Comment on Home electricity bills are skyrocketing. For data centers, not so much.
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 days agoRight but the way I understand it is if you get the plug in style and let it generate some power during the day it will offset your usage and save you money on the bill.
HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 2 days ago
Yes, lile that. There are also types (like the Anker generators for mobile homes / boats etc) which can run stand-alone, but the German balkony solar panels just add cheap supply to the domestic power use by plugging it into the household AC system.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I think you guys running 220 through the whole house is why we don’t have that stateside, just a guess.
Lee@retrolemmy.com 2 days ago
No reason it can’t be done on 120v (from a technical level). In fact, most solar inverters in the US could do this at a technical level as they basically do the same thing, just on a larger scale (higher current and therefore are wired in to electrical panels rather than through outlet as outlets have lower current limits). All you need is the inverter to synchronize its AC output to match grid. If you had a smaller inverter, you could just connect it to an outlet (ignoring building codes, insurance, and other non technical reasons). So the choice is then to have centralized larger inverters or smaller inverters per panel or 2. If you live in a very densely populated area where you can only pit a panel or 2 on a balcony or you don’t have control of your electrical panel, then the small inverter method makes sense.
LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
800w is less than half what you could pull from any outlet in the US. Standard electric breakers are rated for 15amp continuous at 120v. Most heating appliances designed to run for long periods of time (like electric heaters, or countertop cooking) run around 1800watts. So you could pretty easily plug in two 800w solar panels to back-feed a single circuit.
50amp 220v is about the limit on one circuit for most residential homes (for ovens, or electric central heating) which is what would be used for the fastest electric car charging at home.
That’s plenty of headroom for in-circuit solar generation.