Not mentioned in the article is that these systems are still illegal in the US.
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.
do you know why they’re illegal? is there some danger to them?
Individuals owning their own means of energy production is obviously unamerican.
It’s a feature of capitalism!
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.
Balcony solars are not able to back feed since they need the grid to synchronize, if you want one that is able to work in “island mode” you still need approval from the grid provider/one that isnt connected with the schuko connector.
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.
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.
Removed by mod
Removed, civility.
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.
Why did you ban me form Climate?
Just because I questioned this article? If so, that’s fucked up!
I stand by my opinion that combating climate change with consumerism is a bad idea. And you trying to silence that opinion, whether it not it’s wrong, is super problematic.
Although I hope they also considered what happens if there’s two of them on a circuit
The regulations allow only for one. If you want a bigger install than that you need individual approval I think.
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.
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My dude did you even read the article?
299€ for a complete 840 Wp setup at Lidl the other day.
Wtf? Read the article. It’s about 400 Euro full set ups
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!”.
spoiler
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.
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.
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.
My dude did you even read the article?
In Germany, individual plug-in panels sell for as low as 200 euros, or about $217, at big box stores. Complete sets, including mountings, an inverter and cables, are about twice that cost.
