‘Suddenly energy independence feels practical’: Europeans are building mini solar farms at home

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SteveKLord@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨energy@slrpnk.net⁩

https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/26/suddenly-energy-independence-feels-practical-europeans-are-building-mini-solar-farms-at-ho

Installing solar panels on your home or business is common in many European countries. But they really come into their own during energy crises.

“If you’ve got a solar roof on your home and you’ve got a battery then, depending on how much energy you can generate, you are substantially insulated from importing electricity,” explains Matthew Clayton, CEO of UK-based Thrive Renewables.

Dynamic tariffs are becoming more common in Europe. This is where the price of electricity varies throughout the day and night, with costs going up during peak periods, like dinner time, when households are using more.

This means that if you store up solar power during daylight hours, when the sun is at its strongest, then you can use that energy, rather than drawing it from the electricity grid, during the most expensive periods. “Your relationship with the grid is totally changed,” says Clayton.

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Wander@sh.itjust.works ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Grid going down?

I think the last time I experienced that was 15 years ago. Even then it was only for a couple of hours.

Like it’s such a non event as to not even bother trying to fix it.

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- Drasglaf@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It happened in Spain last year and it lasted for a day more or less. You never know.
  
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eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
The disadvantage is that you still lose power when the grid goes down, even if you have storage. Unless you run parallel circuits, and your system is island/black start capable.

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- perestroika@slrpnk.net ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Colleagues, please do not downvote the poster. Most solar poewr installations in use today are grid-following, so it’s correct to point out: if the grid drops, most solar inverters stop. Your average Huawei is not capable of operating in island mode.
  
  Of course, the grid drops rarely, but this is a real risk for example if your electrical grid should get bombed, or pelted with ice rain.
  
  Myself I have a different kind of a solar power system, and it’s not commonplace. It’s easy and doable, there is plenty of instruction available, but it’s less profitable.
  
  panels -> DC -> charging controllers -> DC -> battery bank -> DC --> consumers, among them an inverter --> AC --> possibly the grid
  
  To get a safe system, ask a specialist or learn about balancers, interrupters and fuses. Everything is DIY-able with a willingness to learn. Avoid dangerously high voltage if you aren’t certified to work with electrical power.
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Do you have a pointer to such DIY home solar? I was planning to build my next system from Victron components, but this could be an interesting alternative.
    
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  - MunkyNutts@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Do you have any directions where to go for this, traveler?
    
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- No_Maines_Land@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I’m not sure how that is a disadvantage compared to being on the power grid? If you are on the power grid, and the grid goes down, you also don’t have power.
  
  What is this a disadvantage compared to?
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    My point is that with this basic setup (I run 2 kWp) is that you still lose power when the grid goes down, so your relationship to the grid is not totally changed. The only thing you notice are smaller bills.
    
    The disadvantage is compared to a a insular/black start capable setup which is more expensive/complicated (and needs a licensed electrician to be legal) but lets you run on battery when the grid goes down.
    
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- Frozentea725@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Its pretty common to have a ups built in to switch to batteries. Can’t export power but still lights on
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Yeah, you can run a few systems on a circuit that way, but most of the ups-like storage inverters are not integrated into your solar PV system, so don’t try to minimize feed-in into the grid and maximize locally generated power consumption.
    
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- LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Solar makes it much less likely for the grid to crash anyway. ESPECIALLY closer to the source (avoids transmission loss and strain)
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Renewable power generation is not dispatchable, so large fraction of it in generation make grid stabilization interventions more frequent.
    
    Unless your state has a sane generation strategy you should plan for more rather than less power outage events in future. Fortunately commercial home solutions for that exist and are getting cheaper.
    
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- humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Some, perhaps most, balcony solar use a powerstation as a buffer to the wall outlet. While whole house sharing may get turned off in outage, you can still move the power to where its needed
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yes, you can use that as an emergency solution, if you have a battery-buffered solar system with a ups functionality. Most existing balcony solar systems don’t have that.
    
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- reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  For the plug in panels would it be possible to swap the plug into a battery that isn’t connected to the grid during an emergency? Or is the “plug in” bit more complicated than I’m imagining?
  
  Around me (unrelated to war) they’re offering rebates for home batteries and generators to keep some basics up during an outage.
  
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  - sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s possible, but needs to be engineered for safety, and that design/testing/certification will increase the cost and complexity.
    
    You can have solar panels and a battery totally off grid, where the big battery just acts as a generator, with its own inverter creating AC power for anything you plug in. That’s really simple and cheap, but isn’t safe for connecting to and powering a grid-connected house circuit. So anything you want to power with one of these systems needs to be plugged into outlets that only get their power from these batteries.
    
    You can add a grid-following inverter that safely matches the grid frequency AC, so that you can use the solar power you collect in your own normal home circuit, to power your own household appliances. But the simplest design here is a grid following inverter that doesn’t work when the grid isn’t connected. It can only add to something that already exists and can’t do things on its own.
    
    If you want to do both, where it can work without grid power and it follows the grid when the grid power is on, you’ll have to design a system that can switch between the two modes without delivering power where it’s not expected or generating power that conflicts with the grid’s AC waveform. Making it automated, like an UPS system, is even more complicated.
    
    It’s not impossible, or even that difficult, it just does add complexity and the engineering tradeoff is always the question of “what problem does this solve, and is solving that problem important enough to devote these resources to it?” For anyone on a reliable electric grid where power outages are rare, the answer is usually no.
    
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  - eleitl@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The grid-tied inverters need to have a grid voltage and frequency to be in a certain defined range orelse they switch off (this behaviour can be changed via firmware for some inverters). In theory you could use a pure sinus UPS for that, but in practice it is not designed to receive power on the outlet side and will overload/burn out.
    
    There are specific battery/diesel backed solar grid-tied inverter solutions which can smoothly separate and reconnect from the grid during outages while providing power to the consumers. These are far more expensive than simple grid-tied solar inverters.
    
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