Comment on Why Balcony Solar Panels Haven’t Taken Off in the US
varyingExpertise@feddit.org 5 weeks agoHuh, the wiring just supports power spontaneously coming from an exit point rather than an entry? Is that commonplace?
Why wouldn’t it? Electrical wiring isn’t a one way road, electricity (this is an extreme oversimplification, especially when it comes to AC) will always flow from points of high voltage to points of lower voltage. That’s how solar inverters feed into the grid. Raise their voltage a tad bit higher than the grid and match the frequency and phase of the grid until the outflow matches their maximum available power.
Is that commonplace?
That is a hard question, because this isn’t a feature, it’s how things are. Only thing one needs to take care of is that the solar inverter doesn’t deliver so much power that the circuit can consume beyond the circuit breakers capacity, otherwise the breaker would be rendered moot. That’s why these small plug inverters are limited to 800W in Germany, that puts the entire possible load on a 16A circuit into the general upper limit that is still within the safety margin fro 16A circuits.
Dojan@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
I guess I’ve pictured electricity a bit too much like water. I still don’t quite get how or why this works, but it’s really cool that it does!
That said I’ve no plans on messing around with that kind of thing as I’m terrified of electricity. I electrocuted myself as a kid and that experience stuck. Rather like I did to the dough hooks I stuffed into an extension cord.
varyingExpertise@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
On some level, water would work the same way. If you were to collect water from somewhere, feed it into a pump and hook that up to your kitchen faucet, as soon as you increased pressure a little above that of the public water pipe, water would flow backwards from your faucet through the pipes in the house into the public water supply and your water meter might run backwards, depending on its construction.
disclaimer: Unlike freshly harvested AC electricity from a solar inverter, home collected water does not meet the hygiene standards for public supply. Absolutely do not do that either.
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
And this is why the UK has separated hot and cold water taps.
Your hot water used to come from a rainwater tank on the roof, and it was illegal to pipe it to a mixing faucet because if something went wrong with the cold water site it could pull undrinkable hot water from these tanks and faucets and contaminate all the drinking water.
kalleboo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The inverter in these is designed to shut down if it doesn’t detect a waveform from the grid to sync with. As long as the hardware is legit (which is a big if with how easy it is to get unsafe junk in from China) there is no safety issue, it’s purely regulatory.
Dojan@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
Lots to learn here today! Thanks everyone!
Lähdetään uimaan!
Don_alForno@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
It’s not electrons “reaching” a point that does the work, it’s the fact that they move in a circuit. A generator or a battery just applies the force that makes them move (voltage).