Comment on Why Balcony Solar Panels Haven’t Taken Off in the US
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 weeks agoThe biggest advantage of balcony-mounted solar panels, at least where I live, is that you need 0 permits. You don’t need to ask your neighbors, you don’t need to ask your power company, you don’t need a building permit, you don’t need an electrician and you don’t need a solar company to install them for you.
They don’t replace large solar farms but if you incentivize people to DIY their solar installation you get tons of additional cheap and clean energy from a source that would be wasted otherwise.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What are you powering with it? How are you storing the energy? It just doesn’t make any economic sense to me. I’d love to see some statistics on the total cost of one of these systems and how much power people are actually getting. Maybe it makes more sense in Germany where energy prices are nearly double the US average. But I’d still love to see some real examples to back that up.
kalleboo@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You plug it straight into the wall, it syncs to the grid and back-feeds it, up to 800W
roofuskit@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Back feeding is illegal in the US.
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 weeks ago
Balcony solar panels are dirt cheap, you can get them for 200-300€, including the micro inverter. You usually do not have batteries in these setups, you just use up the generated power while it is available by moving things like the dishwasher and dryer to that time.
To give some actual numbers, I pay 0.22€ per kWh right now. In the last 30 days (Apr 21 - May 20) the balcony solar panels generated 74.11kWh. The month was fairly average with an even mixture of sunny days and rainy days.
Assuming you can use up the 800W of peak power, you will have saved around 16€ in just those 30 days. I don’t have full data for the year yet since I only got mine a few months back but my current estimation is that it will have paid for itself after 2-4 years.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
How are you getting power to your appliances? Someone else suggested back feeding into an outlet which is illegal in the US.
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 weeks ago
Back feeding is legal here if it is connected to a micro inverter which can turn off immediately when disconnected and never outputs more than 800W.