, what's going to cost money is the electrician.
If you have an outside light on your balcony, you can probably feed it through there, though I'm not quite sure how power coming from inside the circuit interacts with the internal circuit breakers - lights sockets are usually not in the same internal subnetwork as wall sockets and this method would be feeding the power into the first circuit which is usually were all your lamps are, not into the second which is usally were all your appliances are, and it's quite possible that the circuit breakers for the lamps' circuit triggers with less current than the one for circuits meant to drive things with much higher power draw like vacuum cleaners, ovens and washing machines.
Lighting fixtures in adjacent rooms are supposed to be on different breakers, not sure whether that also applies to balconies, not a room as such is it... but I'm no electrician. While I *did* get an A in electrotechnics I don't know the VDE norms by heart (nor would I touch the wiring in a breaker panel).
OTOH it's perfectly permissible to have outlets and lighting on the same breaker. That's all to say I wouldn't be surprised or shocked to find that a balcony light is on a general "living room" circuit.
I don't think it matters in practice which phase the inverter is on. If you run the meter backwards with one phase and forwards with another, it should be still. We're not talking about an autonomous installation, after all, when the external network is down and there's no frequency to sync to those inverters stop outputting.
Which all makes me wonder: Why aren't we mandating that all new installations come with network isolation and points where you can plug in panels, battery etc? The hardware isn't that expensive and installing it is practically free when you're doing the initial installation.
Modern meters take that into account (and you'll get one by the energy provider if you don't have it already when you tell them you installed such solar panels), everything that's used in your home gets balanced against what you produce, regardless of which specific circuit uses / provides energy. (Only immediate usage though, and if you add a battery that can save your excess energy instead of feeding it back into the grid you roughly quadruple the cost so that's quite a bit more expensive.)
I'm not thinking the main circuit breaker or the meter.
Were I live appartments have a whole board of smaller circuit breakers once for a different circuits inside the appartment - for example there might be a circuit just for illumination, another for kitchen wall plugs, a different for bedroom wall plugs and so on, and for each of these there will be one such small circuit breaker.
These small circuit breakers normally have a lower trigger point than the main circuit breaker, though they might be different depending on the circuit since different kinds of things draw different amounts of power - i.e. household lamps aren't going to be drawing 1000W whilst an electric oven or electric heater might very draw that or more power.
In a normal situation, the current comes from the outside, through the meter and the main circuit breaker and then gets divided based on demand and goes through each smaller circuit breaker and feeds whatever is drawing power in those circuits.
If you have a balcony plug-in solar power system there, wired to any circuit, IF the power does come OUT from that circuit (I'm not sure, though it makes sense it can) and into the other circuits, then wouldn't the trigger point of the circuit breaker for that circuit (which as I said is lower than the main circuit breaker's) be important?
If I remember it correctly circuit breakers are electromechanic and don't really care which direction the current is going (so OUT or IN is all the same) just how much of it is passing through, so the current going OUT instead of IN on one of those circuit breakers would be fine, but even that being the case, it might still be a problem to wire the solar power via the circuit for the illumination rather than the circuit for the wall socked because the circuit breaker for the illumination circuit might have a lower trigger point than that for the wall sockets circuit (because you might connect a 1000W device to a wall socket whilst a 1000W lamp was already insanelly powerful back in the Filament Lamp days and is much more so in the LED Lamp days).
PS: Your point about "will power come out of my household and how does that interact with the meter and the main circuit breaker" is also important, but I wasn't even thinking about that since I was thinking about just the difference between wiring the power out from an appartment balcony via the circuit for the outside lighting vs bringing that power inside the dwelling and connecting it to a wall socket and hence a different circuit.
Banned
local energy independence is a massive W regardless of where the panels came from or if they were subsidized
Banned
So having 100€ savings in a year for a 200€ panel is a bad deal for you? Seriously 200€ is cheap enough for nearly all German households to afford them. What you are essentially doing is give most German households the ability to produce their own power, greatly enhancing fair power distribution, lower the electricity bill for them and give valuable capital most of the population. The only draw back is that they produce 30-50% less electricity, but forcing that would mean that you support big corporations building those solar panels, which only helps the rich.
Are you claiming that solar panels have a positive co2 footprint? This policy change was a massive step to a) boost solar power and b) boost decentralized energy security. Calling this "consumerism" is absolutely moronic.
Wait, are you claiming they *don't*? (assuming you mean a positive CO₂ footprint means net emission of CO₂).
Solar panels absolutely don't reduce CO₂. They make things worse *more slowly*, just as electric cars do, but they're still making things worse. They are most certainly not carbon neutral, let alone permanently capturing CO₂. They're an energy multiplier, which is less bad than using the energy without the multiplier, but it isn't a net positive.
Which I think is *probably* the crux of OPs point.
Edit: WTF, where are OP's messages? They weren't abusive from my memory, they were quite the opposite of climate-crisis-denying. They were perhaps hyperbolic and absolutist, but I from my memory of them there was no reason to remove them.
Solar panels do not have a positive CO2 footprint in the sense that they are net emitters of CO2. While the production of solar panels generates CO2 emissions, studies have shown that the overall carbon footprint of solar panels is significantly lower than that of traditional fossil fuel-based energy sources.
A life-cycle assessment of solar panels found that the carbon footprint of solar panels is approximately 20-50 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity generated . In contrast, the carbon footprint of coal-fired power plants is around 1,000 grams of CO2-equivalent per kWh .
Research suggests that solar panels can offset their life-cycle emissions within 2-4 years of operation, and can generate clean energy for decades beyond that . A study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that the net carbon emissions savings from solar panels can be up to 78% compared to traditional fossil fuel-based energy sources.
hardly slighty less shit id say.
References:
Fthenakis, V. M., & Kim, H. C. (2011). Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of solar panels. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(8), 3521-3533.
IPCC (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Reich, N. H., & Alsema, E. A. (2017). Environmental impacts of solar energy systems. In Solar Energy Engineering (pp. 255-274). Academic Press.
Perez, M. J. R., Fthenakis, V. M., & Kim, H. C. (2019). Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions and net energy analysis of solar panels. Environmental Science & Technology, 53(11), 6453-6462.
Well, yes. As opposed to a negative footprint, for things that maybe not directly reduce co2 by indirectly, such as renewable energies - solar panels being one of them.
Hence my cave & stone tablet comment. OP surely does not own a carbon neutral computer and uses a carbon neutral internet. But yes, technically speaking solar panels are carbon neutral, since they can generate more power than they consume. Obviously this very much depends on what this energy is ultimately used for but that's just pedantic.
Banned
I guess we can find a bit of wisdom even in you. What's that stone tablet you're writing on from within your cave anyway?